The Family Business: Entertainment Products and the Network Morning News Shows

The morning news programs provide an excellent forum for television broadcast networks to benefit from “corporate synergy,” but do they simultaneously compromise the intent of the social responsibility theory of the press? This study measured the entertainment content of the three network morning shows and correlated that to the ownership of the programs and the products being promoted. Results show the morning programs fill their daily news hole at least 20% of the time with entertainment and sports topics, that the entertainment products covered are more likely to have been produced by the networks' parent companies, and that the coverage of entertainment topics is almost certain to be favorable. The results are further evidence in support of calls for revision and update of the Social Responsibility Theory of the Press. The authors suggest that the adoption of the concept of stakeholder theory, applied in the business literature, offers a framework for making responsible editorial decisions in an atmosphere of corporate synergy.     

When Worlds Collide: Dismantling the Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at the University of New Brunswick,Saint John

The Ward Chipman Library on the Saint John campus of the University of New Brunswick is home to a freestanding collection of over 32,000 science fiction and fantasy works, including reference material, primary works, magazines, and mass market/pulp items from most of the 20th century. Some scholars, including Dr. Farah Mendlesohn of Middlesex University, have described it as one of the best in the world. Active development of this collection ceased in 2000 however, and in recent years it has been primarily used as a popular reading collection, with little academic use. A decision to reduce the collection to one designed solely for academic research was met with great protest, and subsequently the collection was weeded and the remainder moved to storage to free up space for other library initiatives. The article describes the collection, the reasons for the proposed and actual reductions, the protests, and the valuable lessons learned from the experience, including the importance of collection development and management policies, the importance of involving the user community to ensure that everyone's needs are met, and the tensions that sometimes arise when intellectual and practical concerns collide.     

FROM THE LITERATURE: Terry Henner,Column Editor

This article explores automated task services, a type of website that allows users to create rules that are triggered by activity on one website and perform a task on another site. The most well-known automated task service is If This Then That (IFTTT), but recently a large number of these services have sprung up. These services can be used to connect websites, apps, business services, and even devices such as phones and home automation equipment. This allows for millions of possible combinations of rules, triggers, and actions. Librarians can put these services to use in many ways, from automating social media postings to remembering to bring their umbrella when rain is in the forecast. A list of popular automated task services is included, as well as a number of ideas for using these services in libraries.     

FROM THE LITERATURE: Terry Henner,Column Editor

ABSTRACT

In spring 2015, a 45-question survey was e-mailed to 585 medical students at the University at Buffalo (UB) in order to gauge their use of library spaces, resources, equipment, and services at UB’s Health Sciences Library and plan for a library space located within a new medical school building. Students’ self-reported use of the library during the academic year is presented along with the features they would like to see in their ideal library space. The responses generated in the survey are a barometer of current use and will be used in the planning process.     

A Graphic Interface to Online Reference Sources

Librarians at the Arnold Bernhard Library of Quinnipiac University were at a crossroads with electronic reference books. At first they had added the titles to the library's web page, generated records to individual titles in the online catalog, and even established links to their content using the link resolver in the online catalog. It was still felt that the collection was not living up to its potential. In 2007, the automation librarian began a project to add one more level of access to these titles – a graphic interface that simulated the process of walking into a reference room and picking out a title – all of this done with no programming beyond basic HTML. Early usage reports beginning in the Fall of 2007 prove that the concept has found an audience.     

Industry and Business Working with Education Through the Ages Within the UK

Abstract

The article looks at how, when major technologies appeared, from hand printing to data processing, via printing and broadcasting, ‘business’ or ‘companies’ or ‘industry’ responses involved education. The reasons for the response, it has to be said, often had a touch of self interest, but were none the less effective for that. This is continuing today as some of the examples cited indicate.     

Developing holistic practice through reflection,action and theorising

This article outlines how I, as a primary teacher engaging with a self-study action research process, have come to a deeper understanding of my practice. It explains how I have also come to an understanding of why I work in the way I do; of how this understanding influences my work, and the significance of this new understanding. My work as a teacher frequently includes doing collaborative digital projects with my class. As I engaged in research on my practice, I initially experienced difficulties problematising this work. I struggled to achieve clarity not only with engaging in critical thinking but also with articulating my educational values. I found Mellor’s idea about ‘the struggle’ helpful as he explains how ‘the struggle’ is at the heart of the research process. My new understanding around these collaborative projects emerged in terms of holistic practice; clarifying my ontological values and learning to think critically. I am now generating an educational theory from my practice as I see my work as a process for developing spiritual and holistic approaches to learning and teaching. I conclude by outlining what I perceive to be the significance of my work and its potential implications for education.     

Influence of Information Technologies on Kinesiology and Physical Education

The rapid advances made in information technologies over the past few years and the belief that technological change is neither additive nor subtractive to our state of affairs but that it generates total change, suggests that it is timely to consider the implications of these technologies for teaching, research, and professional activity. The task of trying to understand the future influence of information technologies is a challenging one because technology is shaped by an array of forces that includes tradition, politics, economic interests, history, philosophy, and competing technologies. The paper addresses the influence of technology under the following general topics: (a) Promise or peril? Two views on information technology; (b) The difficulty of accurately predicting the future role of information technology; (c) An overview of technological advances and some predictions; and (d) Aspects of special interest—virtual reality, Information Highway, thinking “better” with computers, and devaluation of the body.     

Listening to “The Voices of the Pages”and “Combining the Letters:” Spiritual Practices of Reading and Writing

This article seeks to show that the practices teachers and students engage in—reading, writing, reflection, conversation, teaching, learning—can be spiritually formative. The first part, “Listening to the Voices of the Pages,” explores the monastic approach to reading known as lectio divina, and my own efforts to transpose this ancient method of reading into a twenty-first-century classroom. The second part, “Combining the Letters,” explores the creative power of words to name and bring forth life, and my own efforts to encourage and inspire students to write.     

‘Becoming and being writers’: the experiences of doctoral students in writing groups

The use of writing groups to support students undertaking post-graduate research within universities has begun to receive attention from academic supervisors and doctoral researchers. Very little has been written by doctoral students themselves on the benefits of working within such writing groups. In this article, the experiences of working within a doctoral writing group at an Australian University are presented, primarily from the perspective of students. The authors identify two main benefits they have experienced through participating in a writing group using a ‘multi-voiced’ approach. First, they discuss the kind of learning that they achieved through working in a writing group. They do this with reference to key principles of peer learning and of peer review. Second, they focus on the ways the group worked as a community of discursive social practice. An overarching message for them in participating in the group and now writing this article is the shift in their thinking and experience of writing from seeing writing as an essentially private and implicit process to writing becoming a matter of public and shared work. These two notions are bound by the concept of identity building, drawing from the literature on communities of practice.