Chinese Studies Librarianship in North America

Although American libraries had begun collecting Chinese language materials in the 19th century, notably the United States Library of Congress in 1869, Yale in 1878, Harvard in 1879, and Berkeley in 1896, East Asian studies librarianship in North America, including China studies librarianship, was not fully developed until the 1960s. There was no formal organization that represented the interest of Chinese studies librarians because there were few of them and most of them were China scholars rather than trained librarians. More than 100 years later, the number of Chinese studies librarians in North America has increased considerably, primarily in response to the demand in the field of China studies and more recently to the needs of immigrant population and the general public who has an interest in China.This paper traces the history and growth of Chinese studies librarianship in North America, documents the development of the professional organization that represents Chinese studies librarians, and exami.     

参加第71届国际图联大会综述

论文记录了第71届国际图联大会的概况，并对大会的学术特点以及中国代表团在大会的活动作了较全面的介绍。     

The Human Rights Approach to Education in International Organisations

In this article, the work of three international governmental organisations (IGOs) dealing with human rights will be discussed, namely the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)¹ and the Council of Europe (CoE). In the first section, the main characteristics of the three IGOs in terms of similarities and differences will be elaborated. Then, their human rights approach to education will be described, dealing with the legal foundations. In the final section, the different strategies of implementation based on both their official mission statements and their present strategy papers will be evaluated under the heading ‘competition vs. cooperation’.     

马歇尔计划赴美考察队与美国企业文化在英国的传播

马歇尔计划并不仅仅限于以促进自由贸易和恢复生产为核心的经济援助,它的主管机构经济合作署还十分重视以美国企业文化影响欧洲企业的经营方式。经济合作署资助大量英国生产考察队赴美国企业实地观察,这些专业考察队在对美国相关部门先进的生产和管理方式有了一定了解后,通过发布考察队报告、举办论坛等方式向本国传播美国的生产技术和管理模式。经济合作署实际上是希望通过这些考察队来展示美国的生产技术、管理经验和经营理念,并采用美国经验来解决西欧企业生产中面临的问题。可是,美国的生产方式和管理经验并不一定具有普世性,在推行上难以达到所期望的目标。     

Educational Research for Policy and Practice in Japan – With Particular Reference to Youth Education

Based upon the Fundamental Law of Education, Japanese school education system has long been a source of pride for the country as a result of the high school participation rate, the homogeneity of compulsory education throughout the country. However, the confidence of the people in its schools is now showing severe signs of strain and fatigue. In recent years, there have been many reports about the growing seriousness of a number of educational problems having to do with young people in their childhood and adolescence. Since the mid-1970s, a number of problems have been highlighted. They include violent behavior, juvenile crimes, bullying, refusal to attend school, dropping out at secondary level of education, and corporal punishment. Against the above background, based on recommendations from such advisory bodies as the Central Council for Education and the National Commission on Education Reform, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has adopted a range of policies and launched a series of educational reform programmes. For instance, what is called “Rainbow Plan”, based on the final report submitted by the National Commission on Education Reform, provides the country with basic guidelines for the educational reform in the near future. Roles of educational research for making policies have been of significance. Research initiated by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER) and the National Federation of Educational Policy Research Institutes (NFERI) is an example of contributions to the development of educational qualities in the country. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

中华全国基督教协进会与抗战时期难童救济

抗战时期,难童作为一个特殊的群体引起了上至国民政府,下至各种民间组织的积极关注,难童救济逐渐展开。中华全国基督教协进会作为一个在华各差会的协调机构,发起全国四十余城的战时难童救济事工,成为各种难童救济组织中一股特殊的力量,也是其在华慈善事业的一个重要组成部分。     

Describing students of the African Diaspora: Understanding micro and meso level science learning as gateways to standards based discourse

In much of the educational literature, researchers make little distinction between African-American students and students of the African Diaspora who immigrated to the United States. Failing to describe these salient student differences serves to perpetuate an inaccurate view of African-American school life. In today’s large cities, students of the African Diaspora are frequently learning science in settings that are devoid of the resources and tools to fully support their success. While much of the scholarship unites these disparate groups, this article details the distinctive learning culture created when students from several groups of the African Diaspora learn biology together in a Brooklyn Suspension Center. Specifically this work explains how one student, Gabriel, functions in a biology class. A self-described black-Panamanian, Gabriel had tacitly resigned to not learning science, which then, in effect, precluded him from any further associated courses of study in science, and may have excluded him from the possibility of a science related career. This ethnography follows Gabriel’s science learning as he engaged in cogenerative dialogue with teachers to create aligned learning and teaching practices. During the 5 months of this research, Gabriel drew upon his unique lifeworld and the depth of his hybridized cultural identity to produce limited, but nonetheless important demonstrations of science. Coexistent with his involvement in cogenerative dialogue, Gabriel helped to construct many classroom practices that supported a dynamic learning environment which produced small yet concrete examples of standards based biology. This study supports further investigation by the science education community to consider ways that students’ lifeworld experiences can serve to structure and transform the urban science classroom.

Searching strategies for the Hungarian language

This paper reports on the underlying IR problems encountered when dealing with the complex morphology and compound constructions found in the Hungarian language. It describes evaluations carried out on two general stemming strategies for this language, and also demonstrates that a light stemming approach could be quite effective. Based on searches done on the CLEF test collection, we find that a more aggressive suffix-stripping approach may produce better MAP. When compared to an IR scheme without stemming or one based on only a light stemmer, we find the differences to be statistically significant. When compared with probabilistic, vector-space and language models, we find that the Okapi model results in the best retrieval effectiveness. The resulting MAP is found to be about 35% better than the classical tf idf approach, particularly for very short requests. Finally, we demonstrate that applying an automatic decompounding procedure for both queries and documents significantly improves IR performance (+10%), compared to word-based indexing strategies.     

Between Tradition and Change: Hunting as Metaphor and Symbol in State Socialist Hungary

Through the historic metaphor of hunting the essay examines the lifestyle of the dominant elites of Hungary between 1945 and 1990 on the basis of archival documents, private records, and oral history interviews. The analysis emphasizes the fact that there were interactions between the old, prewar aristocracy and the new state socialist elites. The co-incidence of lifestyles can be viewed through the lens of social and cultural change: new elements hit against the old, shaping and dissolving old behavioural patterns. The article analyses hunting in the contexts of social differentiation and social grouping. Using semiotics the author shows how, even during the era of state socialism, power and social distinctions were articulated on the level of lifestyles, and transmitted via the social, semiotic function of behaviours, patterns of taste, and forms of interaction. Thus, hunting evolved into a metaphor over time in Hungary: it was not only an indispensable part of the everyday life of the elite, but also became a symbol for belonging to it.     

Minority Cultures and Social Media: Magnifying Garifuna

This paper looks at social media use by the Garifuna people. It explores how they are using social media to create a supraterritorial cyberscape. Despite the claim that global media is marginalising minority cultures and causing global homogenisation, this research found that newer forms of social media are in fact creating virtual cultural cyberscapes that are extending minority cultures. The Garifuna cultural response to social media can be demonstrative of the positive impact of social media minority perspectives. The larger implication, though, is that traditional geographical models of cultural space are becoming obsolete. In this research, a total of 60 Garifuna in locations all across the United States and Honduras were selected for participation. Their access to and use of media were examined.