A Library for Libraries: Is the Joint Library Facility becoming an Interlibrary Loan Hub for Libraries?

ABSTRACT

What happens when libraries begin to use ILL to request items that they already own in their home collection? The goal of this multiyear study involving 9565 ILL requests to the Joint Library Facility in Bryan, Texas, is to examine whether or not the shared storage facility was becoming an ILL hub for some libraries. This paper reports the results of the study and how individual requesting and lending interlibrary loan policies and procedures might be altered to address these developing issues.     

Exploring the relational efforts making up a curriculum concept—an Actor-network theory analysis of the curriculum concept of children’s interests

This paper undertakes an investigation of the ‘life’ of the curriculum concept of children’s interests in a preschool practice. The concept of children’s interests plays a vital role in the Swedish preschool curriculum text and in the preschool field. Strongly inspired by Actor-network theory readings, the paper aims at producing accounts making visible the making of the concept of children’s interests through relations among children, carpets, Minecraft figures, boxes, teachers and schedules in a preschool practice. The paper engages in ethnographic materials generated at a Stockholm preschool over a period of 10 months.     

Methadone: six effects in search of a substance

What is the difference between heroin and methadone? Is this difference one of interpretation, where an 'opiate-like' substance is 'labelled' differently through social processes that arbitrarily describe methadone as 'legal' and 'therapeutic', and heroin as 'illegal' and 'harmful'? To study the nature of this difference, I follow two experiments in the United States and in France of methadone substitution, where medical practices attempt to replace heroin by methadone, and thereby to reduce the user's (illegal) drug use. In these trials, the experimenters ask precisely this question. The question of the nature of the difference between the substance's actions is further illustrated by the comparison between the substitution trials: when the experimenters describe methadone differently in different places and times, do they 'interpret' the drug differently, or is the drug itself different? I show that far too many elements vary from trial to trial to say that the 'interpretation' of the substance is all that varies. In order to explore the variation in detail, then, I draw on works about 'performance', and on the actor-network 'theory of action': what heroin and methadone do, but also also the very way in which they 'pass into action', is what varies in each trial. In the end, this question about difference is a question about action. In each trial, there is not from the start one substance with fixed or vague properties which one can then interpret in various manners. 'Substance' does not contain inherent actions from the start ('properties'). Rather, following the experimenters, it is possible to say that 'effects' are primary and that only at the end of the trial do the experimenters laboriously 'find substance' to effects.     

Introduction to the Special Section of Child Development on Positive Youth Development in Diverse and Global Contexts

Positive youth development (PYD) research seeks to understand and promote positive aspects of development in young people. In this the special section, focused upon youth from diverse racial–ethnic backgrounds around the globe, we describe the origins and development of the field, identify key and emerging themes, and present the challenges for work in the area in the years ahead. Central to these are elements that are inherent in many of the articles that constitute the section: These include a need to articulate more clearly the role of social and cultural context in positive development, a need to refine the measures and methods used for collecting data, the significance of social identities, and engagement with other fields of study and with policymakers.     

High-touch,low-tech: Investigating the value of an in-person library orientation game

Since 2011, the Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) has offered Scrabble Scramble, an in-person, student-centered library orientation game, to incoming first-year students. This article describes our journey of developing, assessing, and refining Scrabble Scramble, which focuses on introducing first-year students to the basic services and resources of an academic library. Through analysis of student and library staff feedback survey results, this article reflects on the value of offering a student-centered, impactful, and personal orientation in an environment of rising student enrollment, steady staff numbers, and a trend to move orientation activities online.     

Developing lifelong guidance and counselling prospective by addressing individual and collective experience of humanness,humanity and the world

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Vocational guidance and counselling have usually focussed on supporting individuals to develop life projects that give meaning to...