Mary Somerville: a scientist and her ship

Mary Somerville enjoyed posing for busts and portraits, yet just as in her autobiography, she chose how she wished to be seen. A powerful advocate for scientific progress, Somerville gave her name to a ship that carried British products around the world, and portrayed herself as an ideal role model for women and also an exemplar of European civilisation.     

Spying for the enlightenment

According to Enlightenment ideology, knowledge was shared openly in the international Republic of Letters. In reality, the owners of lucrative new technologies were determined to keep their discoveries hidden from industrial spies.     

On my honor: creating space for thinking and living Girl Scouts differently in (post)colonial Hawai‘i

Girl Scouts aims to foster leadership by encouraging girls to discover themselves, make connections, and take action to make the world better. This paper chronicles the five-year journey of eight professional mothers of color who sought to provide their daughters with a space to ‘think and live differently’ as Girl Scouts and young women of color in (post)colonial Hawai‘i. Through questionnaires and a semi-structured focus group interview, mothers reflect on their original intentions to create a ‘safe space’ for their daughters to engage with the politics of gender, race, and class and to rethink, review, and rework their identities. Mothers’ reflections reveal success in creating safe spaces for the critical analysis of gender, but comparatively less success in critical analyses of race and class – a phenomenon that the mothers suggest may have been complicated by (1) the enduring myth of Hawai‘i as a multicultural paradise, (2) Girl Scouts’ assimilationist history, and (3) the mothers’ own relatively privileged positions.     

Decisions in resource management: The case of microforms

This study examines management of microforms at libraries and institutions maintaining an active interest in their own microform collections, defined for the purpose of this study as those not only holding, but still acquiring microforms. Survey results presented here, which identify factors that contribute to retention and discard decisions – including holdings of the same content in different formats – are considered in the context of decision theory. Findings could inform current and future decisions relating to the microforms discussed here as well as to holdings in formats dependent on other technologies that will eventually change.     

Collaborative Development and Evaluation of an Online Nursing Course

Institutions of higher education acknowledge that online learning represents a growing segment of the modern learning environment, and most students have mastered basic computer skills. However, reluctance to engage in online learning remains among both faculty and students. This article presents a case study of three schools of nursing that collaboratively developed and implemented an online undergraduate-nursing course. The article discusses the challenges that were encountered by faculty and students. The faculty used the distance education literature to address these challenges related to technological, institutional, and pedagogical aspects of online learning, as well as the recruitment and retention of online learners. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the course. The paper concludes with suggestions to overcome the challenges of online learning, such that faculty and students receive the inherent rewards.     

Childhood Experience, Interpersonal Development, and Reproductive Strategy: An Evolutionary Theory of Socialization

The concept of "reproductive strategy" drawn from the field of behavioral ecology is applied to the study of childhood experience and interpersonal development in order to develop an evolutionary theory of socialization. The theory is presented in terms of 2 divergent development pathways considered to promote reproductive success in the contexts in which they have arisen. One is characterized, in childhood, by a stressful rearing environment and the development of insecure attachments to parents and subsequent behavior problems; in adolescence by early pubertal development and precocious sexuality; and, in adulthood, by unstable pair bonds and limited investment in child rearing, whereas the other is characterized by the opposite. The relation between this theory and prevailing theories of socialization, specifically, attachment, social-learning, and discrete-emotions theory, is considered and research consistent with our evolutionary theory is reviewed. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.