A night at Cooper Union

Lincoln's Cooper Union address was instrumental in propelling him to recognition in the East, and establishing him as the political leader of the Republican cause.     

The Ohio Library and Information Network: Resource Sharing at Its Best

The article describes the development and implementation of the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK) shared catalog and patron-initiated online borrowing process. Procedures for providing materials to patrons along with OhioLINK's experience with missing and lost materials are detailed, including lessons learned regarding lost materials and billing. Details of the usage of OhioLINK services and the growth into electronic resources are included. The article summarizes the success of this unmediated borrowing process.     

May It Please the Court: Law Students and Legal Research Instruction in Prison Law Libraries

According to the administrative office of the U.S. Courts, a significant part of the present docket of federal district courts consists of prisoner litigation. This category of litigation, composed largely of habeas corpus petitions, civil rights suits, and suits related to prison conditions, is often pressed by prisoners whose only legal assistance is the resources and materials available in their prison law library. Although prisoner litigation is an essential means of ensuring that our prisons and criminal justice systems operate within the confines of the U.S. Constitution, these often poorly researched and poorly written lawsuits also present special challenges to the federal courts tasked with processing them. This article explores how establishing programs that involve law students in teaching legal research in prison law libraries could help to both ameliorate the burdens that prisoner litigation places on the federal court system and improve prison law libraries’ ability to provide prisoners with meaningful access to the courts. The article begins by discussing the history of prisoner litigation in federal courts and describes four models of legal research instruction and assistance that have been employed in prisons. Based on the lessons learned from these efforts, the article presents a proposal for a prison legal research clinic that could be established by interested law schools and their librarians, and discusses the benefits to law students, prisoners, and the courts that such a program has the potential to deliver.     

Public Meetings in Entertainment Television Programming: Using Procedural Justice to Analyze Fictional Civic Participation

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of entertainment television programs depicting public meetings demonstrate that, while citizens are often shown having substantial opportunity to impact local government, authorities are often portrayed negatively. In particular, they are often shown as rude and in a conflict of interest. The categories for this content analysis represent an initial attempt to draw on social psychological theories of justice for communication research into entertainment television content. The research is also meant to demonstrate how fan-generated computer databases of entertainment television content can be used in conjunction with content analysis to fill a gap in political communication research.     

Books on broadcasting in the library of congress: Programming and audience research

Because advertising is the bread‐and‐butter of broadcasting in the United States, any attempt to limit the number and length of commercials is, bound to meet with strong opposition. One such unsuccessful attempt was made by the FCC only four years ago, but already memories of the events and maneuverings that swirled around this proposal are fading. Lawrence D. Longley investigated this topic in connection with his doctoral dissertation on “The Politics of Broadcasting” which is nearing completion at Vanderbilt University. Mr. Longley is instructor in the Department of Government at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin.     

Exploring Perceptions and Usage Patterns of Digital Video Recorder Owners

The present research combines in-depth interviews and in-home observations to explore usage patterns and perceptions of television viewers in digital video recorder (DVR) households. Innovativeness, Use Diffusion, and Continuity-Discontinuity are employed to characterize DVR use and conceptualize DVR viewing in the home. Findings indicate that the DVR is an important, interactive technology that can help transform the way television is used by some consumers in their movement to proactive media decision makers.     

The nature and development of commentary

The caution with which the broadcaster views editorializing is interesting, when considered in light of the broadcaster's willingness to allow “strangers” (people not associated with station or network ownership) to comment on topics of the day. Today, the commentary is undergoing change in form and personnel, but it remains an important program type. Dr. Smith is Instructor in the Department of Speech at Bowling Green (Ohio) State University.     

Improving Educational Outcomes of Hispanic Students in a Professional Degree Program

In an attempt to reduce the educational achievement gap of Hispanic students in a professional degree program, two courses grounded in the Keller method were implemented at a pharmacy school. The Keller method is characterized by breaking course content into modules, then allowing students to test and repeatedly remediate and retest until competency is achieved. Outcomes from this intervention-based cohort study suggest that the Keller method is effective in reducing the educational achievement gap of Hispanic students in a professional degree program.     

From Reading Readiness to Reading Competence: The Role of Self-Regulation in At-Risk Children

This study investigated how self-regulation contributes to the development of reading competence in an at-risk sample of 157 children born to adolescent mothers. It was hypothesized that reading readiness at age 5 would shape self-regulation at age 10, which in turn would influence reading competence at age 14. Based on structural equation modeling, it was concluded that self-regulation partially mediated the relationship between early reading skills and later reading competence. These findings suggest the importance of socioemotional and cognitive self-regulation in the development of reading competence; implications for classroom practice are discussed.     

The splinter in your ear: Noise as the semblance of critique

Noise appears to critique the prevailing cognitive and social habits of modernity by providing concrete and particular art objects that demand attention and jar us from one‐dimensional life. Noise sounds, for a moment, like a true alternative not only to contemporary music but to a whole way of thinking through abstract generalisation and living through commercial mediation. Understood in this way, noise makes sense. Once noise is no longer inscrutable, however, it is assimilated into popular culture and becomes a commercial novelty. The blatant contradiction of the commodification of noise gives rise to a second order of critique wherein noise parades its uselessness and occasions reflection on the tortured existence of art in modernity, the ubiquity of identity thinking, and the relation between use and exchange value. This ironic endgame for noise, however, is itself absorbed by consumer culture and noise lives on as but another cool, extreme product. The cultural reception of noise thereby demonstrates the mechanism by which modernity absorbs artistic attempts to critique it, and noise is ultimately understood as a desperate but spectacular failure.