Cats,Comics, and Knausgård: Promoting Student Reading at a U.K. Academic Library with a Leisure Reading Collection

This case study describes the creation of a leisure reading collection in the Clifford Whitworth library at the University of Salford. It briefly surveys existing literature on leisure reading collections and looks at the growing interest among U.K. academic libraries in recreational reading. It considers the reasons for promoting reading as a leisure activity to students and describes the processes of selecting, purchasing, and marketing the collection at Salford. It also considers possible future developments for the collection and the evaluation of the library's attempts to encourage a culture of reading among Salford students. The positive response to the collection suggests the development of leisure reading is a worthwhile activity for academic libraries to focus on and the study contains useful information for others who are interested in creating a similar collection.     

Reimagining the Wheel: Using Circular Calendars for Planning in Law School Libraries

This essay proposes using a wheel or circular calendar to identify and document the events and projects of an academic law school year, both in and out of the classroom. The idea of harnessing the natural cyclical process of law school for library planning comes from concept mapping, which can conceptualize an issue by using a variety of mapping strategies to organize and show the relationships between pieces of information and a central concept. Using a wheel graphic to visualize a process can facilitate project management and aid in teaching legal research strategy.     

Sex-role stereotyping by high school females in science

Although the participation by females in upper-level occupations and positions has expanded considerably in recent years, science is still considered a masculine career field. The results of this study show that only the physical sciences in particular (not science in general) are clearly viewed as masculine academic areas. Furthermore, the results suggest that the perception by girls of the physical sciences as masculine is much more likely to occur in coed classes than in all-female classes. The results can best be explained by two factors: (1) the attitudes conveyed by teachers and by society may predispose students toward a greater acceptance of women in biology than in the physical sciences; and (2) when girls perceive themselves as a deviant minority in physical science classes, their performance and preference for the physical sciences is reduced, perhaps because of competition and comparison with males. In all-female classes, however, girls are not a deviant minority, and therefore they are able to perform and develop preferences without inhibition.     

Selecting Books for Children Birth Through Four: A Developmental Approach

The selection of books to read to young children matters enormously in the role books play for enriching children’s lives. This paper reviews the scientific evidence for the appropriate selection of books, and argues that care in selecting books targeted to children’s developing skills will enhance the power and the pleasures of reading to young children.     

Type and severity of child abuse and college students'' lifetime suicidality

Objective: The present study compared reported histories and severity of child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, and both, in college men and women.Method: Four hundred and eighty-six consenting undergraduates completed measures of suicidality, sexual abuse (SA), and physical abuse (PA). Based on their responses, they were categorized into 12 mutually exclusive groups: no PA/no SA (n = 234), moderate PA/no SA (n = 78), severe PA/no SA (n = 34), no PA/mild SA (n = 21), moderate PA/mild SA (n = 12), severe PA/mild SA (n = 5), no PA/moderate SA (n = 20), moderate PA/moderate SA (n = 15), and severe PA/moderate SA (n = 10).Results: Participants who reported both severe sexual and severe physical abuse reported more lifetime suicidality than participants who reported either mild sexual and/or physical abuse. Those who reported sexual abuse involving invasive sexual acts such as rape, and physical abuse involving behaviors that resulted in physical injury to the child, were more suicidal than those who reported less severe abuse. In addition, although combined sexual and physical abuse correlated with increased suicidality, unexpectedly, there was no interaction. Finally, women students endorsed more reasons for living than men and about the same level of suicidal ideas and global suicidality, despite a greater likelihood of having been abused.Conclusions: The absence of an interaction between sexual and physical abuse suggests that this increased suicidality is additive rather than multiplicative. An implication is that college counseling personnel need to be aware of the suicidal risk of women and men students reporting either sexual or physical abuse.     

GOVERNING FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND WITH LOVE: PARENTS AND CHILDREN BETWEEN HOME AND SCHOOL

A bstract .  In this essay, Benjamin Baez and Susan Talburt analyze the U.S. Department of Education's Helping Your Child Series to consider how the government of children, families, and schools reflects a concern with two seemingly unrelated political objectives of neoliberal projects: creating responsible, self-reliant citizens and making schools more efficient. Where these two objectives converge is in their techniques: they both use the parent-child relationship and what appears to motivate it. Drawing on Michel Foucault's conceptualization of government as "the conduct of conduct," Baez and Talburt analyze two pamphlets with an eye to several themes: the "commonsensical" nature of its address to loving parents; the "responsibilization" of parents and children; the insidious entry of school goals and behavioral norms into homes; and the seeming empowerment of the parent as partner in his or her child's learning. Finally, the authors discuss how the logic of modern forms of governing families and schools might be contested.