Digital Commons Network^™

Surveys Of Calling Amphibians In North Dakota, Douglas H. Johnson, Ronald D. Batie

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Amphibians have received increased attention in recent years from the scientific community and general public alike. Many populations throughout the world have declined or have been extirpated, often without an apparent cause. Concern about the status of amphibians has translated into a growing interest in systematic and statistically sound monitoring programs. Several extensive efforts to monitor populations of calling amphibians are in place, and more are under development. Necessary for the design of appropriate surveys is an understanding of the behavior, especially vocalization, of the various species, and how it varies by geographic location and environmental conditions. In 1995 we …

The Center For Agri-Food Industrial Organization & Policy: Scholarly Economic Research For A Changing Agri-Food Industry, Azzeddine Azzam

Cornhusker Economics

The Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is now the home of the Center of Agri-Food Industrial Organization & Policy. Founded in June 2001, the Center pools the research expertise of 5 scholars from the Department of Agricultural Economics and the Department of Economics to address in a timely and scientific manner agri-food industrial organization & policy issues of vital interest to the agricultural economy of the State of Nebraska, to disseminate research results to the public, and to train students and interested citizens in the economics of the food supply chain that links input suppliers, farmers, …

Libraries Across The Curriculum: A Collaborative Model For The Strategic Delivery Of Information, Signe Swanson, Tracy Bicknell-Holmes

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Conference Presentations and Speeches

No abstract provided.

Nebraska’S Rural Population: Is The Glass Half Empty Or Half Full?, Sam Cordes, Randolph L. Cantrell

Cornhusker Economics

Those interested and concerned about rural Nebraska often focus on population data. In recent months, the media have been very active in focusing on this issue, largely because of the release of the 2000 U. S. Census numbers. For the most part, media reports and analysis have painted a fairly bleak picture of what happened in rural Nebraska during the decade of the 1990s. In this short article we summarize how the recent Census data can be used to paint such a bleak picture and refer to this as “the glass is half empty” story. We then provide an alternative …

Building A Magnet School Network In Rural Communities, Linda Moody, Susan Fritz, Lloyd C. Bell, Valerie Egger

Nebraska Network 21: Publications

Maintaining rural community economic viability, schools, and retaining youth are concerns for many rural areas. The current population shift from rural to urban areas is compounding the issue. One means of keeping young people and adults in rural communities and encouraging people to move from urban to rural communities is to provide high quality, relevant, affordable educational programs on demand. The Mead Agricultural Sciences Magnet School, the first rural magnet school, was created to fill such a void. Now in its third year of operation, the rural agricultural sciences magnet school concept is being incorporated into three other communities.

The …

Internalization Of Character Traits By Those Who Teach Character Counts!, Kristyn Harms, Susan Fritz

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

Increased character education is one alternative available to help what many see as the mayhem of moral decline in America. Research suggests a correlation between the teaching of character education of youth and its positive ethical results throughout the United States. While these findings demonstrate positive changes experienced by youth audiences, no research to date has been conducted on the effects that teaching Character Counts! has on those teaching the program. The research project reported here examined Character Counts! Program's impact on Cooperative Extension and on the personal and societal lives of Extension educators and assistants. In a recent survey …

Community Options For Wellhead Protection Areas, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

The Wellhead Protection Area Act (WHPA Act) was adopted in 1998. The WHPA Act authorizes public water suppliers (primarily cities and villages) to designate wellhead protection areas (WHPAs) to protect community water supplies from pollution.

Under the Nebraska Safe Drinking Water Quality Act, the quality of water provided by public water supply systems is regulated by the Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services. If a community’s water violates drinking water standards, the community can operate only under NDHHS administrative order until the violations are corrected. Nitrate is Nebraska’s most widespread groundwater contaminant. If a community’s water exceeds the 10 …

The Impact Of Publicly Funded Research On The Structure Of U.S. Agriculture, Jeffrey S. Royer

Cornhusker Economics

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the concentration of agricultural production in the United States as the number of farming and ranching operations has declined and the average size of those operations has grown. This increased concentration has been accompanied by increased coordination of production and marketing activities through contracting, consolidation and vertical integration. Although independent family farms and ranches have been responsible for most of the nation’s agricultural production historically, small and medium-sized operations are finding it difficult to compete in today’s increasingly industrialized food and agricultural sector.

November 2001 - Staff Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

How Is Your Information System?, Roger Selley

Cornhusker Economics

As the current year ends it is again time to assess the past year, evaluate the health of the business and begin making decisions for the next year. If there are some records you need but haven’t started, the next best thing is to start now. After you satisfy the IRS and your creditors, what is the next priority in your record keeping? One place to start in identifying record keeping priorities is to list the decisions you want to support and the data needed. Another would be to list your goals and the data needed to monitor progress towards …

The Hybrid Librarian: The Affinity Of Collection Management With Technical Services And The Organizational Benefits Of An Individualized Assignment, Gail Z. Eckwright, Mary K. Bolin

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Collection management and technical services have a natural affinity that is not reflected in the organization of many academic libraries, where subject librarians are often aligned with reference. This article examines organizational and individual approaches to librarian assignment, along with the place of collection management in the organization.

Libraries are organized to provide service. The division of functions is designed to acquire materials, provide intellectual access to them, house and circulate them, and assist library users in finding information. The assignment of responsibility to librarians follows this organizational pattern. Specialties, positions, and job descriptions generally reflect a functional or departmental …

Bending The Rules Of “Professional” Display: Emotional Improvisation In Caregiver Performances, Jayne M. Morgan, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Organizational norms of emotional expression are open to negotiation through improvised performances, as employees may bend or break emotion rules to gain more leeway in expressiveness and participate in the development of their own role identities in the workplace. In this ethnographic study, a dramaturgical perspective is used to analyze the processes and outcomes of emotional improvisation as observed among nurses, technicians, and physicians in a cardiac care center. It was found that the emphasis on maintaining a “professional” appearance in caregiving largely constrains actors to perform along their scripted roles. Results are discussed in terms of practical implications for …

Deviant Behavior And Victimization Among Homeless And Runaway Adolescents, Les B. Whitbeck, Dan R. Hoyt, Kevin A. Yoder, Ana Mari Cauce, Matt Paradise

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This study used a high-risk population of runaway and homeless adolescents to investigate the effects of history of caretaker abuse and deviant subsistence strategies on victimization among adolescents. Based on a multisite sample of 974 homeless and runaway adolescents, logistic regression models were used first to examine factors predicting involvement in sexual and nonsexual deviant subsistence strategies and then to investigate the effects of deviant subsistence strategies on physical and sexual victimization when adolescents were on the streets. Results indicated that when controlling for all other factors, including histories of physical and sexual maltreatment in families of origin, street behaviors, …

Conservation More Important Than Ever In Farm Bill, Roy Frederick

Cornhusker Economics

When a new farm bill is signed into law, conservation provisions are likely to vie with commodity supports for top billing. After more than twenty such laws, this may be a first. Soil conservation has been a part of farm bills since passage of the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. However, not until passage of the Food Security Act of 1985 were wetlands, water quality, wildlife habitat and other natural resource issues addressed. Each subsequent farm bill has added one or more new conservation initiatives. The new legislation almost certainly will continue that pattern.

September 11th And Agricultural Trade, H. Douglas Jose

Cornhusker Economics

September 11th caused us to think about our place in the world community, the freedoms we take for granted and the lifestyle we have enjoyed, particularly in the buoyant economic times in the post World War II period. But we may not have brought the impact on agriculture into our reflections of the September 11th events, and how we interact in this world community.

Trade is essential to the U.S. agricultural sector, with earnings from U.S. exports accounting for 20 to 30 percent of total farm income. The productivity of U.S. agriculture has grown faster than our domestic demand, requiring …

Conference Connections: A Great Way To Get Involved!, Charity K. Martin

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The purpose of the New Members Round Table is to help new librarians and other library workers make contact with people in the library profession. So, we are very excited about our new project called Conference Connections. The first annual Conference Connections festivities will kick off this year at the NLNNEMA annual convention in Kearney, October 17-19. We have activities scheduled for people who are new to NLA. Even those who have been to the conference many times are welcome to participate!

October 2001 - Staff Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Rights For Agricultural Biotechnology: Piracy And Its Ramifications For U.S. Agriculture, Konstantinos Giannakas

Cornhusker Economics

Parallel revolutions in molecular biology and the legal framework that assigns intellectual property rights (IPRs) to plant genetic resources have resulted in the emergence of agricultural biotechnology and the introduction of genetically modified (GM) products into the food system. IPRs create economic incentives for research and development by making the innovator the residual claimant of the benefits associated with the new technology.

Introduction To Public Trust And Confidence In The Courts, David B. Rottman, Alan Tomkins

Alan Tomkins Publications

This special issue is fortunate in its timing. The topic of public perceptions of the courts is having a rare moment in the limelight thanks to the drama of Florida’s ballots and what can count as a vote (or what opportunities there are for recounting ballots) in the U.S. Presidential election. The outcome of the political election seemed to rest on successive decisions by the judicial system: in particular, Florida’s trial and appellate courts, the federal court of appeals, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court. Each of these courts addressed the propriety of electoral ballot counts for Presidential candidates in …

Cash - Where It Comes From, Where It Goes, Larry L. Bitney

Cornhusker Economics

The Statement of Cash Flows is an important financial statement for the farm or ranch business manager. While an accrual income statement explains the difference in net worth from one balance sheet to the next, the statement of cash flows explains the difference in cash and cash equivalents from one balance sheet to the next.

Review Of Happy As A Big Sunflower: Adventures In The West, 1876-1880. By Rolf Johnson., H. Arnold Barton

Great Plains Quarterly

In December 1876, Rolf Johnson, the twenty-year-old son of the Swedish immigrant parents in Henderson Grove, Illinois, began writing a diary he would continue until it ended without explanation four years later in Cubero, New Mexico. In March 1876, the family moved, with other Swedish settlers from Knox County, Illinois, out to Phelps County, Nebraska. Rolf recounts the excitement and hardships of pioneering of the Plains, including plagues of grasshoppers, prairie fires, lawlessness, and Indian unrest. But he also tells of courage, neighborliness, and community building. He works the harvests in eastern Nebraska and hunts buffalo to the west.

Review Of The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Journal By Stephen R. Jones, Ron Block

Great Plains Quarterly

In The Last Prairie: A Sandhills Joumal, naturalist Stephen R. Jones provides an informed and passionate portrait of the Sandhills of western Nebraska, "the last remaining relic of the boundless grasslands that once extended from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains." These grass-fixed sand dunes have not only provided Jones with his subject but also a style, since these twenty essays are as graceful, diverse, and startling in their transitions as the Sandhills themselves.

A representative essay may begin in first person, emphasizing the sensual complexity of directly experiencing the Sandhills. But then by subtle shifts and turns, …

Review Of Cowboys, Gentlemen And Cattle Thieves By Warren M. Elofson, Patrick A. Dunae

Great Plains Quarterly

This book focuses on the golden age of the ranching industry in western Canada from the early 1880s to the early 1900s. During that period large ranches were established in what is now southwestern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta, many of them owned by wealthy investors in England and eastern Canada; some of the spreads were managed by graduates of prestigious agricultural colleges. The owners, the managers and their families, and the cowboys they employed comprised a community that was cultured, conservative, and generally law-abiding.

Warren Elofson doesn't see it that way. He argues that the ranching frontier in the Canadian …

Review Of Cowboys, Ranchers And The Cattle Business: Cross-Border Perspectives On Ranching History Edited By Simon Evans, Sarah Carter, And Bill Yeo, Paul Voisey

Great Plains Quarterly

This collection presents a selection of papers delivered at the Canadian Cowboy Conference held in Calgary, Alberta, in 1997 in conjunction with the Glenbow Museum's "Canadian Cowboy Exhibition." The subtitle indicates the main theme, but American readers should note that all of the authors focus on ranching north of the border, and particularly on southern Alberta. They present new research from that frontier and compare it to the existing literature in the United States. The main purpose of their efforts, however, is to challenge the traditional vision of Canadian ranching first articulated by Lewis G. Thomas and refined by such …

"We Anishinaabeg Are The Keepers Of The Names Of The Earth" Louise Erdrich's Great Plains, P. Jane Hafen

Great Plains Quarterly

With these words, Louise Erdrich sets forth her own manifesto for writing about her place. A Native of the Northern Plains, Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa nation. In a stunning production of seven novels, six with interwoven tales and characters, two poetry collections, a memoir, and two coauthored books, Erdrich has created a vision of the Great Plains that spans the horizon of time and space and ontologically defines the people of her heritage.

ERDRICH'S NORTH DAKOTA

The literary impact is remarkable. Louise Erdrich's North Dakota cycle of novels includes the award-winning Love Medicine (1984), The …

Title And Contents- Fall 2001

Great Plains Quarterly

Great Plains Quarterly

Volume 21/ Number 4 / Fall 2001

Contents

FIVE VOICES ONE PLACE: AN INTRODUCTION Susan J. Rosowski and John R. Wunder

LAND, JUSTICE, AND ANGIE DEBO: TELLING THE TRUTH TO - AND ABOUT - YOUR NEIGHBORS Patricia Nelson Limerick

THE EARTH SAYS HAVE A PLACE: WILLIAM STAFFORD AND A PLACE OF LANGUAGE Thomas Fox Averill

"NO PLACE TO HIDE": WRIGHT MORRIS'S GREAT PLAINS Joseph J. Wydeven

FROM FEIKEMA TO MANFRED, FROM THE BIG SIOUX BASIN TO THE NORTHERN PLAINS Arthur R. Huseboe

"WE ANISHINAABEG ARE THE KEEPERS OF THE NAMES OF THE EARTH": LOUISE ERDRICH'S GREAT PLAINS …

A Conversation With Jane Smiley, Jonis Agee

Great Plains Quarterly

JANE SMILEY: LOCATION AND A GEOGRAPHER OF LOVE

In her essay on place, Eudora Welty points out that "Henry James once said there isn't any difference between 'the English novel' and 'the American novel,' since there are only two kinds of novels at all: the good and the bad." Then Welty responds to him stating that for good novels "fiction is all bound up in the local. The internal reason for that is surely that feelings are bound up in place .... The truth is, fiction depends for its life on place. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving …

Review Of The Limits Of Multiculturalism: Interrogating The Origins Of American Anthropology By Scott Michaelsen, Nathan E. Bender

Great Plains Quarterly

Multicultural perspectives in American anthropology are not new but have been present since its inception. Michaelsen examines the origins of North American anthropology as a scholarly discipline in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the participation in it of American Indian writers and scholars. This interesting circuit through the history of anthropology reviews much current research along the way. Rather than offering a final summary of the points of each chapter in order to make a concluding case for the "limits of multiculturalism," Michaelsen uses his first chapter to lay the theoretical groundwork for his arguments and then presents the …

Review Of Reclaiming Indigenous Voice And Vision Edited By Marie Battiste, Dennis Martinez

Great Plains Quarterly

The eighteen essays collected in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision provide, finally and in one volume, a substantive and reasonably comprehensive analysis by the first generation of Indigenous scholars of the present and future role of Indigenous Knowledge and the emerging Indigenous cultural renaissance in the global context of neocolonial Western culture and science. The book springs from an International Summer Institute at the University of Saskatchewan on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples held in 1996 and attended by mostly Indigenous scholars from Canada, the US, India, and New Zealand.

This is not yet another book, produced by …

Review Of Some Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys: A Collection Of Articles And Essays By John R. Erickson, Michael C. Coleman

Great Plains Quarterly

"My interest in ranch life is probably genetic," writes Western author and ex-cowboy John R. Erickson. "My mother's people were Texas frontiersmen, ranchers, and cowboys back to 1858." Although the present reviewer grew up in Dublin (Ireland, not Texas), my interest is also genetic, as my movie-loving father filled me with stories of the West. He would have enjoyed Erickso1!'s little book, as did I.

The organization is thematic, with sections containing short essays and articles on people, place, climate (terrible!), animals, cowboys, ranch, rodeo, and tools (saddles and boots- in Catch Rope [1994] Erickson examined roping). While based heavily …