Collecting Sex Materials for Libraries

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes data gathered over a year-long survey of library employees' opinions of sexually related materials in library collections. Surveys generally examine patron attitudes rather than the attitudes of library employees, whose attitudes and beliefs can have a strong effect on the collection. The researchers discovered themes in the data, such as varying definitions and differences between pornography and erotica, legality issues and misconceptions, differing perceptions of censorship dependent on library type, and a possible lack of acceptance of non-heteronormative material. The survey and analysis serve as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of appropriateness of sexually related materials in libraries.     

Socializing the h-index

A variety of bibliometric measures have been proposed to quantify the impact of researchers and their work. The h-index is a notable and widely used example which aims to improve over simple metrics such as raw counts of papers or citations. However, a limitation of this measure is that it considers authors in isolation and does not account for contributions through a collaborative team. To address this, we propose a natural variant that we dub the Social h-index. The idea is to redistribute the h-index score to reflect an individual's impact on the research community. In addition to describing this new measure, we provide examples, discuss its properties, and contrast with other measures.     

Cultural and institutional restrictions on dying styles in a technological society

The starting medical advances of this century have created unparalleled opportunities for ill and suffering people, but these same forces have combined to make the experience of dying a terrifying, fearful, lonely vigil for many. Devoid of traditional myths, rituals, and family support, many patients now die in sterile institutional settings often appearing as mere appendages to life-supporting machines. This shift from the moral to the technical order manifests itself in doctors' fascination with gadgets, the emphasis upon parts of the body, and a concomitant blurring of distinctions concerning death, personhood, and individual rights. The patient is reduced to a secondary role in his or her own death, thus engendering a widespread desire for a sudden death. In light of these circumstances, health care personnel need to create circumstances that would give people more opportunities to die in styles commensurate with their life styles. Society must seriously study the implications of the unthinking treatment of people; and routines, policies, and procedures based on matters of mere efficiency and technological convenience must be replaced by those human and humane ceremonies, attitudes, and policies that must assure that technology's magnificent achievements do not obscure the human need for individuality and spiritual growth even during the dying process.     

Improving Opportunities for Bridging Social Capital: The Story of a Full-Service Community School Initiative at an Alternative High School

Abstract

This article describes the collective efforts educators and multiple community partners are taking to transform one alternative urban high school into a full-service community school. The article presents preliminary findings on the opportunities for bridging social capital that the full-service initiative has created and the impacts such opportunities have for students in urban alternative settings with multiple risk factors stacked against them.     

The effect of phonics instruction on the reading comprehension of beginning readers

This study investigated whether two groups of6-year-old beginning readers taught to read by aphonics and by a ``book experience' non-phonicsapproach would differ in reading comprehension as wellas the processes of word recognition. The two groupswere matched for word recognition but despite this, thephonics taught children had higher readingcomprehension. Phonics taught children produced morecontextually appropriate errors, and in both singleword and text reading made more spoken attempts atreading unknown words. The non-phonics taught childrenhad much faster reading reaction times to familiarwords but they scored less in phoneme segmentation andnonword reading tasks. Compared with the nonphonicsgroup, the phonics group spent more time in attemptsat identifying unknown words and this included usingcontextual information, which apparently resulted inmore rehearsal of the meaning of the story text andhence better reading comprehension performance.     

Adult Perception of Emotion Intensity in Human Infant Cries: Effects of Infant Age and Cry Acoustics

The relation between adult perception of emotion intensity in the cries of 1- and 6-month-old infants and the acoustic characteristics of the cries was examined. In the first study, adults who were inexperienced in child care rated 40 cries on 3 emotion intensity scales: anger, fear, and distress. The cries of 6-month-olds were rated as being significantly more intense. Different acoustic variables accounted for emotion intensity ratings for the 2 infant ages. Peak amplitude and noisiness of the cry predicted adult judgments of intensity ratings of 1-month-olds' cries; a measure of amplitude ratio (in 2 frequency bands) was the best predictor of intensity ratings of 6-month-olds' cries. In the second study, parents of infants rated the same cries on the same scales. They also rated the older infants' cries as being more intense. The 2 adult groups did not differ on their ratings, and a regression equation derived from one adult group predicted the other adult group's rating of the same infant age better than it predicted its own ratings for the other infant age. Infant age, and its associated acoustic features, seems to be a more important determinant of adults' perception of emotion intensity than are such adult characteristics as gender or infant-care experience.     

“Nice things get said”: corpus evidence and the National Literacy Strategy

The article compares evidence from an electronic corpus of texts written for a child audience with specifications in the National Literacy Strategy. The concepts and terminology associated with corpus linguistics are introduced and explained, and the research study from which the findings derive is summarised. Results of the analysis are presented in sections on word frequencies, contractions, word forms and synonyms. The article concludes with an indication of the implications of the findings for education policy and classroom practice.     

Did the Recession Impact Student Success? Relationships of Finances,Staffing and Institutional Type on Retention

Economic recessions impact higher education institutions in complex ways. Several analyses have examined the influence of the 2007–2009 recession on tuition, enrollments, revenues, and expenditures, but the connection of these resource allocation patterns to a student success outcome—namely, retention—is limited. This study examined relationships among institutional expenditures, tuition, and staffing patterns on first-year retention rates at private and public institutions in 2007, 2009 and 2011: before, during, and after the economic recession. Private and public institutions increased tuition during this time period and increased expenditures. Expenditures most directly educating students (i.e. instruction) and institutional selectivity were positively associated with retention. However, public and private institutions differed in how they allocated their expenditures. That the findings correspond with past research investigating relationships between resource allocation and retention illustrate principles of the resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978): institutions impacted by external economic changes, adjust revenues, staffing, and expenditures during economic changes.