Decisional Regret Theory: Reducing the Anxiety About Uncertain Outcomes During Group Decision Making Through Shared Counterfactual Storytelling

People want to live in a predictable world, yet regularly face uncertain outcomes from decision choices. Here, a decision-making theory of communication is proposed. Faced with decisions, people experience anxiety as they anticipate choice-regret. The communicative dynamic of Decisional Regret Theory (DERT) is the production, sharing, and reconstruction of predecisional imaginary narratives that allow alternative decisional outcomes to be anticipated. DERT predicts a type of shared communication (counterfactual storytelling) under specific circumstances (anticipation of making a meaningful decision). It further predicts listener responses: (a) reproducing the story, (b) altering the story, (c) creating an alternative story, or (d) disconfirming the story. Exemplars of counterfactual communication during jury decision making are offered, together with a model describing the emergence of group counterfactual storytelling.     

Collection Development Trip to Moscow,Tallinn, Riga,and Vilnius,May 3–23, 2013

The author traveled to Moscow, Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius in May 2013. The primary purpose of the trip was to acquire materials written by former participants in the University of Iowa’s (UI) International Writing Program (IWP). The UI Libraries has an approval plan for works written by IWP authors from selected countries, including those she visited, but this trip was an opportunity to locate harder to identify materials and to learn from the writers themselves about their current projects.     

How the GPO Got Its Groove Back

Abstract

In the last decade, the Government Printing Office has dealt with two major problems of this revolution. First, GPO has had to master the various aspects of the electronic age. Second, they have had to deal with the “under-the-gun” mentality of a government totally enamored of the “apparent” efficiency and accuracy of electronic information. GPO's struggle with these problems has been neither easy nor comfortable. From top to bottom in the government documents world nearly everyone has some degree of apprehension, misgiving, or outright suspicion concerning the future of the accessibility of government information. Despite these difficulties GPO has made important strides toward implementing the apparatus of electronic information, while at the same time striving to ensure the quality and coherency of the end product available to the nation's citizens.     

The Way We Work Now

Abstract

As the Government Printing Office completes its transition to an electronic distribution system for government information, reference services within the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) are changing as well. In addition to meeting new user needs and using new resources to do so, many government information librarians find themselves working in new environments within their libraries. Throughout the 1990s, many FDLP institutions reorganized reference services in order to provide government information assistance at the library's main reference service point. This article reports the results of a survey of FDLP institutions identifying the factors contributing to the reorganization of services, the process and success of reorganizing within these libraries, and the pros and cons of these service arrangements.     

Trading Spaces Mentoring Program: The Melding of Talent and Opportunity

A mentoring program for all of Utah's library workers is helping libraries grow and succeed. Best practices for running a library mentoring program in your area are given. [Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Public Library Quarterly for the following supplemental resource: application to receive mentoring]     

(Re)Making the Serials Cataloger: The SCCTP Within an Educational Framework

ABSTRACT

The Serials Cooperative Cataloging Program (SCCTP) is reviewed from the standpoint of a library educator. Although the demand for copy catalogers has declined in the era of digital information, the demand for original catalogers has remained constant due, in part, to the growth in titles in different media formats and different languages. Additionally linking to information housed externally or internally and embedding metadata tags for resource discovery are among the new tasks for organizers of information in the Internet era. Increasingly professional organizations are filling the need for continuing education and training for advanced-level catalogers. This article examines the SCCTP as a model for continuous professional development and concludes it is adaptable more generally.     

Partners in Collaborative Cataloging: The U.S. Government Printing Office and the University of Montana

Collaboration is a necessity in the current library environment where time, money, and resources are limited. This is particularly noticeable for institutions housing federal government documents. In addition to keeping up with the influx of current publications, federal depository libraries must address historical documents for which bibliographic records are not readily available. This report discusses how the United States Government Printing Office and the University of Montana Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library are working together to increase access to pre-1976 United States Forest Service publications and gray literature within the same subject area.     

"大阅读"活动的发展历程及特点分析

“大阅读”活动是一类阅读活动的统称,倡导通过阅读提升社区、社群的氛围,形成社区、社群的凝聚力,从而建设书香社会.它最早起源于英国,随后兴盛于美国,并逐步影响全世界,形成一个世界范围内广泛而持续不断的阅读热潮.“大阅读”活动的组织机构不一,有的由单一的传媒组织推动,也有的由阅读推广组织、传媒组织和图书情报机构等联合推动.通过对“大阅读”活动的发展历程及特点的总结、分析,将对我国开展“大阅读”活动、建设书香社会提供可资借鉴的启示.     

Multiple dimensions of family engagement in early childhood education: Evidence for a short form of the Family Involvement Questionnaire

The primary aim of this study was to develop and validate a short form of the 42-item Family Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ) for use in preschool. Empirical evidence derived from a representative sample of preschool programs in a large city in New York State with the original version of the FIQ was used to select the items for a 21-item short form. A representative sample of 590 Head Start families was also identified from a large Head Start program in Pennsylvania to serve to validate the short form. Confirmatory factor analysis of the short form substantiated the three robust dimensions of family involvement from the original FIQ. Concurrent measures of parental satisfaction and assessments of children's literacy and mathematics skills along with an examination of family demographic variables supported the validity of the confirmed dimensions. Implications for the use of this multidimensional, short form of family involvement in large-scale program evaluation were discussed.     

英开放大学、美大学水平考试体系与我国高等教育自学考试之比较

以历史的角度、国际的视野来观察,英国开放大学和美国大学水平考试体系(CLEP)与我国高等教育自学考试有很多相似的地方。作为国外成熟的教育形式和考试制度,英国开放大学和美国CLEP考试对我国的自学考试如何发展的重要借鉴意义是不言而喻的。文章将从开放性、经济性、学分、学历(学位)及助学等几个方面,对中、英、美三种教育模式进行比较,从而根据国际教育体系的一些特点和做法对我国自学考试的改革提出一些探索式的建议。