Semiotic mediation in guiding interactions with young children: The role of context and communication handicap on distanciation in adult discourse

This paper pays attention to two factors often neglected in the studies of instructional or guidance interaction: the specifity of the child as interlocutor and the constraints exerted by the properties of the tasks on the semiotic means used to guide the child. Following Sigel’s ‘distanciation hypothesis’ we have studied the ‘distancing’ characteristics of the adult’s discourse adressed to the child in two groups of dyads, one with deaf (N=5), the other with hearing children (N=7) aged around 24 months, in two tasks: Symbolic Play and Picture — Book reading. The main results indicate a strong effect of the tasks, SP allowing more distanciation than PB for both categories. D-dyads show few differences in SP task but less ability to share references in Picture-Book reading. It appears also that with such young children, the distancing potential might be conveyed by the forms and pragmatic functions and not only by the semantic components of adult’s utterances.     

Discolouration of Gold Decorations

Discoloured 18-carat gold decorations from Sweden have been analysed by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray electron spectroscopy (XPS)/electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (electron spectroscopy).The original gold composition was close to 75% gold, 13% silver, and 12% copper. After manufacture, many details were boiled in sulphuric acid. As a consequence of this, the surfaces are irregular and porous with a gold concentration around 90% and with less than 1% copper. With XPS the outermost 10–20 atomic layers could be examined. No copper was present here, and the silver concentration was significantly higher. Also carbon, sulphur, oxygen, and (in one case) chlorine were present. The valence numbers indicated that gold only occurred in its metallic state, while silver (as Ag⁺) was preferably associated with sulphur to form black silver sulphide (Ag₂S). The grey discolorations are basically due to silver sulphide and organic dirt. Sometimes green, violet, and ‘copper-shining’ colours occur, presumably as a result of light refraction phenomena.     

Preventive Conservation Applied to Wallpaintings in a Desert Environment in Mexico

ABSTRACT

The church of San Diego de Alcalá, located in Pitiquito, Sonora , in Mexico, lies on a missionary road founded by the Jesuit Eusebio F. Kino, which, with the expulsion of the Jesuit order in 1767, passed into the care of the Franciscans. It contains wallpaintings which presented deterioration problems whose cause was not easy to determine, since the damage appeared to be inconsistent with the techniques used and the environmental conditions. With an interdisciplinary team, a methodology was designed for a combined study of the environment of the church and its wallpaintings. Thermal imaging of the exterior and interior walls indicated that the building was made up of different materials, and the junctions between them explained the different deterioration pathologies between one zone and another. Hydrological maps for groundwater in the locality were studied, to elucidate the presence of water in a desert zone; abundant sources of water in the subsoil were identified, which, because of overexploitation of the land, have been diminishing over time. This allowed the elaboration of a plan for site management, through the identification of those deterioration factors that can be mitigated by simple maintenance actions that are inherent to the environment and the materials, which enabled a scheduled maintenance scheme to be implemented. This improved the condition of the building and its wallpaintings, while reducing the resource invested to achieve this goal.     

Project Management Techniques at the Complutense University: Academic Librarians' Perceptions

This study examines how academic librarians at the Complutense University (Spain) perceive project management techniques that are becoming increasingly popular in library and information centers due to the need to comply with their strategic planning and services. To reach this goal, a quantitative and qualitative methodology was applied and a survey, in the form of a questionnaire, was used as a data gathering tool. The response rate was 31.2%. The key findings are based on respondents' education regarding project management skills and their expertise managing projects, as well as the presence of project management courses in the Library and Information Science Spanish curriculum. This study revealed that over one third of the academic staff completed their project management training by self-directed learning. Additionally, over half of them stated that they had not participated in any library project in the last five years, and almost half of the library staff concluded that project management techniques are quite important as formal courses in the Library and Information Science university programs. The study is interesting and revealing for those library and information services professionals who are facing day-to-day to users' demands and Library and Information Science challenges.