Risky Business: Outsourcing Serials Cataloging

In 1999, the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh began a project to outsource cataloging for both the monographs and serials that were included in a special collection known at the university as the Glidden Collection. The collection had previously been accessible only through the existence of a card catalog. The materials had originally been cataloged using a local hybrid classification system based on the Glidden classification system. In her presentation, Faye Leibowitz provides detailed information about the history of the collection and why certain factors associated with the collection made it a difficult candidate for outsourcing. Libraries should seriously consider the hidden costs of outsourcing serials cataloging. The decision to outsource serials cataloging should take into account staffing problems and training. The way in which catalogers at the selected vendor use “cataloger's judgment” can also impact consistency between existing library policy and the outsourced records.     

Functional Requirements Specification for Archival Asset Management: Identification and Integration of Essential Properties of Services-Oriented Architecture Products

The complexity and size of geospatial data can constrain the capabilities of service providers and create risks to the long-term preservation and archiving of valuable information assets. While services-oriented architectures such as the Earth Data Analysis Center's Geographic Storage, Transformation and Retrieval Engine (GSToRE) facilitate increased use and impact of geospatial data by mitigating these complexities by development of dynamic applications and interfaces, such services can often be primarily focused on the maintenance and delivery of only the most current versions of geospatial data that may nonetheless possess significant historical, cultural, or scientific value. Actions and documentation required to assure long-term preservation may not be supported by existing business models or may be otherwise compromised. However, general purpose archives offer a preservation capability that is complementary to the value created by dynamic service providers. We present an overview of the features of GSToRE, and the DSpace repository platform and describe the requirements of a methodology for the harvest, quality assurance, and ingest of geospatial data into an institutional repository as a complement to the dynamic data access and visualization services provided by GSToRE and systems like it.     

‘Last Zulu Warrior Standing’: Cultural Legacies of Racial Stereotyping and Embodied Ethno-Branding in South Africa

This paper explores the legacies of white South African cricketer Lance ‘Zulu’ Klusener. His childhood immersion in ‘Shakan culture’ on a Natal farm was said to imbue him with warrior prowess on the field. In Klusener's newly democratic country even township veterans of the People's War against apartheid, who associated cricket with racial tyranny, followed his World Cup exploits. So too did his rural Zulu fans in KwaZulu–Natal chiefdoms. Klusener's ‘Zulu’ persona not only represented deeper cultural histories, but also pervasive colonial markers. In the post-apartheid era, Klusener's fame revealed a different minority at play. His sporting identity impressed the ‘rainbow nation’, especially the promoters of reconciliation selling the evocatively familiar with a new twist: the warrior inspiring unity, not with tribal spear, but with colonial bat. With international sanctions against South Africa lifted in 1994, boosters of cricket wanted to change negative perceptions of their racially exclusive sport. Klusener appealed to the historically oppressed at home and opened sources of global revenue formerly closed by a four-decade-old sport boycott. Indeed, his ‘warrior’ reputation was ripe for exploitation in a ‘neoliberal’ tourism-oriented economy called ‘Ethnicity Inc.’, the title of a book by John and Jean Comaroff on the ‘marketing [of] vernacular lifeways’ of ‘ethno-nations’.     

Getting to the heart of the matter: A diary study of swimmers' appraisals of organisational stressors

Abstract We explored sport performers' cognitive appraisals of organisational stressors. The relevant demands and transactional alternatives that athletes experience in relation to the situational properties were identified. Thirteen national standard swimmers completed semi-structured, interval-contingent daily diaries for a 28-day period. A combination of inductive and deductive content analysis was used to organise and analyse the diary entries with a focus on the following areas: organisational stressors, their underlying situational properties, and the swimmers' transactional alternatives. One hundred and thirty-one of the organisational stressors were appraised as threat, 41 as challenge, and 83 as harm/loss. Support was found for the majority of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) situational properties with the only exception being temporal uncertainty. Imminence was associated with the greatest number of threat appraisals (47), novelty was associated with the greatest number of challenge appraisals (17), and duration was associated with the greatest number of harm/loss appraisals (22). It is concluded that appraisal plays a pivotal role in sport performers' experiences of their organisational environment. Swimmers' transactional alternatives are influenced by the situational properties of the stressors encountered.     

US-alone presentations as an extinction procedure

CS-alone trials or US-alone trials were interpolated between Pavlovian defense conditioning and later measurement of the Pavlovian CR (conditioned suppression of dipper licking). Although both procedures equally degraded the CS-US contingency, only the CS-alone procedure significantly weakened the previously established CR. The US-alone procedure appeared to have no effect.