Excluding archival silences: Oral history and historical absence

Despite our society's increasing reliance on electronic documentation, to-date archives remain, largely, material repositories of cultural memory. It is an accepted historical problematic, however, that culture is often resistant to material preservation. There exists an undeniable and profound tension between scholarly efforts to reconstruct history and interpret cultural traditions and the fragmentary, and often limited, material record. That is to say, scholarship is shaped by a sinuous negotiation around the historical silences that encompass all of material culture. Historical silences, however, can at times be marginalized (or at best excluded) by a sensitive configuration of material evidence with oral history.Excluding Archival Silences: Oral History and Historical Absence uses a historically and geographically specific example of oral history to engage in a more generalist discussion of how oral reflection, especially when shaped by material evidences, can be an especially effective tool for preserving the dynamics of culture that often remain undocumented.     

Teaching Appraisal in an American (U.S.) Archives Program

The author, a professor at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, discusses the use of selected archival literature to nurture an appraisal mindset, particularly within the American context. She then addresses in some detail types of appraisal case studies and the variety of ways that they may be used as teaching tools.     

Child maltreatment reporting in the general population: Examining the roles of community,collective efficacy,and adverse childhood experiences

According to bystander theory, factors such as the community environment, collective efficacy, and history of adverse childhood experiences could be related to likelihood of reporting or intervening against maltreatment. An online survey was conducted with 946 general population Californians obtained through mixed-mode random probability and quota-based recruitment methods. Using an experimental vignette design, participants were randomly assigned to two scenarios: a) potential child abuse occurring in their neighborhood; b) potential child abuse in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Weighted multivariate logistic regression models assessed relationships between the vignette condition, collective efficacy, appraisal of the behavior, and likelihood of reporting or intervening. The results suggested that perceiving the vignette as occurring in your own neighborhood was associated with lower odds of viewing the behavior as appropriate and considering it abusive. Higher collective efficacy scores were associated with lower odds of viewing the incident as inappropriate but higher odds of personally intervening. Adverse childhood experiences were positively related to reporting the incident to child protective services and intervening. Bystanders may be more likely to give parents in their own neighborhood "the benefit of the doubt" by viewing their abusive behaviors as less severe, potentially leading to underreporting. Neighborhood collective efficacy might increase willingness to personally intervene, but not contact systems such as child protective services or police, suggesting that enhanced trust in communities does not extend to these institutions. Our findings have implications for neighborhood and education interventions to enhance understanding of and willingness to intervene on behalf of children.     

Spread or Sacrifice: Dilemma for Lighting Policies

ABSTRACT

Light sensitive objects will fade on display. Collection managers and curators face the dilemma whether to spread fading over several similar objects or sacrifice one. This paper describes an experiment in which participants were asked how they would want to pass on a collection of seventeenth century hand-coloured maps to coming generations. Results show that while colour changes are hardly visible, both public and professionals do not perceive them as damage and prefer to spread fading. Once fading becomes clearly visible in all maps, the preference shifts to sacrificing one map. The tipping point lies around five just noticeable changes. This information can be used when selecting objects for exhibition. The outcome also implies it would be prudent to assess the degree of fading of much exhibited objects and consider whether and when to choose for a sacrifice strategy.     

UNIMARC Format Relevance: Maintenance or Replacement?

This article presents an empirical study focused on a qualitative analysis of the UNIMARC format. An analysis of the structural quality of the data provided by the format is evaluated to determine its current suitability for meeting the requirements and trends in data architecture for the information network and the Semantic Web. Driven by a set of quality characteristics that identify weaknesses in the data schema that cannot be bridged by simply converting data to MARC XML or RDF/XML, we conclude that the UNIMARC format is not compliant with the current metadata schema desiderata and must be replaced.     

Assessing the Benefits of Content Notes Enhancements for Digital Audio Resources

Our library has previously investigated the potential impact the addition of contents notes on circulation. In a subsequent study, we found contents notes were the second metadata element most heavily linked to circulation (title was first). Since there has been a marked decline in the use of print resources at our library and a corresponding increase in digital resources, we wanted to know if the addition of contents notes to records for online streaming audio files would result in a similar increase in usage. After enhancing the records, we tracked usage for a period of three months.     

The metamorphosis of medical discourse and embedded cultural rationality: a content analysis of health reporting for neurasthenia and depressive disorder in China

Neurasthenia (shenjing shuairuo) and depressive disorder are medical issues that have given rise to disputes in China for more than 20 years. Since the 1980s, the once ubiquitous diagnosis of neurasthenia in China was rapidly substituted by depressive disorder in the clinical context. Globally, the metamorphosis from neurasthenia to depressive disorder heralded the triumph of scientific rationality, which identifies neurasthenia as a categorical fallacy. In China, however, neurasthenia retained social and cultural significance; thus, it has become a contestable discourse in relation to depressive disorder. By examining the health reporting of both discourses over a decade, this study explicated how neurasthenia and depressive disorder were represented in a popular health newspaper in China. The content analysis showed that neurasthenia is a more culturally and everyday embedded discourse closely associated with Chinese medicine and laymen’s discourse, while depressive disorder is more associated with Western medicine and the professional discourse. The differentiation of two sets of medical discourse evinces that despite the ostensibly prevailing scientific rationality in media health reporting, cultural rationality is deeply embedded in communicating mental health issues with the lay public. It further suggests the significance of investigating the social and cultural expression of mental illnesses in China.     

How U.S. and Chinese journalists think about plagiarism

A comparison of 1,096 professional journalists in China and the United States on attitudes toward attribution and plagiarism reveals Chinese journalists were more likely to see attribution as a practice to be embraced regardless of career longevity and culture, suggesting journalistic norms are more important than a collectivist orientation. Attribution was more likely to be embraced by those who see principles as more important than expediency, affirming research that plagiarism is hardly a monolithic concept. Overall, journalists in the two nations did not vary significantly in their attitudes toward plagiarism, despite vast differences in culture and politics as well as evidence that in some other fields China is more accepting of reusing material without attribution. The data show that among journalists, attitudes toward plagiarism are shared across national boundaries, reinforcing related research showing that a journalism culture exists and is shared at least in part across national boundaries.     

Worn Grooves

Drawing from visual, material and written archival sources, this article critically explores some of the functions, uses and perceived values of recorded sound during the First World War and in its aftermath. An instrument of communication as well as commemoration, the gramophone helped bridge geographical (and, in some cases, cultural) distances between the home front and the rear, providing civilians with the fleeting illusion of presence, proximity, or even sentimental communion with the front. The article analyses (a) the affective and connective, but also propagandist, values of commercial wartime recordings as they circulated between the home and the front, (b) the popular notion of gramophones as regulatory instruments of civilisation, (c) the commemorative exploitations of recorded sound in the interwar period. The article focuses on the British experience, contrasting it with examples drawn from French and German experiences.     

The Formation of Swedish Media Studies, 1960–1980

Around 1960, the politics of the emerging media society in Sweden tended to fixate the formative functions of mass communication. The monopoly of public service broadcast media, press subsidies and new tendencies in film policy were some of the issues around which uncertainty prevailed. New methods to provide reliable data were sought by politicians, since empirical facts were required as arguments for an updated media policy. This article examines the different ways that the field of media studies was introduced in Sweden between 1960 and 1980. We argue that Swedish academic media studies departed from, and emerged within, a rather diffuse borderland between industry, politics and academia. The formation of national media research in Sweden can partly be seen as an effect of politicians and the media industry wanting to be better informed on issues such as media influence, media ownership and the habits and composition of the media audience.