美国“阿富巴”新战略及对我国西部安全局势的影响

奥巴马政府上台后,突出“巧实力”外交理念,以“倾听”和“接触”为基调,突出务实和灵活．并以打击恐怖势力为名,实施“阿富巴”新战略,这一战略的实施,正是美国在“巧实力”战略之下为完善对南亚地区的钳制性控制,推动对该地区的主流性控制的新战略谋划,将对中亚、中南亚地缘战略格局产生重大影响,并对我西部安全带来新的挑战。     

Anatomy education faces challenges in Pakistan

Anatomy education in Pakistan is facing many of the same challenges as in other parts of the world. Roughly, a decade ago, all medical and dental colleges in Pakistan emphasized anatomy as a core basic discipline within a traditional medical science curriculum. Now institutions are adopting problem based learning (PBL) teaching philosophies, and since medical colleges in Pakistan first introduced PBL curricula that expose the basic sciences primarily in clinical contexts, the methods and extent of anatomy teaching have been topics of much debate. Many claim that PBL curricula dilute basic science education, especially anatomy. At the same time, classically trained faculty members with PhD in anatomy have become nearly extinct in Pakistan, with only four working in country. A third challenge currently facing anatomy education in Pakistan, as in many parts of the world, is an unavailability of cadavers for dissection. As more institutions adopt PBL curricula, as PhD anatomists are harder to find, and as cadavers for dissection become scarce, Pakistan and other countries around the world will have to seriously consider how they will sustain adequate anatomy education. Anat Sci Educ 2:193–194, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

巴以和平进程的历史回顾与思考

巴以冲突由来以久,这当中既牵涉到土地和经济利益问题,又有历史、文化和宗教诸方面的因素。以巴冲突表面上是以色列和巴勒斯坦之间的地区冲突,但其对中东地区乃至全世界的影响却非常深远。本文通过对以巴和平进程的历史回顾,指出以巴和平道路虽然问题纠葛,困难重重,但是和平终究会到来。巴勒斯坦人应当有其生存和建国的权利,但是巴勒斯坦的建国应当在联合国的协议框架内通过和平的方式实现。巴以双方应本着和平的愿望在充分认识历史和现实、充分认识双方实力的基础上真正进行和平谈判,在联合国的监督下实现和平共存。     

Changing Strategies for Information Delivery: Theory into Practice

ABSTRACT

Many events over the past decade have jeopardized the library's ability to fulfill its basic mission resulting in a shift of information delivery paradigms. Interlibrary loan, document delivery and resource sharing have become essential rather than peripheral and funding patterns are reflecting this philosophical shift. There is renewed interest in cooperative collection development and multiple options for meshing document delivery with an existing ILL program. Within this environment under a redefined mission statement, the Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, addresses these shifting paradigms and has implemented a program to meet the information needs of its patrons.     

Library Anxiety and Emotion Perception Among the Undergraduate Social Sciences Students: A Relationship Study

ABSTRACT

Previous research has mostly focused on the demographic and academic correlates of library anxiety. This study focused on the “library anxiety” and “emotion perception” of students, with the objective of examining the relationship between these two concepts. In total, 279 self-reporting questionnaires were used for analysis. The results confirmed the existence of the phenomenon of library anxiety, with these students being more anxious regarding the “user education” and “user knowledge” factors. They showed greater skills of emotion perception. A negatively significant relationship appeared between library anxiety and emotion perception. The results suggest that user education and emotion perception training programs should be developed to overcome students' problems.     

Pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ experiences and attitudes toward using social networking sites for collaborative learning

Extensive use of social networking sites by students and teachers makes educators and researchers to think whether they can be incorporated in instructional process to facilitate students’ learning. This survey-based study records and examines Pakistani pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ current uses of Facebook, and their attitudes toward using Facebook for collaborative learning, and to see if there is a significant relationship between participants’ intensity of Facebook use and their attitude toward instructional use of Facebook. Results of the study indicated that pre-service teachers’ and teacher-educators’ motives for their current Facebook use are mainly limited for social purposes. Pre-service teachers’ use of Facebook is more intensified than the use of Facebook by teacher-educators. Further, pre-service teachers showed more positive attitudes toward using Facebook for collaborative learning than the attitudes of their faculty. Findings also indicated a positive relationship between participants’ Facebook intensity and their attitudes toward its use for collaborative learning.     

Gender representation in the public sector schools textbooks of Pakistan

This paper examines gender biases in school textbooks after a decade long effort by the ministry of education (MoE) Pakistan and international organisation (IOs) to eliminate all forms of gender inequality in education. The intention underpinning these initiatives was to nurture a view of gender equality based consciousness through the introduction of more positive gendered images into school textbooks in Pakistan. However, the study discussed in this paper discovered that schools textbooks are still embedded with gender-biased messages and stereotypical representations of male and females. Gender biases in 24 textbooks (Urdu, English and Social Studies) from class 1 to 8 were analysed with the help of a qualitative content analysis approach. The paper draws attention to the insouciant approach taken by the MoE and IOs towards the goal of gender equality. The study found that, despite the prevailing claims of achievements, the new textbooks are ideologically invested – and contribute to the perpetuation of gender inequality. In this context, the gender blindness of the curriculum designers and textbook authors is a matter of serious concern.     

Millennials’ Reading Behavior in the Digital Age: A Case Study of Pakistani University Students

Abstract

This article uncovers the reading trends of Millennials living in Pakistan by investigating their reading behavior within the digital paradigm. A cross-sectional survey-based quantitative research design was adopted. Masters students (16?years education) from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) recognized universities of Lahore, Pakistan was the study population. A total of 515 masters’ level students from 7 universities participated in the survey. The participants were recruited by employing a two-stage stratified purposive total population sampling technique. The study findings confirmed that despite their preferences for print material, Millennials were using electronic material for reading more frequently. However, the study showed that the reading purpose influences the choice of the reading format. Furthermore, the availability of electronic reading content in the public domain and open access contents may be a reason for increased use of e-content, as free websites were the preferred method of millennials for obtaining reading material. Social networking websites and intelligent search engines like “Google” were also in use and play a role in finding the relevant information and reading e-content. The study shows that the digital environment has a significant impact on the reading behavior of individuals, a fact which needs to be considered by academics, practitioners, and the individuals themselves. It is considered a baseline study that opens various potential directions and avenues for future research.     

Emotions Management Skills and Barriers with Library Staff: A Correlational Survey of Agriculture Students

The literature has identified barriers with library staff as one of the important barriers affecting academic activities of students and also recognized the relationship of various academic and demographic characteristics of students with it. The emotions management skills of students may be one of the possible correlates of the barriers with library staff. This study was designed to investigate the levels of barriers with library staff and emotions management skills as well as their possible correlation using two standardized scales. The data were collected from the final year undergraduate agriculture students. The results confirmed the existence of barriers with library staff among the participants of both genders experiencing the same level of anxiety. The participants scored 3.75 (average) on the emotions management scale. The results also revealed significantly negative correlation between emotions management skills and barriers with library staff among these students. These results have many practical implications in the sphere of academic librarianship.     

Managing the Personnel in University Libraries: A Developing Country Perspective

Let's face it, these days leading and managing a library workforce is a complex task, as many competing factors influence the values, behaviors, and culture of library workplaces. This feature column, written by Nosheen Fatima Warraich and Kanwai Ameen, focuses on academic libraries in Pakistan, as the workplace setting; but the research also has implication for the management of library human resources in other contexts and in other countries.

Reading this contribution caused me to think about the issues relating to human resource management in a broader global context. This article is a timely reminder that library workplaces are pretty much the same across the world—something I was reminded of recently when I spent some time at an academic library in Malaysia. Local context and issues are important in any consideration of library human resource challenges and opportunities with local factors (such as enterprise agreements, workforce composition, etc.) never far from the focus of library leaders. However, leaving aside local context, library workplaces are also impacted by global factors (including information and communications technologies, global economic conditions, etc.). More so than ever before, the challenges and opportunities playing out when it comes to leadership and management of library human resources, have many things in common. This feature column highlights this point well as it brings a nice mix of applied research and professional practice experience. Based on some large scale research, its findings may be helpful to library leaders in contexts beyond Pakistan.

I am pleased to feature this contribution to help highlight the global nature of our practice of professional skills in librarianship and the leadership of library human resources. As always, I invite contributions to the column on topics broadly addressing themes or issues for library workers throughout their career lifecycle. Please submit articles for this column to the editor at vicki.williamson@usask.ca. Please mark the subject line of your submission “IILR contribution.”