Managing Serials in a Large Digital Library: Case Study of the UNT Libraries Digital Collections

The Portal to Texas History (http://texashistory.unt.edu) and the University of North Texas (UNT) Digital Library (http://digital.library.unt.edu) contain more than 445,000 items collectively, hosted by the UNT Libraries. These collections include a variety of serial publications such as newsletters, magazines, scholarly journals, annual reports, and yearbooks. Many of these serials are key resources for the user groups of both repositories. In this article, we discuss the importance of serials within our collections, some of the challenges, the standards we use, and how we leverage metadata to facilitate access to serials for diverse global users.     

Refugee Students at College and University: Improving Access and Support

This article summarizes the findings and recommendations of a study into access to, and experience of, colleges of further education and universities by refugees in Sydney, Australia. The study sought to identify examples of institutional good practice which are potentially transferable to other major host countries for refugees in the developed world. It focuses upon the factors influencing the decision to enter college or university, sources and usefulness of information and advice, access courses and special entry schemes, the recognition of prior learning and overseas qualifications and institutional sensitivity and support. It concludes with a series of recommendations for providers of further and higher education to improve access and support for students from refugee backgrounds.     

Challenging Authority: Al-Balādhurī and al-Ṭabarī on Khārijism during the Reign of Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān1

ABSTRACT

Khārijite resistance to Umayyad authority during the caliphate of Mu?āwiya b. Abī Sufyān (r. 661–680) is represented in detail in the works of the early Muslim scholars A?mad b. Ya?yā al-Balādhurī (d. c. 892) and Mu?ammad b. Jarīr al-?abarī (d. 923). While the Khārijites are overwhelmingly depicted by both authors as religious fanatics whose excessive piety caused widespread bloodshed and who thus should be condemned, a closer look reveals that Khārijites serve specific and distinct narrative purposes: al-Balādhurī uses them mainly to illustrate Umayyad tyranny, while al-?abarī addresses the consequences of Khārijite revolts for communal and imperial stability. The latter's work is also marked by a dichotomy between activist and quietist Khārijism, implying that al-?abarī is not so much opposed to Khārijism as a set of “heretic” religious ideas, but rather to its violent expression of politico-religious opposition.     

Community polarization over educational programs can be avoided

The series of events involved in implementing an innovative educational project in a fairly conservative community are outlined with particular reference to parental dissemination procedures, the role of the media, and staff response strategies. Shortly after the project's inception, two challenges against the use of an affective curriculum were mounted by a couple of opposition parents. The attempts were considered unsuccessful and several operating assumptions for new programs were described.     

Cyberbullying,revenge porn and the mid‐sized university: Victim characteristics,prevalence and students' knowledge of university policy and reporting procedures

In this study, we provide a snapshot of cyber abuse behaviours among students at a single, mid‐sized public commuter university in the United States. The goal of this study is to provide helpful information that can guide universities when creating cyber‐civility policies, information that is currently lacking in Higher Education. We examine recent university cases and relevant laws related to cyberbullying and revenge porn, survey student characteristics that are associated with this type of victimisation and make suggestions for language universities should consider when drafting their cyber abuse policies. Finally, we address the role of the university in protecting potential victims, training students on policies and reporting procedures, and intervening in incidents related to these types of cyber abuse.     

Behind the wall: service challenges at a prison library

Abstract

This article examines the challenges of providing library services to incarcerated men at the State Correctional Institution Benner Township in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Most challenges stem from sustaining an inmate’s right of access to the courts, operating without the technology found in most public libraries, and dealing with censorship.     

Young people and their engagement with health-related social media: new perspectives

Young people are increasingly turning to social media for health-related information in areas such as physical activity, diet/nutrition and body image. Yet, there are few robust empirical accounts of the content and form of the health-related material young people access and attend to, or the health-related content they create and share. Furthermore, there is little guidance from research or policy on young people's engagement with health-related social media. This leaves many relevant adults ill-equipped to protect young people from the negative influences of social media and to optimize the potential of social media as a medium for health promotion. This article presents new evidence on young people's engagement with social media and the influences they report on their health-related behaviors. The research was undertaken with 1296 young people (age 13–18) using a participatory mixed methods design. Initially, a public pedagogy [Giroux, 2004. Public pedagogy and the politics of neo-liberalism: Making the political more pedagogical. Policy Futures in Education, 2, 494–503] theoretical framework was used to guide data analysis but this was found to be limiting. An adapted framework was developed, therefore, drawing on Miller et al. [2016. How the world changed social media. London: UCL Press] and Lomborg [2011. Social media as communicative genres. Journal of Media and Communication Research, 51, 55–71] to account for the unique ways in which pedagogy operates in a social media context. Young people accessed and used a range of health-related information on body transformations, diet/nutritional supplements or recipes and workouts/exercises, albeit in different ways. Moreover, young people identified five forms of content that influenced their understandings and behaviours: (i) automatically sourced content; (ii) suggested or recommended content; (iii) peer content; (iv) likes; (v) reputable content. The findings also suggest that relevant adults can reduce risk and realize more of the positive impacts of social media for young people by focusing on content, and the ways in which content is shaped in the interplay between interactive functionalities of social media (e.g. likes and followers) and young people's social uses of social media (e.g. friends, information).     

‘The art of democracy’: Young people's democratic learning in gallery contexts

In this article the authors report on research which aimed to explore the opportunities for democratic action and learning in a number of artist‐led gallery education projects in the south‐west of England. The research takes an approach to citizenship learning and democracy that is less focused on citizenship as a specific subject in the formal school curriculum and the achievement of specific citizenship outcomes that can follow from it. Rather, it is more focused upon understanding how democratic practices that are embedded in the day‐to‐day lives of young people contribute to their democratic learning and participation as citizens. Drawing upon conceptual categories and concepts that illuminate the process, the authors demonstrate the nature and character of young people's democratic learning. An implication arising from this is the need for practice‐orientated research in other contexts (e.g. work, leisure and home) to fully understand the nature of democratic learning.     

Invisible and special: young women’s experiences as undergraduate mathematics students

This paper reports on young women students’ participation in their undergraduate mathematics degree programme: their gendered trajectory is characterized in terms of their being both ‘invisible’ in the dominant university mathematics community and yet ‘special’ in their self‐conception. It draws on data collected from a three‐year longitudinal project investigating students’ experiences of undergraduate mathematics at two comparable traditional universities in England. Specifically, students’ narratives are interpreted as providing insights into their defensive investments in their particular ways of participating. An interpretive feminist perspective is used to claim that these young women are involved in the ongoing redefining of the gendering of participation in mathematics, and conveys how they manage to choose mathematics, and achieve in university mathematics, whilst in many respects adhering to everyday views of femininity.

Leitmotif

No one could see [the witch] Serafina from where she was; but if she wanted to see any more, she would have to leave her hiding place. …There was one thing she could do; she was reluctant because it was desperately risky, and it would leave her exhausted; but it seemed there was no choice. It was a kind of magic she could work to make herself unseen. True invisibility was impossible, of course: this was mental magic, a kind of fiercely held modesty that could make the spell worker not invisible but simply unnoticed. Holding it with the right degree of intensity, she could pass through a crowded room, or walk beside a solitary traveller, without being seen. (Pullman, 1998 Pullman, P. 1998. The subtle knife, London: Scholastic Point.  [Google Scholar], p. 35)     

Theories of learning: models of good practice for evidence-based information skills teaching

This feature considers models of teaching and learning and how these can be used to support evidence based practice.