A suggested approach to a library building program

The preliminary building program suggested in this paper makes use of outlines, graphs, charts, and lists, rather than long-winded paragraphs, to describe the needs, objectives, and philosophy of the library. It is hoped that a short, concise, but detailed, report using these methods will save time and make the report more attractive to read, thereby encouraging the many people who will need to assist in the building planning to use the report.     

Financial Feeling: An Investigation of Emotion and Communication in the Workplace

There is growing interest in the role of emotion when considering communication in the workplace. This work has most often considered workers in front-line service positions in investigations of emotional labor, and human service workers in investigations of empathy and emotional work. In this study, we consider processes of both emotional labor and emotional work in the financial planning profession. Financial planners occupy a role requiring ongoing relationships with clients, conversations about the often emotional topic of money, and a need to manage emotion in a variety of interaction contexts. Thus, from extant theory and literature regarding emotion and communication, we proposed research questions regarding the roles of emotional labor and emotional work in the financial planning profession. These questions were investigated in a web-based survey study of almost 300 professional financial planners and supporting interviews with 14 financial planners. Results indicate support for existing theory on emotional work, extensions to current research regarding emotional labor, and important implications for the role of emotion and communication in a range of professional service roles.     

Communicating Knowing Through Communities of Practice: Exploring Internal Communicative Processes and Differences Among CoPs

Knowing is an enacted, communicated process that is difficult to observe, let alone manage, in organizations. Communities of practice (CoPs) offer a productive solution for improving knowledge and knowledge management, but the communicative processes that enact CoPs have not been explored, leaving CoPs as an organizational black box. This research extends CoP theory as a means to determine the presence of a CoP and distinguish between various CoPs, and as a practical means to evaluate the communicative processes of organizational knowledge. CoPs enact the communicative nature of knowing through the elements of mutual engagement, negotiation of a joint enterprise, and shared repertoire. Specifically, two groups of volunteers are examined through a combination of participation, observation, and interviews in order to explore CoP theory as a dynamic system for examining and evaluating organizational knowledge.     

A focus on quality--the library's role in occurrence screening

One of the highest priorities in today's hospitals is the provision of quality care to patients. The medical librarian has an increased responsibility to furnish quality information to the medical staff. Traditional methods of reference service continue to work well, but it is increasingly important for librarians to become more directly involved in hospital quality assurance (QA) activities. Occurrence screening is one system of QA where the librarian can make a difference.     

Health information for patients: The hospital library's role

Libraries today, including most hospital-based patients' libraries, are involved only peripherally in providing patient health science information. Hospital libraries should collaborate with health professionals in getting health information to patients--along with the library's more traditional roles of providing recreational reading for patients and serving the informational needs of the physician and medical staff. The library should act as the center for educational materials and programs within the hospital. Many health agencies, health educators, physicians, and librarians have been discussing the need for patient health education, but there are few effectively organized or established education centers. This paper discusses an overview of patient health education and intellectural freedom, proposes a new role for the existing hospital library in patient health education, and suggests guidelines for establishing a patient education center.