Introduction

This introduction highlights the speakers and their topics presented at the Libraries eResource & Emerging Technologies Summit (formerly known as the MidSouth eResource Symposium) held at Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries on August 3, 2012. The Summit was co-sponsored by EBSCO Information Services, North American Serials Interest Group's Continuing Education Committee, and MSU Libraries. Electronic resources continue to consume library budgets while remaining critical for today's researchers and students. Libraries must demonstrate their value and continually remind their stakeholders of the importance of these electronic resources and just how vital access to this digital information is. This year's Summit presentations focused on the acquisition, access, and management of eResources, and provided attendees with knowledge of new and emerging technologies related to electronic resources and the digital environment.     

Demonstrating Our Value: Tying Use of Electronic Resources to Academic Success

Dr. Stephanie Havron Rollins, Instruction Coordinator, and Ed Cherry, Systems Librarian at Samford University, presented the results of their research that measured the use of library electronic resources and academic success as defined by a higher grade point average (GPA). They presented statistics on student database log-ins by college, department, and major; student log-ins by level, class, and gender; and student undergraduate GPA by department and class. Research implications were discussed along with future research ideas. Their findings demonstrate to library stakeholders the impact that the library has on student success.     

Supervisor accessibility and job characteristics

Dyadic and normative accessibility are hypothesized to correlate positively with three task dimensions: variety, autonomy and identity. The presumed independence of the dyadic and normative accessibility scales is also investigated. Data were collected from 40 middle level managers in a variety of organizations. Results show significant relationships between dyadic accessibility and the characteristics of variety and autonomy. Tasks with high identity plausibly do not require much supervision. Follert's scale for normative accessibility seems to have some serious validity problems, and probably ought to be replaced or newly validated.     

Writing and Publishing

John Tebbel's A History of Book Publishing in the United States: Volume III--The Golden Age Between Two Wars, 1920-1940 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1978---$32.50)

Anne Lyon Haight and Chandler Grannis' Banned Books: 387 BC to 1978 AD (New York: Bowker, 1978---$13.95)

Bruce Joel Hillman and Judith Ann Beraha, eds. 1979 Writer's Market (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 1978---$14.95)

Doris Ricker Marston's A Guide to Writing History (Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest, 1976---$8.50)

Girls Series Books: A Checklist of Hardback Books Published 1900-1975 (Children's Literature Research Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis, Minn. 55455---price not given, but about $7.50, paper)     

Regulation

Marion Davidson and Martha Blues Making it Legal: A Law Primer for. the Craftmaker,Visual Artist and Writer,(New York: McGraw-Hill 1979-$8.95 paper)

An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy by Charles O. Jones (this one is 1917. and a 2nd ed. 258 pp, –price not given. paper)

Policy Analysis for Public Decisions by Duncan MacRae Jr. and James A. Wilde (325 pp..—$9.95, paper)

Essentials of Public Administration: A. Text with Readings by Larry B. Hill and F. Ted Hebert n 432 pp. —price not given, paper)     

Gender,parental education,and ability: their interacting roles in predicting GCSE success

We investigate the relations between gender, parental education, ability, and educational achievement in Britain, focusing on the way in which gender and parental education interact with ability to contribute to a pupil’s obtaining secondary school qualifications. This allows us to provide evidence relevant to claims concerning the effects of differences in the way in which working- and middle-class familial cultures interact with gender-specific behaviour in school. Given the configurational nature of the processes likely to be involved, we employ Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis as our method. We find that, in both academically selective and non-selective schools, high ability is a quasi-sufficient condition for obtaining certain levels of qualification, but that at lower levels of ability, either being female or having highly educated parents (or both) have to be present, too. Boys without highly educated parents perform less well than girls from a similar background.     

Reflections on Roberta Lamb,Social Actor

Information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the lives of people at the operative level; it is less clear in what ways and to what extent it has changed the way people feel and develop as human beings. We create excellent means, but are we feeling better and getting better, and by what criteria should we evaluate our progress? Operative power is needed for the human progress, but it is not enough. In this article we consider the traditional values of knowledge, goodness (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics) as the criteria of human progress, and how our embrace of ICT has affected our advance toward these values. We round up our discussion with reflections on aspects of human nature that lead people along the ways of knowledge, goodness, and beauty, and also those that hinder such advancement.     

'It's a Delicate Thing': Coping with a Hidden Disability in Mainstream Schools

Judith Cavet, Principal Lecturer at Staffordshire University, reports on her qualitative study exploring the experience of children and young people affected by faecal incontinence as a result of a congenital physical impairment, and highlights the significant tensions facing some pupils, who are 'invisibly disabled'. The associated taboos mean that the disability is little understood and poorly accepted. Affected children and their parents describe how school staff can play a key role in providing a suitable educational environment.     

Borrelli,Mill, Emily and Me

In this paper, I explore the insights suggested by Michele Borrelli's ‘The Utopianisation of Critique’ in the context of a real‐life educational encounter that involves an attempt at being ‘critical’. Borrelli's observation that all positive utopian critique implies an inevitable degree of dogmatism takes on a new—and less depressing—significance when examined in the light of such an encounter. Acknowledging the tensions suggested by Borelli's analysis is, I argue, what makes a particular educational stance ‘critical’. Rather than leading to conceptual confusion, this should be seen as integral to the transformative and motivational potential of the educational process.