The Greek Publishing Industry and Professional Development

In the Greek publishing industry, tradition and the desire for innovation go hand in hand. The industry is influenced by European developments in publishing and bookselling in terms of book promotion methods, the role of chain bookstores and the impact of information technology. Greece shares the features of other small book markets in Europe, whilst retaining the individuality defined by the Greek language and the country’s cultural and social conditions. This article provides an overview of the publishing industry in Greece through a review of the relevant literature and the available statistics. This work also focuses on the need to develop publishing skills through publishing education and continuous professional development.     

A guide for the perplexed: Scientific educational research, methodolatry, and the gold versus platinum standards

The paper opens by characterizing recent discourse about empirical educational research as the “new Babel”-critics, using different theoretical vocabularies and making different deep assumptions about the nature of social life, are failing to communicate with each other. After locating some of the critical positions on a left-right continuum, the main discussion focusses upon the end of this continuum where there are located the recent attempts to restore rigor to educational research by using the so-called “gold standard” of randomized field trials. It is argued that positions at this end of the continuum misrepresent the nature of science, and some examples are briefly mentioned in order to covey the point that it is fruitful to view scientists as making convincing cases, cases that appeal to a wide variety of evidence. This assessment of scientific cases is called the “platinum standard”.     

Assessing Use and User Needs for Content Management Systems in the Canadian Federal Public Sector

Canadian public sector organizations require users to make use of content management systems. Symptoms of low adoption include misuse and inefficient workarounds. This research project, through the use of a survey, investigates perspectives of end users in the Canadian public sector; it focuses on assessing users' needs and incorporating their feedback. A goal for this research was to explore and interpret the challenges related to needs assessment in content management projects.     

Connecting Cline Library with Tribal Communities: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

One of the six strategic planning goals of Northern Arizona University (NAU) is to strengthen its relationship with Native Americans and to become one of the nation's leading universities serving Native American students. Considering its close geographic proximity to several tribal communities—particularly the Navajo Nation, which represents 44% of Native American Students at NAU—several programmatic and collection management activities have been instituted at the university's Cline Library as a response to this broader university goal. The library's outreach efforts, though, extend beyond the university's Native American student population and include activities designed to collaborate with tribal communities in a more direct and inclusive manner. Furthermore, incorporating concepts of critical librarianship into the library's teaching, learning, and public programming helps provide a progressive theoretical framework for improving relationships between the university and Native American communities. This case study provides an overview of existing programmatic and policy-based initiatives at the library and discusses where improvements could be made to help foster a closer and more meaningful relationship with Native American students, faculty, and patrons.     

Young children's understanding of perception, desire, and emotion

Very young children seem to know that people experience several mental states: desires, perceptions, emotions. In three studies, we investigated 2- and young 3-year-olds' judgments and communications about how these states connect together in people's lives and minds. Two experimental studies with 56 participants demonstrated young children's understanding of at least one set of connections: In appropriate circumstances, a person's perception of desirable or undesirable objects leads to related emotional experiences. A complementary investigation of four young children's everyday conversations demonstrated their awareness of and expression of several additional connections between people's desires, perceptions, and emotions.     

What Makes the Foucault Pendulum Move among the Stars?

Foucault’s pendulum exhibition in 1851 occurred in an era now known by development of the theorems of Coriolis and the formulation of dynamical meteorology by Ferrel. Yet today the behavior of the pendulum is often misunderstood. The existence of a horizontal component of Newtonian gravitation is essential for understanding the behavior with respect to the stars. Two simple mechanical principles describe why the path of oscillation is fixed only at the poles; the principle of centripetal acceleration and the principle of conservation of angular momentum. A sky map is used to describe the elegant path among the stars produced by these principles.     

The role of cross-disciplinary academic language skills in disciplinary,source-based writing: investigating the role of core academic language skills in science summarization for middle grade writers

Reading and Writing - Learning to use language in order to complete source-based writing tasks is a challenge for middle grade writers worthy of additional study, especially given that these tasks...