Website creation and resource management: developing collaborative strategies for asynchronous interaction with library users

Objective: To make electronic resources available to library users while effectively harnessing intellectual capital within the library, ultimately fostering the library’s use of technology to interact asynchronously with its patrons (users). Methods: The methods used in the project included: (1) developing a new library website to facilitate the creation, management, accessibility, maintenance and dissemination of library resources; and (2) establishing ownership by those who participated in the project, while creating effective work allocation strategies through the implementation of a content management system that allowed the library to manage cost, complexity and interoperability. Results: Preliminary results indicate that contributors to the system benefit from an increased understanding of the library’s resources and add content valuable to library patrons. These strategies have helped promote the manageable creation and maintenance of electronic content in accomplishing the library’s goal of interacting with its patrons. Conclusions: Establishment of a contributive system for adding to the library’s electronic resources and electronic content has been successful. Further work will look at improving asynchronous interaction, particularly highlighting accessibility of electronic content and resources.     

Distal Communication by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence for Common Ground?

van der Goot et al. (2014) proposed that distal, deictic communication indexed the appreciation of the psychological state of a common ground between a signaler and a receiver. In their study, great apes did not signal distally, which they construed as evidence for the human uniqueness of a sense of common ground. This study exposed 166 chimpanzees to food and an experimenter, at an angular displacement, to ask, “Do chimpanzees display distal communication?” Apes were categorized as (a) proximal or (b) distal signalers on each of four trials. The number of chimpanzees who communicated proximally did not statistically differ from the number who signaled distally. Therefore, contrary to the claim by van der Goot et al., apes do communicate distally.     

To Me It’s Like Having a Kid,Kind Of: Analysis of Student Reflections in a Developmental Mentoring Program

This qualitative longitudinal study focuses on analyses of journals written by 31 sixth grade students who participated in the Chapel Buddy program. The Chapel Buddy program is a developmental mentoring program that pairs sixth graders with kindergarten students. Mentors responded to guided writing prompts three times during the course of the year. Prompts were designed to encourage mentors to explore their role as mentors and their understanding of the mentor–mentee relationship. Results indicated that the program presented a rich, experiential learning opportunity for the sixth graders to develop a relationship with a younger child, to reflect on what it means to be in a helping relationship, and to examine their experiences as “big kids.” Sixth graders varied in their ability to successfully engage and manage their kindergarten mentees, which in turn meaningfully affected the mentors’ satisfaction. Strategies to maximize the educational value of developmental mentoring programs with younger mentors are discussed.     

Apocalypticism in secular public discourse: A proposed theory

Scholars have long studied biblical apocalyptic texts and later religious texts in the same genre, considering their distinctive features and their effects. Literary theorists have found apocalyptic strains in secular literature and studied the literary texts as apocalyptic. Studying speeches as apocalyptic illuminates the rhetorical effects of the speeches and underscores the narrative elements of apocalyptic discourse that have been merely taken for granted.     

Media Policy

FCC: THE UPS AND DOWNS OF RADIO-TV REGULATION by William B. Ray (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989—$24.95, ISBN 0-8138-0227-X, 214 pp.)

ACTUAL MALICE: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER TIMES v. SULLIVAN by W. Wat Hopkins (New York: Praeger, 1989—$39.95, ISBN 0-275-93246-X, 226 pp.)

CASES AND MATERIALS ON MASS MEDIA LAW by Marc A. Franklin and David A. Anderson (Westbury, NY: Foundation Press, 1990 price not given, ISBN 0-88277-778-5, 951 pp.)

MASS COMMUNICATION LAW: CASES AND COMMENT by Donald Gill mor, Jerome Barron.Todd Simon and Herbert Terry (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1990 $52.00, ISBN 0-314-56267-2, 947 pp.)

THE COPYRIGHT BOOK: A PRACTICAL GUIDE by William S. Strong (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990 $17.95, ISBN 0-262-19292-6, 249 pp.)

SOCIAL RESEARCH IN COMMUNICATION AND LAW by Jeremy Cohen and Timothy Gleason (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990—$9.95, paper, ISBN 0-8039-3267-7, 140 pp.)     

Making a Community Network Sustainable: The Future of the Wired High Rise

Much time and money has been committed by governments, private business, and the third sector over the last 5 years in establishing opportunities for underserved populations to gain access to new forms of information and communication technologies, in an effort to overcome the so-called “digital divide.” This article traces the efforts that have been made to establish a networked community at a single high-rise public housing estate in inner Melbourne, Australia, and considers some of the potential opportunities for and barriers to ensuring the continuity of the network, which is large, complex, costly, and potentially fragile, into the future.     

A study in semantics in industry today

This paper combines an interactionist perspective with a rules‐based approach for the purpose of analyzing and evaluating organizations. It is suggested that an organization is analogous to a culture and that it can be analyzed by identifying its collectively defined master contract. It may be critiqued by assessing the process by which that master contract is communicated among its members. The organization and its individual members can then be evaluated according to the competence with which members can coorient themselves to the master contract and can coordinate their activities within the constitutive and regulative rules established by the organization. A case study suggests this new approach to organizational communication will be a useful one for communication theory as well as for consultants.     

Effects of modified-implement training on fast bowling in cricket

The effects of training with overweight and underweight cricket balls on fast-bowling speed and accuracy were investigated in senior club cricket bowlers randomly assigned to either a traditional (n = 9) or modified-implement training (n = 7) group. Both groups performed bowling training three times a week for 10 weeks. The traditional training group bowled only regulation cricket balls (156 g), whereas the modified-implement training group bowled a combination of overweight (161?-?181 g), underweight (151?-?131 g) and regulation cricket balls. A radar gun measured the speed of 18 consecutive deliveries for each bowler before, during and after the training period. Video recordings of the deliveries were also analysed to determine bowling accuracy in terms of first-bounce distance from the stumps. Bowling speed, which was initially 108?±?5 km?·?h^?1 (mean?±?standard deviation), increased in the modified-implement training group by 4.0 km?·?h^?1 and in the traditional training group by 1.3 km?·?h^?1 (difference, 2.7 km?·?h^?1; 90% confidence limits, 1.2 to 4.2 km?·?h^?1). For a minimum worthwhile change of 5 km?·?h^?1, the chances that the true effect on bowling speed was practically beneficial/trivial/harmful were 1.0/99/<?0.1%. For bowling accuracy, the chances were 1/48/51%. This modified-implement training programme is not a useful training strategy for club cricketers.     

The Association of Objectively Determined Physical Activity Behavior Among Adolescent Female Friends

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which physical activity among adolescent female friends is interdependent. The participants were 318 adolescent girls with a mean age of 16.0 years (range: 15–18 years). Pedometry was used to assess physical activity over 4 days. The relationship between an individual girl and her first-nominated reciprocal friend's physical activity level was moderate (r = 0.45, 90% confidence interval = 0.31, 0.56), when the friendship was nonreciprocal it was trivial (r = -.06, 90% confidence interval = -.36. .25). Friends' physical activity levels explained between 27% and 32% of an individual's pedometer-determined physical activity level. Reciprocity of friendship is an important variable to consider when understanding the relationship between adolescent female friends' physical activity. When friendships are reciprocal, there is a stronger relationship between friends' physical activity.