The Future of Libraries: More Questions Than Answers?

This article summarizes the conclusions from a series of two-day seminars of professional library executives on the future of libraries. The provocative element in this summary is the groups’ promises to not get caught up in library “nostalgia, platitudes, and clichés.” The result is a clear-cut set of questions that all librarians but especially public librarians need to face as they prepare for the many questions of adaptation of their profession to the issues they already face in keeping or making their libraries successful through the remaining decades of the 21st century.     

Persuasive Advocacy

Librarians need to consider a new approach in order to build more effective advocacy efforts. Building upon the principles developed by Robert Cialdini, a noted social psychologist, the authors suggest that there are six tendencies of human behavior that will positively impact compliance with a request: liking, reciprocity, social proof, authority, consistency and scarcity. In the end, relationships that are built over time are what matter as far as funding decision makers are concerned.     

你可以这样说

连续几期给大家介绍的"你可以这样说",同学们都掌握了吗?下期开始我将给大家介绍电影对白中的地道英语。     

Offsetting racial disadvantage in employment: enhancing performance on personnel selection tests through access training

This paper gives an account of the use of access training in order to enhance the performance of ethnic minority candidates in the process of selection for the West Midlands Police Force. Following the location of the initiative in an equal opportunities framework, the new Police Initial Recruitment (PIR) Test is described. This test was introduced in 1991 to replace the original test, first used in 1974, and is the first element in the selection process. The aims of the access training course are outlined and attention drawn to the way in which the course seeks to develop a range of skills relevant to both the selection process and police basic training, i.e. it seeks to do more than simply raise test scores. The methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of the access course are reported before consideration is given to the issues raised by the study.     

The Dangers of Pipeline Thinking: How the School‐To‐Prison Pipeline Metaphor Squeezes Out Complexity

In this essay Ken McGrew critically examines the school‐to‐prison pipeline metaphor and associated literature. The origins and influence of the metaphor are compared with the origins and influence of the competing prison industrial complex concept. Specific weaknesses in the pipeline literature are examined. These problems are described as resulting, in part, from the influence that the pipeline metaphor has on the thinking of those who follow it. McGrew argues that addressing the weaknesses in the literature, abandoning the metaphor, and adopting a more complex theoretical orientation grounded in critical scholarship, will enable educational scholars to better capture the relational nature of the social phenomena being described while simultaneously making their work more useful to emerging movements for social justice.