The exact-display approach for online catalog subject searching

When public catalog users enter queries that exactly match the catalog's controlled vocabulary, online systems should respond with browsing lists of alphabetically arranged subject headings, because such displays guide users to retrievals based on the assignment of the matched subject headings to bibliographic records. Unfortunately, studies of online catalog searching demonstrate that alphabetical displays are no longer capable of managing large numbers of subdivided forms of subject headings, because searchers exhibit low levels of perseverance when faced with large numbers of retrievals. This paper introduces a new approach to displaying retrieved subject headings in subject searching—the exact-display approach—designed to encourage users to browse bibliographic information. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the exact-display approach by showing how many user queries would be candidates for this approach, demonstrate an implementation of the exact-display approach in an experimental online catalog, and feature end-user experiences with this approach as implemented in the experimental catalog. End-user experiences gave the authors the opportunity to make several recommendations for enhancing the original design of the exact-display approach so that future implementations of this approach in operational online catalogs are responsive to the needs of online catalog users.     

Education on the appalachian trail: What 2,000 miles can teach us about learning

Rather than dwelling on why too many men don't succeed in college, trekker Karen Arnold examines the features of an experience in which many men do excel: the long hike from Georgia to Maine. Educators can learn why accomplishing this feat may be more rewarding than college.     

关于当代大学数学教学模式的探索

随着科技与信息技术的不断进步,时代也赋予了当代大学教育新的任务,当然高校数学教学也是其中的一个方面。数学随着时代的发展其重要性日益凸显,随着教育改革的深入,高校数学教学模式也成为被关注的一个话题。本文通过对高校数学教学模式现状分析,探索高校数学教学模式的走向。     

Planning for the Budget-ocalypse: The Evolution of a Serials/ER Cancellation Methodology

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries are funded almost entirely by undergraduate student use fees. As the undergraduate enrollment has plateaued in recent years, the libraries have not been able to keep up with rising costs, resulting in a series of cuts to the materials budget totaling around $3.25 million. While some of these cuts took the form of reductions in firm orders and dissolution of approval plans, for the past three years the bulk has come from cancellations of serials and electronic resources. With each year’s cuts, the UNT Collection Development department has been forced to modify and refine their deselection process. This article will show the development of UNT’s strategy for determining cancellations using a variety of methods (overlap analysis, usage statistics, faculty input) and tools (EBSCO Usage Consolidation, Serials Solutions 360).     

Centrifugal multiplexing fixed-volume dispenser on a plastic lab-on-a-disk for parallel biochemical single-end-point assays

In this study, a multiple sample dispenser for precisely metered fixed volumes was successfully designed, fabricated, and fully characterized on a plastic centrifugal lab-on-a-disk (LOD) for parallel biochemical single-end-point assays. The dispenser, namely, a centrifugal multiplexing fixed-volume dispenser (C-MUFID) was designed with microfluidic structures based on the theoretical modeling about a centrifugal circumferential filling flow. The designed LODs were fabricated with a polystyrene substrate through micromachining and they were thermally bonded with a flat substrate. Furthermore, six parallel metering and dispensing assays were conducted at the same fixed-volume (1.27 μl) with a relative variation of ±0.02 μl. Moreover, the samples were metered and dispensed at different sub-volumes. To visualize the metering and dispensing performances, the C-MUFID was integrated with a serpentine micromixer during parallel centrifugal mixing tests. Parallel biochemical single-end-point assays were successfully conducted on the developed LOD using a standard serum with albumin, glucose, and total protein reagents. The developed LOD could be widely applied to various biochemical single-end-point assays which require different volume ratios of the sample and reagent by controlling the design of the C-MUFID. The proposed LOD is feasible for point-of-care diagnostics because of its mass-producible structures, reliable metering/dispensing performance, and parallel biochemical single-end-point assays, which can identify numerous biochemical.