From UHSL to UHMLG: the evolution of a group for health librarians in higher education

Background: In 2007 the University Health Sciences Librarians Group (UHSL) merged with the University Medical Schools Librarians Group (UMSLG) to form the University Health and Medical Librarians Group (UHMLG). This paper traces the course of health librarianship in the UK which led to this event, from the perspective of the UHSL. Methods: The narrative has been developed from the Executive Committee minutes, newsletters and reports of events organized by the UHSL. Summary: The UHSL evolved from the Council of Polytechnic Librarians (COPOL) Health Sciences Group and the Standing Conference of National and University Librarians (SCONUL) Health Sciences Group. It sought to represent the views of health librarians working in the university sector. It also provided, through newsletters and study days, information, networking opportunities and professional development. UHSL collaborated with other relevant organizations to further its aims. Conclusion: The structure of professional support groups within health librarianship reflects the evolving nature of the health service, higher education and the social changes driven by technological developments.     

Reassessing the Role of Translation in English Language Teaching

Preamble My purpose in this talk is to reassess the role of translation in English language teaching.I propose to do this by examining how approaches to the use of translation in the teaching of English have changed and developed over the years and then evaluating the     

Preadolescents'' Social-Emotional Adjustment and Selective Attrition in Family Research

Researchers often ask subjects to commit considerable time and effort to completing tasks that are not especially enjoyable. In a multistage investigation of sixth-grade boys and their families, we hypothesized that boys who were prone to high levels of distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and low well-being) but only low or moderate levels of self-restraint (i.e., consideration of others, impulse control, suppression of aggression, and responsibility) would be particularly unlikely to agree to participate. Consistent with this hypothesis, boys from 33 classrooms who were nominated by their peers as high in distress and moderate or low in self-restraint were significantly less likely than other boys to take part in an in-class survey. In addition, the families of boys who scored high in distress and moderate or low in self-restraint on the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI) were less likely than other families to agree to an observation session in their homes and to a series of telephone interviews about daily events in the boys' lives. Across the 3 phases of the research, the cumulative attrition rate of these at-risk boys was approximately 80%, compared to only 50% for those low in distress and/or high in self-restraint. These results suggest that the children of greatest interest in studies of social competence and family interaction may often be among those least adequately represented.     

Effective college teaching from the students' and faculty's view: Matched or mismatched priorities?

Thirty-one studies were located in each of which students and faculty specified the instructional characteristics they considered particularly important to good teaching and effective instruction. Students and faculty were generally similar, though not identical, in their views, as indicated by an average correlation of +.71 between them in their valuation of various aspects of teaching. In those studies with relevant data, the differences that did exist between the two groups showed a pattern of students placing more importance than faculty on teachers being interesting, having good elocutionary skills, and being available and helpful. Students also emphasized the outcomes of instruction more than faculty did. Faculty placed more importance than did students on teachers being intellectually challenging, motivating students and setting high standards for them, and encouraging self-initiated learning. The results of the present analysis were compared with those of an earlier analysis of the importance of various specific aspects of instruction in terms of their correlations with students' overall evaluations of teachers in actual rating situations.     

“ACCENTUATION EFFECTS” OF DISSIMILAR ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS: An Application and Exploration of Holland's Theory

This longitudinal study of college students found accentuation of initial group differences among academic subenvironments for Artistic abilities of both male and female students and for Enterprising abilities of male students. It also showed that male and female students in Artistic subenvironments-for whom Artistic abilities and interests were each of the two gender groups' initially prominent characteristic-increased still further in score on the Artistic abilities and interest scale over four years of college; and parallel results were found for male students in Enterprising subenvironments in terms of Enterprising abilities and interests. Moreover, both male and female students initially high on Artistic and Enterprising abilities and interests gained more on these attributes if they entered congruent academic subenvironments (Artistic and Enterprising subenvironments, respectively) than if they entered any of the other subenvironments. Whereas these findings support Holland's theory, other data (primarily for Investigative and Social abilities and interests of students) were either less supportive or unsupportive of Holland's theory. Some implications of these results are discussed.     

Information processing in seven-month-old infants as a function of risk status

7-month-old full-terms and high-risk preterms (less than 1,500 grams at birth) were compared on problems of visual recognition memory and tactual-to-visual cross-modal transfer. On the visual problems, preterm infants showed significantly less differential attentiveness to novelty than full-terms. They also required longer exposure times during visual familiarization, primarily because of longer pauses between fixations. Preterms and full-terms exhibited different patterns of looking, as indicated by the duration of fixation and the frequency in shifts of gaze. On the cross-modal problems, preterms and full-terms both exhibited similar and significant preferences for familiar rather than novel stimuli, a direction of preference which suggests that these problems were relatively difficult for both groups. For the preterms, novelty and exposure-time scores were found to be related to several medical risk factors. Novelty preferences were compromised in preterms who had suffered RDS postnatally, particularly those who had required prolonged mechanical ventilation. In general, high-risk preterms exhibited deficits in visual recognition memory and in the ability to recruit, sustain, and shift attention.     

The effects of preexposure to a warning or a safety signal on the acquisition of a two-way avoidance response in rats

Rats that were given nonreinforced preexposure to either a warning signal or a safety signal were significantly retarded in the subsequent learning of a two-way shock-avoidance response compared to rats that were not preexposed. These results are consistent with Mackintosh’s “learned-irrelevance” formulation of latent inhibition. They do not support a prediction derived from an extension of Kalat and Rozin’s “learned-safety” hypothesis. These findings suggest that preexposures in the total absence of aversive events do not endow a stimulus with safety properties.