A passion for portraits: Elizabeth Cay's pastels

Elizabeth Cay (1771–1831), the grandmother of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), was a talented amateur pastellist; several of her pastel portraits survive as does her set of pastels. She studied with Archibald Skirving (1749–1819), a Scottish miniature painter who later in life turned to larger-scale portraiture in pastel and served as drawing master to the Edinburgh elite. Cay's pastels are not fabricated sticks but consist of powdered pigment housed in various glass and ceramic containers and were apparently applied by stumps, still in her workbox, or brushes. The Cay color samples were identified by spectrographic analysis, polarized light microscopy, and microchemical tests which, in addition, indicated that a number of pigment mixtures present gave specific hues in keeping with earlier treatise accounts of the preparation of a pastel gamut for practical use. Elizabeth Cay's pastel workbox may be rare surviving evidence of one way, more common that we appreciate today, in which amateurs, and perhaps professionals, practiced pastel painting.     

Creating a Web-accessible,point-of-care,team-based information system (PoinTIS): the librarian as publisher

The Internet has created new opportunities for librarians to develop information systems that are readily accessible at the point of care. This paper describes the multiyear process used to justify, fund, design, develop, promote, and evaluate a rehabilitation prototype of a point-of-care, team-based information system (PoinTIS) and train health care providers to use this prototype for their spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury patient care and education activities. PoinTIS is a successful model for librarians in the twenty-first century to serve as publishers of information created or used by their parent organizations and to respond to the opportunities for information dissemination provided by recent technological advances.     

French by osmosis

The typical nursery school in the province of Quebec, Canada, is conducted in French, the official language of schools and business. Even so, it is not unusual to find English- as well as French-speaking students at many of these schools. Both languages are spoken in the province.