Why So Many Repositories? Examining the Limitations and Possibilities of the Institutional Repositories Landscape

Academic libraries fail to take advantage of the network effect because they manage too many digital repositories locally. While this argument applies to all manner of digital repositories, this article examines the fragmented environment of institutional repositories (IR), in which effort and costs are duplicated, numerous software platforms and versions are managed simultaneously, metadata are applied inconsistently, users are served poorly, and libraries are unable to take advantage of collective data about content and users. In the meantime, commercial IR vendors and academic social networks have shown much greater success with cloud-based models. Collectively, the library profession has enough funding to create a national-level IR, but it lacks the willingness to abandon local control.     

UX and Your Library: A Scalable Model

User experience is immeasurably important for your patrons as they access your Web site. This article presents tips and strategies for testing user experience, suggests a number of different popular technologies and tools that are used in the UX field, and lays out a plan for sharing and utilizing data to make improvements on your Web site. It is the goal of this article to present a model for improving Web site usability that can be scaled up or down depending on the resources available at your institution.     

Watershed Education for Sustainable Development

Global Rivers Environmental Education Network (GREEN) is an international network that seeks to bring students, teachers, and communities in the world closer together through the bond of studying and improving our river systems. The network is an expanding global communication system that invites participants to analyze watershed usage, monitor the quality and quantity of river water, reflect on ways that land and water usage and cultural perceptions influence river systems, and present their findings and recommendations to appropriate governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The pedagogical model that GREEN has been working under is Action Research and Community Problem Solving (ARCPS). It is a process that enables students and teachers to participate more fully in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of educational activities aimed at resolving an issue that the learners have identified. Some of the cornerstones of the instructional approaches are watershed analysis, experiential learning, interdisciplinary orientation, integrated problem solving, action-taking, and the support of networks. GREEN encourages classrooms to consider a cross-cultural component to their watershed education program in an effort to further global citizenship by linking students, teachers, and community members from different regions of the world.     

Science education as a civil right: Urban schools and opportunity‐to‐learn considerations

In this article I make the case that urban science education is a civil rights issue and that to effectively address it as such we must shift from arguments for civil rights as shared physical space in schools to demands for high‐quality academic preparation that includes the opportunity to learn science. The argument is organized into two sections: first, a review of the school desegregation literature to make the case that urban science education for all is a civil rights issue; and second, an examination and critique of opportunity‐to‐learn literature, including an analysis of three opportunity‐to‐learn constructs to illustrate their potential as civil rights tools in science education. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 1015–1028, 2001     

A Comparison of Three Approaches to Electronic Media Diaries

This project compared the richness of reporting and reflection of three approaches to electronic media diaries. For 1 week, 145 students were randomly assigned to keep daily diaries about their media use and perceptions of media content using one of three methods: (a) a traditional daily journaling approach conducted online, (b) an experience sampling method (ESM) approach that combined daily journaling with multiple daily message prompts, and (c) an approach that combined online peer-group discussion with online daily journaling. The goal was to determine if the supplementary diary activities yielded more detailed, emotive, and cognitive responses. Diary content was analyzed using traditional manual content analysis and linguistic software. Results indicated that the ESM condition elicited less cognitive- and affective-oriented language than the other conditions. The group discussion condition evidenced some advantage over the diary-only group in terms of number of media channels and specific content mentioned.     

一种基于Bento模式的联邦检索系统

[目的/意义]信息资源发现与传递服务一直是图书馆的核心业务,目前在欧美出现一种新形式即基于Bento模式的联邦检索服务系统,研究其最新发展趋势对完善我国图书馆发现系统有重要参考价值。[方法/过程]通过文献调查、比较研究、案例分析等方法,对比国内外发展现状,揭示混合排序的不足和Bento模式的优点,并以美国伊利诺大学香槟分校（UIUC）图书馆为例说明其应用和未来发展趋势。[结果/结论]实践证明Bento模式更有利于实现从全资源发现向全图书馆发现的转变,检索效果和图书资源利用率均有较大幅度的提升。     

The Challenge of Controlling for SES in Social Science and Education Research

This article addresses the difficulties of controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) in social science and educational studies. The article reviews the history behind controlling for SES and points out the shortcomings of the research approaches of the past. I then assert that there still remain a number of weaknesses in the ways that are presently and commonly used for controlling for SES. I argue that the field of the natural sciences is well ahead of the social sciences in addressing some of the difficulties in measuring the effects of SES. Among the issues that natural scientists are investigating include the notion of reciprocal causality and SES as a catch all variable, as well as examining the factors that affect SES. The article examines a number of methods that researchers are introducing to examine the effects of SES in more sophisticated ways. These methods include considering variables that influence SES, taking measures of SES at different points in time, examining intervening variables that act between SES and the variables under study, and other approaches.     

How the Central Intelligence Agency recruited Arab Detroit: Government communication,interpellation and citizenship

In 2009, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employed a multipronged communications campaign to encourage Arab Americans in Detroit, MI, to apply for employment. Adapting Althusser’s notion of interpellation, this article examines how this government agency’s communications exacerbated the conditional, incomplete status of Arab American citizenship in post-9/11 America. At this precarious time, facially inclusive gestures can be understood as exclusive practices. This beckons more scholarly attention to how government communication implicates citizenship.