Chaos theory, informational needs, and natural disasters

This study applies chaos theory to a system-wide analysis of crisis communication in a natural disaster. Specifically, we analyze crisis communication during the 1997 Red River Valley flood in Minnesota and North Dakota. This flood, among the worst in modern American history, consumed entire metropolitan areas, displacing thousands of people. The conditions and decisions leading to the disaster, and the subsequent reactions are retraced. Communication related to river crest predictions (fractals), the shock at the magnitude of the crisis (cosmology episode), novel forms of reorganizing (self-organization), and agencies that aided in establishing a renewed order (strange attractors) are evaluated. Ultimately, we argue that preexisting sensemaking structures favoring rationalized, traditional views of a complex system led officials to make inappropriately unequivocal predictions and ultimately diminished the effectiveness of the region's crisis communication and planning.     

冰上课教学方法与难点教学实践初探

在教学实践中感到冰上课的难点有2个:站立和弯道技术.就冰上站立和弯道技术进行了技术和教学方法的初步探讨.在冰上首先要解决站立问题,能站立后滑行就比较容易;另一个难点就是弯道滑行,这点若也解决,冰上课就成功了.     

Storage and retrieval of e-mail in a business environment: An exploratory guide

Executives recognize the value of maintaining access to information. More managers filter their own e-mail rather than have assistants do this task. Organizing and storing data for future use are left to the personal preference of the individual manager. Is this in the best interest of the organization? Are data being stored in a manner causing them to be irretrievable in the future? Are irrelevant data being stored? This study investigates the strategies used to store and retrieve e-mail. The results revealed that the primary search strategy was a reliance on memory. The labels assigned to the e-mail folders triggered the user's memory. Although, in the short term, memory is sufficient for organizing and retrieving information, the lack of transferability and preservation of this information poses a danger. The association between the electronic file label and the stored information is unique to the manager and may lead to inaccessibility of relevant corporate knowledge in the future.     

The written composing ability of children with learning disabilities: a review of the literature from 1980 to 1990.

This article reviews the literature pertaining to the written composing ability of students with learning disabilities that was published primarily in the decade from 1980 to 1990. The papers included are either reports of research or discussions of instructional procedures that are based on research. The topics addressed include story composition, expository writing, training/intervention research, and rationales/procedures for instruction.     

Book reviews

Association of Research Libraries     

Can Knowledge of Erasure Behavior be Used as an Indicator of Possible Cheating?

What is the typical amount of student answer‐changing that takes place in a low‐stakes test environment? Can we use this information to look for evidence of improper answer‐changing (cheating) on high‐stakes test?     

An intrapreneurial approach to integrating information production services into an academic medical center library

The many challenges faced by health sciences libraries of all types and sizes often require innovative solutions. When an innovative solution involves calculated risk taking, the approach is called intrapreneurial. At the University of Miami School of Medicine, an intrapreneurial approach solved the fiscal problems of the biomedical communications unit. The Louis Calder Memorial Library inherited these problems when the Department of the Library and Biomedical Communications was created in the early 1980s. In this paper, two intrapreneurial programs are described, and the benefit and suitability of this management style to information services are demonstrated.     

Supervisors' In-Session Behaviors and Cognitions

A multiple case study of four supervisors indicated that numerous factors shape supervisors' in-session performance and revealed a complex interplay between thoughts and behaviors.