Gross Intrusions

This essay closely analyzes the 1936 British film Sensation, directed by the eccentric queer filmmaker Brian Desmond Hurst. The film participated in an extensive and heated debate about intrusive and ‘sensational’ press practices that erupted in the 1930s. In his cinematic version of events, Hurst made sensational journalism seem like an exciting, if morally dubious, part of modern life—a news form that satisfied a basic human desire to learn about the private lives and hidden secrets of other people. This essay shows how Sensation, in its ambivalent relationship to this fraught cultural issue, reveals some of the complexities of interpreting queer filmmaking before the advent of a self-aware and politicized ‘queer film.’ It argues that intrusive journalism was of interest to Hurst precisely because it engaged with issues at the core of queer identity—exposure, revelation, privacy, and criminality—before the decriminalization of homosexual acts.     

Making Paper Maps Relevant in a Digital Age

Special Libraries, Special Challenges is a column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, business, and so forth. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and solutions that arise specifically in given subject libraries, while drawing links to how such issues affect librarianship in general. Special or subject-matter librarians interested in authoring a piece for this column are invited to contact Melissa K. Aho at aho@umn.edu

Ryan Mattke is head of the John R. Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota where he has worked since 2007. When he is not poring over maps he can be found reading, writing, paddling, hiking, gardening or building canoes. He holds a B.A. in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Minnesota and can be reached at matt0089@umn.edu.     

The impact of library instruction: do first-year medical students use library resources specifically highlighted during instructional sessions?

Objectives:

The research sought to determine if first-year medical students consulted and cited resources specifically highlighted during library instructional sessions.

Methods:

Students attended a library resources instructional session. Resources that pertained to the students'' assignment were demonstrated and discussed. The students created a report including citations from relevant literature. The citations were analyzed and categorized as: a resource discussed at the instructional session, a resource found on the course LibGuide, a library resource, course material, or some other resource. All citations were subcategorized as print or electronic.

Results:

Three years (2008–2011) of data analyzing 2,983 citations showed that 49.55% of all citations were from resources discussed during library instructional sessions; 21.86% came from resources with links on the course LibGuide; 77.51% were from library resources; and 90.68% came from electronic resources.

Conclusion:

Students cited resources specifically highlighted during library instructional sessions for their assignments. The percentage of all citations coming from resources highlighted during the instructional sessions or found on the course LibGuide indicates that library instruction had an impact on the students'' work.

Highlights

• Review of the literature shows that instruction about library resources accompanied by clear guidelines on scholarly research methods and resources provided by course instructors have the biggest impact on the quality of cited materials in student bibliographies.
• Graduate medical students cited library resources more frequently than nonlibrary resources for their assigned coursework.
• Graduate medical students cited materials and resources specifically highlighted during library instructional sessions for their assigned coursework.

Implications

• Instruction about library resources tailored to medical students'' assignments impacts the resources that the students consult and cite for their assignments.
• Using the information gathered from citation analysis to modify teaching plans can impact the effectiveness of library instructional sessions.

     

eVenturing Entrepreneur's Resource Center

No abstract available for this article.     

Patronizing young and elderly adults: Response strategies in a community setting

Within the context of an elaborated model of the communication predicament of aging, the effects of particular response strategies to patronizing, intergenerational talk were investigated with written vignettes depicting a community situation. Young adults (N = 222) evaluated a patronizing speaker more negatively than a non‐patronizing speaker, and they also judged both conversational partners to be more satisfied when patronizing speech was absent. As compared to cooperative responses, assertive responses from the patronizee led to evaluations that she was higher status, more controlling, less nurturing, and less satisfied. Patronizing individuals receiving an assertive response were evaluated as less in control and satisfied than when they received a cooperative response.     

Public Libraries as Rhetorical Devices: Reimagining Print,Dewey, and Memory as Invention in the Digital Age

This article frames the public library and its system of organization as rhetorical tools. By providing an historic overview of libraries and their formation, the author recognizes the severed connection between library systems and the field of rhetoric, specifically the rhetorical canon of memoria. He seeks to reconnect memoria to the public library by recognizing the place-based nature of both classical memoria and library classification systems. The implications, he contends, run deep in libraries as seemingly neutral entities shape collective memory and education. Finally, the author provides a section that focuses on how digital-age libraries could be shaped, maintained, and managed in a way that recognizes memory as a rhetorical tool that aids in knowledge formation.     

The contributions of parental management language to executive function in preschool children

This study investigated relations between preschoolers’ emergent executive function skills and their interactions with parents, with particular focus on the verbal utterances parents use to guide children's behavior (i.e., management language). Parent–child dyads (n = 127) were videotaped during a structured play task and the frequency of two types of management language, Direction (high control) and Suggestion (low control), was observed. Children's executive function was assessed using the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders (HTKS) task. Latent growth modeling was used to investigate relations between management language and the development of children's executive function. Direction language (i.e., commands) was negatively associated with children's age three executive function but not significantly related to the rate of executive function development over time. Conversely, Suggestion language (i.e., questions and statements that offer children some degree of choice) was positively related to executive function at age three but negatively related to growth. The potential importance of management language as a parenting behavior that contributes to various aspects of children's self-regulation during preschool and kindergarten is discussed.     

Understanding MOOCs as an Emerging Online Learning Tool: Perspectives From the Students

This study examined participants’ learning experiences in the context of a six-week massive open online course (MOOC) in journalism with five thousand students from 137 countries. Three research questions were asked: (1) Who are the students and why are they enrolled in this MOOC?, (2) How much time have the students spent in taking this MOOC and have they completed all the assignments?, and, (3) What have they learned and what aspects of this MOOC do the students find most helpful? Four hundred and nine students responded to a survey and forty-four responded to interview questions. The main findings showed 84% of the participants were working professionals and only 28.9% were from a journalism background. Of those who did not complete the course, lack of time was the top reason. Most participants reported a positive learning experience, but lack of feedback and/or poor quality were reported as negative experiences. The discussion forum was the least liked aspect of the course.