Trends in Special Libraries: Observations Based on Conference Content

The annual conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) provides an opportunity to observe trends in special libraries emerging, continuing, and fading. This column analyzes the program of the SLA 2015 conference held in Boston June 14–16, 2015, and compares it to the programs of previous SLA conferences. Prior analyses and observations of SLA conferences are discussed. Emerging trends noted at the 2015 conference include data management and analysis, print collections, laboratory safety, and prospect research. Consulting, outsourcing, strategic alignment, open access, digitization, institutional repositories, and taxonomies have maintained a prominent presence at SLA conferences over the years. The column closes by calling for more research on and analysis of the content of SLA and other conferences attended by special librarians to capture trends not yet appearing in the journal literature.     

Women's recreational surfing: a patronising experience

Research analysing the operation of power within sport and physical activity has exposed the marginalisation and exclusion of women's sport in explicit and institutionalised ways. However, for women in recreational and alternative physical activities like surfing, sporting experiences lie outside institutionalised structures, thus requiring alternative surfing of conceptualising the processes of exclusionary power. In this paper, we focus on the voices of women recreational surfers to explore the changes which may or may not be occurring at smaller, more localised levels of women's engagement with surfing culture. An ethnographic methodology was employed to ask women how and why they engage in surfing and what it means for them, rather than asking questions based on existing assumptions. In presenting the data we draw upon the double meaning afforded by the term ‘to patronise’ as a means of framing the complex ways that women continue to be differentiated in surfing culture, and the ways they respond to this. In the final section, we employ a Foucauldian analytic lens to explore the subtle normalising practices in which women are incited to recognise and undertake the practices of the valued masculine ideal of the ‘good surfer’ through caring acts and advice offered by male surfers. This post-structuralist perspective offers space to think outside of simple resistance and reproduction, instead considering a complex space where women and men negotiate power in a range of ways from contextual, subjective positions. In conclusion, we argue that women recreational surfers are enacting alternative ways of operating within the power relations that circulate in the waves, creating ever-changing spaces for new ways of doing and knowing surfing to emerge.     

Capillary flow in sacrificially etched nanochannels

Planar nanochannels are fabricated using sacrificial etching technology with sacrificial cores consisting of aluminum, chromium, and germanium, with heights ranging from 18 to 98 nm. Transient filling via capillary action is compared against the Washburn equation [E. W. Washburn, Phys. Rev. 17, 273 (1921)], showing experimental filling speeds significantly lower than classical continuum theory predicts. Departure from theory is expressed in terms of a varying dynamic contact angle, reaching values as high as 83° in channels with heights of 18 nm. The dynamic contact angle varies significantly from the macroscopic contact angle and increases with decreasing channel dimensions.     

The efficacy of peer modeling and social conflict in the acquisition of conservation.

Significant gains in conservation of number, amount, mass, and weight were made by 53 nonconservers (age 6-9) who either simply observed conserver's performance on mass and weight problems or argued with conservers in a social conflict situation about these problems. There were no significant differences in conservation performance between the modeling and social conflict treatments. It was suggested that the social conflict effect could be attributed to modeling effects.     

网上语言学习与性别差异

网上语言学习作为一种时新学习趋势正在悄然兴起。在影响语言学习的各种因素中,性别差异毋庸置疑将被给予特别的重视。此研究从生理与认知差异的不同角度,分析了两性差别,并以分析这种差别对于网上语言学习所带来的对学习成果的影响为目的。此研究主要通过问卷调查的形式,样本来自50位大学在校学生和不同背景的社会在职人员。研究的结果表明性别差异的确在网上语言学习的质量方面起着重要的作用,并且对网上语言学习者和基于网上学习的研究者都有着重要的指导作用。　　Keywords:languagelearning;genderdiffer ence;web-basedlearning