Impact of end-user search training on pharmacy students: a four-year follow-up study.

The Alfred Taubman Medical Library at the University of Michigan has offered instruction in online literature searching to third-year pharmacy students as a component of the course "Drug Information and Scientific Literature Evaluation" since 1983. In the spring of 1989, a follow-up study was conducted to assess the impact of instruction on four classes of graduates. Of a pool of 151 graduates, 90 (60%) responded to a mailed questionnaire on their use of information and computerized literature searching. The respondents were divided into four subgroups: end-user searchers, users of intermediaries, end users who used intermediaries, and those who did not use computerized literature search systems. Seventy-two percent of the respondents used some type of computerized literature searching, and 42% performed their own searches. The four subgroups differed in general computer use, familiarity with MEDLINE search terminology, information use, reasons for using or not using literature searching, and characteristics of searches (i.e., type, time frame, amount, and frequency). Training in end-user search systems appears to have had an impact on the continued use of computerized literature searching several years after the formal educational program.     

Physician information seeking: improving relevance through research

Health sciences libraries have considerable potential as resources for both formal continuing professional education, as well as the informal continuing education that results from the professional's efforts to solve problems in daily practice. While there is a growing interest in making the resources of health sciences libraries more accessible to practitioners on a routine, day-to-day basis, there also needs to be more awareness of how, when, where, and why professionals look for information in the context of practical problems. This paper reviews recent research that identifies the context in which physicians seek information and advice from external sources, the information sources that physicians access, and the factors that influence which particular sources are sought. The results indicate that physicians vary in their information needs, preferences, motivations, and strategies for seeking information. This diversity suggests that health sciences libraries, in their efforts to be more accessible, should consider "market research" to determine the needs, preferences, and use patterns of the library's targeted users. Libraries may also benefit from exploring alternative methods of improving access to their resources.     

Preparation for ethical decision-making: An analysis of research in professional education

The current societal and professional context presents a variety of ethical challenges to decision makers. The importance of educational preparation for ethical decision-making and ethical leadership has been addressed in the literature of library and information science (LIS), among other professions. However, it can be quite difficult to measure the impact of professional ethics education on students. This article is based on an evaluation of published original research related to ethics education in disciplines supported by professional education, including education, nursing, allied health, journalism, social work, public health, engineering, and LIS. The study considers data related to research design, methodologies used, populations studied, approaches to measuring impact, levels of impact, and publication in the journal literature. Results indicate more extensive research in education and nursing as compared with other fields, a lack of baseline data gathering for comparison, a reliance on a limited number of data-gathering techniques, and a tendency toward studying alumni over current students     

Advances in the phylogenesis of Agaricales and its higher ranks and strategies for establishing phylogenetic hypotheses

We present an overview of previous research results on the molecular phylogenetic analyses in Agaricales and its higher ranks (Agaricomycetes/Agaricomycotina/Basidiomycota) along with the most recent treatments of taxonomic systems in these taxa. Establishing phylogenetic hypotheses using DNA sequences, from which an understanding of the natural evolutionary relationships amongst clades may be derived, requires a robust dataset. It has been recognized that single-gene phylogenies may not truly represent organismal phylogenies, but the concordant phylogenetic genealogies from multiple-gene datasets can resolve this problem. The genes commonly used in mushroom phylogenetic research are summarized.     

Book reviews

^cAbd al‐Malik b. Habib. Kitāb al‐Ta'rij (La historia). Edición y estudio por Jorge Aguadé. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas & Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1991 (Fuentes Arabico‐Hispanas, 1). 163 + 224 pp. [Arabic title: Kltāb al‐Ta'tikh]

Kedar, Benjamin Z., ed. The Horns of Hattin. Jerusalem and London: Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, Israel Exploration Society and Variorum 1992. 368 pp., 12 plates; $74.75 (cloth).

Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Their History and Culture According to Local Muslim Sources. Translated and edited by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1992. xi +101 pp., $22.00 (cloth).

Cameron, Averil and Conrad, Lawrence I., eds. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Papers in the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam). Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1992. xiv + 428pp., 12 plates; $29.25 (cloth).

Vereno, Ingolf. Studien zum ältesten alchemistischen Schrifttum. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992 (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 155). 414pp.

Tolan, John. Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1993. xv + 288pp., $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper).

Lassner, Jacob. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994. 281 pp., $19.95 (paper), $49.95 (cloth).

Menocal, María Rosa. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1994. xv + 295pp., $34.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Massignon, Louis. The Passion of al‐Hallāj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Translated and edited by Herbert Mason. Abridged edition, Bollingen Series XCVIII. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. xxxi + 293pp.

Viguera Molins, Maria Jesús. El Islam en Aragón. Saragossa: Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada, 1995 (Colección “Mariano de Pano y Ruata”, 9), 174 pp., 182 ills. in colour, maps, diagrams, charts etc No price stated.     

Book reviews

Zwartjes, Otto, ed. La Sociedad andalusí y sus tradiciones literarias (Foro Hispánico, 7). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.

Brincat, Joseph M. Malta 870–1054: Al‐Himyai's Account and its Linguistic Implications. Malta: Said International Ltd., 1995. 52pp.

Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. 316 pp., US$18.95 (paperback), US$49.91 (cloth).

Diem, Werner, Arabische Geschäftsbriefe des 10. bis 14. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Documents Arabica Antiqua 1), 2 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995. Textband ix+518pp., Tafelband 76 plates.

Coope, Jessica A. The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. xvii+113 pp., US$ 25 (cloth).

Edwards, John. Religion and Society in Spain, c.1492 (Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS 520). Aldershot and Brookfield: Variorum, 1996. x+351 pp., US$ 97.00 (cloth).

Tolan, John Victor, ed. Medìeval Christian Perceptions of Islam. A Book of Essays (Garland Medieval Casebooks, Volume 10). New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996. xxi+414 pp., US$60.00 (cloth).     

Controlling the field of academic economics in Hungary, 1953–1976

Conclusions On the basis of these findings, I suggest that the structure and organisation of the field of Hungarian economics under state socialism should be described as a case of partitioned bureaucracy.⁹ The compromise between research economists and the political elite in the New Course era between 1953 and 1955¹⁰ survived the post-1956 reaction in so far as political economy, with its predominantly legitimatory and ideological functions, remained partitioned from the other sectors in the field through the remainder of the state-socialist period. This secured considerable protection both for Marxist-Leninist political economy—which faced the destabilising effects of exposure to the findings of serious empirical research—and for the other sectors, which were professionally oriented and earnestly interested in the pursuit of unbiased empirical research, free from stifling agitprop interference. Our data concerning the reputational control of the field reflects only one, although very important, aspect of this partitioning. Another and much plainer aspect is that, from the early 1960s, the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee no longer exercised control over the field, except in the political economy sector.The proposition about the mechanism paradigm should not be taken seriously as a statement of a Kuhnian type of intellectual organisation of Hungarian economics, with reform economics at its hard theoretical core. But it should certainly be taken seriously as a reflection of the sociopolitical structure which emerged and developed from the mid-1950s onwards. Neither the politicians nor the economists saw as necessary or even contemplated the integration of Hungarian economic research with Western mainstream economic thought. In exchange for the professional expertise and socio-economic intelligence necessary for the exercise of power, Hungary's state-socialist political class offered their economists relative autonomy and freedom from interference. The price the economists had to pay was partly to refrain from openly and systematically challenging the beliefs perpetuated by the political economy of socialism, and partly to accept in their research the paramountcy of policy orientation. But this burden they assumed willingly since it made them the only group within Hungary's academic intelligentsia—indeed, the only group in Hungarian society outside the political class—with the privilege of being coopted to the institutions with power over some restricted domains of policymaking. After 1989, especially under the conservative Antall government, this proved less than advantageous.¹¹ Although the benevolence of many critics is open to question, it could greatly benefit the field if the economists' expulsion from contemporary politics went hand in hand with provision of the material, intellectual and institutional conditions for a new approach where a fundamentally scientific orientation is paramount.