Introduction

ABSTRACT

DIRECTORY OF VENTURE CAPITAL. Lister, Kate and Tom Harn-ish. NY: John Wiley &; Sons, Inc., 2000, 385 pp., $39.95, ISBN 0-471-36104-6.

GALANTE'S VENTURE CAPITAL &; PRIVATE EQUITY DIRECTORY. Galante, Steven P. and Keith Moore. Wellesley, MA: Asset Alternatives Inc., 2000, 1,342 pp., $395.00, ISBN 1-893648-04-4.

THE DIRECTORY OF VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS: DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL. Lakeville, CT: Grey House Publishing Inc., 1999, 1,227 pp., $295.00, ISBN 1-891482-94-7. Reviewed by James Galbraith.

BUSINESS INFORMATION BASICS: A GUIDE TO THE KEY INTERNATIONAL SOURCES, 2000. Foster, Pam (Ed.) (with contributions by Judith M. Nixon). London: Headland Business Information, 2000, 230 pp., UK £95.00, ISBN 1-85739-204-3. Reviewed by Ann Fiegen.

DOING BUSINESS AND INVESTING WORLDWIDE 2000 (CD-ROM). PricewaterhouseCoopers, May 2000, 1 CD-ROM disc. Pricing: $395.00 (institutional price of $295.00 available to public and academic libraries). (800) 579-1646 or http://www.PricewaterhouseCoopersglobal.com/gx/eng/ins-sol/main/index.html. PC compatible. System requirements: Windows 3.1 or higher. Reviewed by Adele L. Barsh

PLUNKETT'S ON-LINE TRADING, FINANCE &; INVESTMENT WEB SITES ALMANAC, First Edition. Plunkett, Jack W. (Ed.). Houston, TX: Plunkett Research Ltd., 2000, $149.99 (includes diskette), 547 pp., ISBN 1-891775-08-1. Reviewed by Hal P. Kirkwood, Jr.

PLUNKETT'S TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY ALMANAC, First Edition. Plunkett, Jack W. Houston, TX: Plunkett Research Ltd., 2000, 653 pp., US$179.99 (includes CD-ROM), ISBN 1-891775-06-5. Reviewed by Hal P. Kirkwood, Jr.

U.S. GOVERNMENT ON THE WEB: GETTING THE INFORMATION YOU NEED. Hernon, Peter, John A. Shuler, and Robert Dugan. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1999, 348pp., $42.00, paperback, ISBN 1-56308-757-X. Reviewed by Bert Chapman

WHO'S WHO IN ECONOMICS, 3rd Edition. Blaug, Mark (Ed.). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1999, 1235 pp., US $350.00, ISBN 1-85898-886-1. Reviewed by Judith M. Nixon.     

The Reference Desk,Points-of-Sale,and the Building of Loyalty: Applications of Customer Relationship Management Techniques to Library Marketing

This article argues that the reference desk is a primary interaction point for direct marketing of the library and remains, despite all the other marketing methods (e.g., posters, speaker's events, email announcements, brochures, RSS feeds), an extremely potent agent to act as a physical point of sale for the library, so necessary in producing a loyal community of returning scholars. This method of marketing the library by the reference desk librarian has much to do with face-to-face interactions. Summaries adopted from Customer Relationship Management literature are discussed as marketing guidelines for the reference desk librarian.     

Islamic pedagogy and embodiment: an anthropological study of a British Madrasah

This anthropological study of a higher education British Madrasah was undertaken to increase our awareness of the spectrum of sensory experiences that shape Islamic pedagogy. We started our anthropological study from an Islamic premise of the inseparable nature of knowledge and the sacred. Pedagogy is defined as not a matter of simple methods and technique but as a holistic approach that deals with the capacity to form the human person. Islamic pedagogy is represented by the heartfelt interactions between the teacher and learner through orality, facilitating memorization, and the didactic approach towards sacred texts. This research has explored the sensoria of a British Madrasah from a spiritual approach and this provides the foundation for shaping our understanding of the madrasah concept of Islamic pedagogy. An Al-Ghazali’s mystical-theoretical approach toward learning is evident in this research in defining the madrasah as a spiritual rather than social construct, and is optimized by the embodiment of learning.     

Presidential debate questions and the public agenda

Presidential debates have become an institutionalized component of presidential campaigns. Debates have been shown to create learning in voters and are capable of influencing vote choices. Although candidates have some control over their utterances, questions, usually asked by journalists, have a strong influence on the topics candidates can address. It is fashionable to criticize the questions posed by journalists in these “joint press conferences.” This study adds a new twist to media agenda‐setting, providing empirical evidence on the question of whether voters’ issue interests influence the topics of journalists’ questions. Results show that the questions asked by journalists in debates do not reflect the public interest. We recommend that future debates eschew the use of journalists as sources of questions for presidential debates.     

The role of outcome expectations in the experience of a state of communication apprehension

Following the trend toward cognitive explanations of social phenomena, an expectation‐based model of the processes leading to a state of communication apprehension is advanced. Further, an initial test of the model is reported. The results of this study indicated that expectations are a significant predictor of communication apprehension as measured by self‐report. In addition, importance of communicative goals and the interaction of expected outcome and goal importance were also significant predictor variables. These relationships were not observed when heart‐rate was used as a measure of anxiety.     

Searching for the public: school funding and shifting meanings of ‘the public’ in Australian education

School funding is a principal site of policy reform and contestation in the context of broad global shifts towards private- and market-based funding models. These shifts are transforming not only how schools are funded but also the meanings and practices of public education: that is, shifts in what is ‘public’ about schooling. In this paper, we examine the ways in which different articulations of ‘the public’ are brought to bear in contemporary debates surrounding school funding. Taking the Australian Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Report) as our case, we analyse the policy report and its subsequent media coverage to consider what meanings are made concerning the ‘publicness’ of schooling. Our analysis reveals three broad themes of debate in the report and related media coverage: (1) the primacy of ‘procedural politics’ (i.e. the political imperatives and processes associated with public policy negotiations in the Australian federation); (2) changing relations between what is considered public and private; and (3) a connection of government schooling to concerns surrounding equity and a ‘public in need’. We suggest these three themes contour the debates and understandings that surround the ‘publicness’ of education generally, and school funding more specifically.     

Hateful metrics and the bitterest pill of scholarly publishing

Glenn McGuigan is a specialist business librarian at Penn State who has written about change in university libraries, and about the impact of the academic publishing industry on scholarly publishing.     

Certainty of Punishment and Criminal Thinking: Do the Rational and Non-rational Parameters of a Student’s Decision to Cheat on an Exam Interact?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal thinking interacts with the rational requirements of human decision-making in a group of college students. A convenience sample of 315 undergraduates (114 males, 201 females) completed self-report measures of criminal thinking and estimated their likelihood of cheating on an exam given different levels of certainty of apprehension. A repeated-measures analysis of covariance revealed that students were significantly more likely to seize on the opportunity to cheat when the certainty of getting caught was 10% than when it was 50% and that students with higher levels of criminal thinking were more likely to take the opportunity to cheat than students with lower levels of criminal thinking. In addition, students exhibiting moderate proactive criminal thinking and moderate to high reactive criminal thinking were significantly less likely to be deterred from cheating when the odds of getting caught were low.