Librarians Team Up with Marketing Research Class

The Library Assessment Committee at Central Missouri State University has conducted numerous user surveys within the past three years. In an effort to come up with some creative new ideas, the Committee worked with one of the University's Marketing Research classes. The class's term project was to design a methodology to assess students' impressions of library service. Several of the ideas have been implemented, and an intern form the Marketing Department has been hired to assist with future surveys.     

Métissage on the Airwaves: Toward a Cultural History of Broadcasting in French Colonial Algeria, 1930–1936

This article explores the methodological challenges and possibilities of writing a cultural history of broadcasting in French colonial Algeria during the tumultuous decades between the two world wars. In a diverse, multi-ethnic colonial society, how can historians and media scholars evaluate audience reception? What meanings did radio broadcasting acquire in the colonial context? To answer these questions, this article considers the controversies surrounding two culturally hybrid broadcasts produced by Radio-Algiers during the 1930s. A careful examination of the remaining historical record concerning these broadcasts, from newspaper accounts to archival sources, exposes the cultural fluidity that typified everyday colonial life and reveals how radio broadcasting politicized music and oral language in novel ways. Broadcasting—as a purely sonic medium—challenged the classificatory mechanisms of the French colonial state and the racial and ethnic boundaries that undergirded colonial society. In consequence, historical memories of Radio-Algiers and its role during the waning years of the French empire deny the sonic cultural hybridity that flourished over the interwar airwaves.     

Pride and Challenges for Information Management Through the Centuries: The Online Version of the Jagiellonian Library Old Catalog (Up to 1949)

The article discusses the Jagiellonian Library's scanned version of its catalog of books published up to 1949. This case study analyzes the issue of information management in light of the history of the catalog from 1802 onwards and the process of making the catalog accessible via the Internet. It examines the consequences of the decision to scan the catalog on the various library departments' current procedures, as well as on library users.     

Conference Report: Seventh IUdin Readings,Krasnoiarsk, Siberia,October 9–12, 2012

The article describes a conference held in Krasnoiarsk, Siberia, Russia, October 9–12, 2012, devoted to Russian bibliography, book studies, and the library collections of Gennadii Vasil'evich IUdin (1840–1912).     

Bibliographical Projects in Polish-Jewish Studies Since 1989

SUMMARY

Over the last two decades, interest in the field of Polish-Jewish studies has grown, in Poland as well as in North America, Western Europe, and Israel. One aspect of this is that bibliographic projects have begun, with the goal of tracking and making generally available information about publications in this field. This article describes in particular the ongoing project that the author manages with the Israeli journal Gal-Ed: On the History of the Jews in Poland, which includes plans to make available as an online resource the information in the printed installments of the bibliography.     

Chat Reference at Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

Carnegie Mellon University Libraries began its chat reference service in October of 2000. The article explains why library administrators decided to institute chat reference and the steps taken to implement this decision. The Libraries utilize commercial off-the-shelf software called LivePerson. Service evaluation features of LivePerson provide interesting data for analysis. Summary statistics of the service and the cumulative results of post chat surveys (filled out by chat patrons on a voluntary basis) are presented. Plans for future enhancements of the chat reference service are discussed.     

“You Don't Play,You Volunteer”: Narrative Public Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Narrative and ludological analysis suggests that Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor: Rising Sun constructs a narrative of World War II that selectively retells history and constructs an Orientalist representation of the Japanese Empire. The gaming environment exists as an interactive museum that immerses gamers into history so that they experience warfare in their homes. Combining newsreels, fictional letters from home, and interviews with veterans of the “Good War,” Medal of Honor: Rising Sun retells a history that omits details of Japanese internment or atomic weapons. The intertwined themes of personal revenge for the loss of a family member and historical revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor guide gamers through an “educational” experience of the war. Finally, its failure to simulate violence means that Medal of Honor: Rising Sun invites a critical blindness to commemorating war.     

Reflecting the Census

Abstract

This article discusses ongoing changes and future challenges in collecting multi-ethnic and multi-cultural archival materials, as viewed in the context of several collecting projects undertaken by the former Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia.     

Encoded Archival Description: Are Finding Aids Boundary Spanners or Barriers for Users?

ABSTRACT

The article reports the results of a usability study of an EAD interface. Findings indicate that subjects had trouble understanding archival terminology and how best to search for information in finding aids. Furthermore, they were not familiar with the structure or contents of finding aids. In addition to building interfaces that minimize archival jargon and rely heavily on users' prior understanding of hierarchical finding aids, this study indicates that users require new forms of virtual reference assistance in the online environment.     

Describing Anything That Walks

ABSTRACT

Anchored on the Vietnamese American Project (VAP), this essay presents the documentation of the Vietnamese American Experience through the voices of ethnic Vietnamese in Orange County, California, home to the largest concentration of this ethnic group outside Vietnam. Groundbreaking in its approach and method, VAP is an open forum that enables community assessment, self education, public memory preservation, and the first step toward understanding Vietnamese America and the Vietnamese diaspora. The cross-sectional narratives encompass transcontinental accounts of first and 1.5 generations of Vietnamese refugees and their children, and subsequently focus on their coming to terms with their second home in America, dwelling on how ethnic Vietnamese have negotiated with political turmoil, socioeconomic changes, and cultural identity. The paper, as the VAP, bridges cultural and linguistic barriers, connecting the native land and the adopted country. In short, the paper through its synthesis of the VAP: (1) gives a timely response to the urgent needs to understand and study the ethnic Vietnamese community in Orange County, providing much-needed primary data on the respective population for the ethnic communities and interdisciplinary scholarship; (2) serves as a healing process for members of the Vietnamese American community in Orange County and other victims of war; (3) sheds light onto intra- and inter-ethnic relations, fostering community consolidation, forging cross-cultural collaborations, and nurturing racial harmony; (4) contributes to an important period in American history with perspectives that are lacking in the extant literature; and (5) will conduce peace by bringing out the human experience in America's longest war.