Organizational dynamics of an NLM-grant-funded consortium: the Nursing Information Consortium of Orange County

The development of the Nursing Information Consortium of Orange County (NICOC) is traced over time, and reasons for the crises encountered are explored. Based on the experiences of NICOC, recommendations for other consortia are included, as well as for the consortium grant process.     

Book reviews

Varela Gomes, Rosa. Cerâmicas Muçulmanas do Castelo de Silves. Silves: Museu Municipal de Arqueologia, 1988 (XELB, 1). 294pp, numerous figs, and pls.

Rubiera i Mata, María Jesús.Introducció a la literatura hispaho‐àrab (Col. ecció Xarc AI‐Andalus, l).Alicante: Universitat d'Alacant, 1989. 117pp.

Guichard, Pierre. L'Espagne et la Sicile musulmanes aux XI^e et XII^e siècles. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1990. 232pp., figures, maps. FF. 138.‐ ‘ .

Lozano Cámara, Indalecio. Tres tratados árabes sobre el Cannabis Indica. Madrid: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, Instituto de Cooperación con el Mundo Arabe, 1990. 220pp.

Powell, James M., ed. Muslims under Latin Rule, 1100–1300. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 221pp.

Actas del Simposio Internacional sobre la Ciuidad Islámica. Ponencias y Comunicaciones. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico de la Diputación Provincial, 1991. 474pp.

Neugebauer, Otto. Abu Shaker's “Chronography”: A treatise of the 13th Century on Chronological, Calendrical and Astronomical Matters, written by a Christian Arab, preserved in Ethiopie (Õsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philos.‐Histor. Klasse: Sitzungsberichte, 498).Wien: Ö.A.W., 1988. 198pp., 7pl. OS 350.‐.

Arbel, Benjamin, Hamilton, Bernard and Jacoby, David, eds. Latins and Creeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204. London: Frank Cass, 1989. 245pp. £18.     

Knowledge, learning and small firm growth: A systematic review of the evidence

A systematic review of empirical research on knowledge and growth in small firms is reported. The findings cover how human and social capital, organizational systems, and knowledge networks combine to facilitate or restrict growth. Findings highlight the situated, complex and idiosyncratic nature of small firm growth and the tensions between this experience and a prevailing view of knowledge in the existing research as a codifiable and transferable asset. A need for supplementary small firm heuristics (to age, size and sector) and epistemologies (to knowledge as an asset) and research approaches are identified to better investigate this diversity.     

Are we looking through the same lens? Principal recruitment and selection

This article reports a study designed to identify the factors that both hiring bodies and applicants believe are most important when making decisions about principal selection, appointment and acceptance. Based on a quantitative study involving the four main groups of players in the principal selection process, we confirmed a four-factor structure. In order of importance the four factors were, Generic Managerial Skills, Communication and Presentation Skills, Experience and Credence, and Religious Affiliation and External Connection. The fourth factor is rarely mentioned in the literature. The findings indicate a shift in the role expectation of principals from educational leaders to administrative managers. Findings also challenge the use of interviews as the sole principal selection mechanism.     

与Brad对话:加拿大学生暑假怎么过?(英文)

暑假到了,Sarah想知道加拿大学生暑假做些什么,是待在家里打电脑游戏,还是出去旅游呢?Sarah听说Brad到过全世界很多地方旅游,她很想知道Brad对此有什么特别的感受。     

Evangelical-Christian publishing: Where it’s been and where it’s going

For all of its apparent success, evangelical-Christian publishing has gone largely unnoticed by the book-publishing world and now finds itself confronted by several challenges. This article provides an overview of the development of evangelical-Christian Moody helped in its launch, and of changes in the way Christian books are distributed. While these changes intersect those in general bookselling, they are also unique in several ways.     

Effects of motivational and cognitive variables on reading comprehension

The authors examined how motivational and cognitive variables predict reading comprehension, and whether each predictor variable adds unique explanatory power when statistically controlling for the others. Fourth-grade students (N = 205) completed measures of reading comprehension in September and December of the same year, and measures of background knowledge and cognitive strategy use in December. Teachers rated internal reading motivation of each student. Results from multiple regression analyses showed that motivation, background knowledge, and cognitive strategy-use made significant, independent contributions to children’s reading comprehension when the other predictor variables were controlled. Further analyses showed the same cognitive and motivational variables predicted growth over a 3-month period in reading comprehension. Possible explanations of the observed relations between motivation, cognitive variables, and reading comprehension are presented.     

Finding what is missing from a digital library: A case study in the Computer Science field

This article proposes a process to retrieve the URL of a document for which metadata records exist in a digital library catalog but a pointer to the full text of the document is not available. The process uses results from queries submitted to Web search engines for finding the URL of the corresponding full text or any related material. We present a comprehensive study of this process in different situations by investigating different query strategies applied to three general purpose search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) and two specialized ones (Scholar and CiteSeer), considering five user scenarios. Specifically, we have conducted experiments with metadata records taken from the Brazilian Digital Library of Computing (BDBComp) and The DBLP Computer Science Bibliography (DBLP). We found that Scholar was the most effective search engine for this task in all considered scenarios and that simple strategies for combining and re-ranking results from Scholar and Google significantly improve the retrieval quality. Moreover, we study the influence of the number of query results on the effectiveness of finding missing information as well as the coverage of the proposed scenarios.