Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Uconn Libraries Newsletter

UConn Libraries Newsletter

2 Vice Provost notes exciting things happening on campus and in the Libraries.

3 New computer technology provides remote access to the Libraries' licensed software, anytime, anywhere.

4 Billie Levy receives NCLC Distinguished Service Award.

5 Staff member David Avery recognized as academic mentor.

6 New fund launched for UConn authors who publish in open access journals.

7 Kindertransport through the eyes of survivors and Archives & Special Collections.

8 Library events captured in photos.

9 Dodd Prize awarded to human rights litigation experts.

10 New staff and anniversaries.

11 A remembrance of preservationist Jan Merrill-Oldham.

12 Current art exhibits.

Recent Work On Archival Color Spaces, Robert Buckley, Steven T. Puglia, Michael Stelmach, F. Barry Wheeler, Michael J. Bennett, Lei He

UConn Library Presentations

Abstract, printed and published separately from presentation by ISCC/IS&T/SID, can be found in electronic format at: http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/libr_pubs/41/

Abstract To The Presentation: Recent Work On Archival Color Spaces, Robert Buckley, Steven T. Puglia, Michael Stelmach, F. Barry Wheeler, Michael J. Bennett, Lei He

Published Works

No abstract provided.

Installing And Evaluating Audit Control Environment’S (Ace) Audit Manager V1.6, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

Outlines steps toward the successful installation of Audit Control Environment's (ACE) Audit Manager for scalable use in ensuring the bit-level integrity of files in large digital repositories.

Engendering Haiti’S Reconstruction: The Legal And Economic Case For Mainstreaming Women In Post-Disaster Programming

Research Papers

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake of devastating magnitude shook Haiti, killing over 250,000, reducing much of the country’s infrastructure to rubble—including its government—and leaving millions of people without homes and livelihoods. As Haiti lurches toward an era of rebuilding and renewal, the ways in which priorities are set and resources spent can either accelerate the rate at which Haitians are able to emerge from poverty and achieve economic development—or they can substantially inhibit the country’s path toward recovery. One of the most critical factors that will determine which path Haiti takes is the extent to which gender concerns are …

Affiliation Goals And Health Behaviors, Jerry Cullum, Megan O’Grady, Howard A. Tennen

UCHC Articles - Research

People are inherently driven by the need to form and maintain relationships, and these affiliation goals can influence health behaviors in two ways: (a) indirectly, by increasing a person’s attention to others and subsequently leaving them more likely to emulate the health behaviors of others (social contagion); (b) directly, by leading people to be more likely to engage in health behaviors they perceive as helping them to form and maintain relationships with others (self-initiated behavioral engagement). In this review, we discuss the evidence for the catalyzing role of affiliation goals in these two processes for a variety of positive (e.g., …

Galantamine-Induced Tremulous Jaw Movements In Rats: Reversal With Adenosine A2a Antagonists, Chelsea Elizabeth Leser

Honors Scholar Theses

Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurdegenerative disorder, affecting millions of people worldwide. The underlying etiology of Alzheimer's disease, however, is such that treatment is difficult.

Researchers have linked a decrease in the transmission of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to the cognitive deficits seen in Alzheimer's disease. Recent drug therapies have focused on using drugs that block the action of the enzyme, acetylcholinesterase, that breaks down acetylcholine. However, these drugs, known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, have been found to produce side effects that have the same characteristics as Parkinson's disease, the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. In this study, the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, …

Bioindicator-Based Stated Preference Valuation For Aquatic Habitat And Ecosystem Service Restoration, Robert J. Johnston, Eric T. Schultz, Kathleen Segerson, Elena Y. Besedin

EEB Articles

No abstract provided.

Accurate Color? A Preliminary Investigation Into The Color Gamut Of Selected Special Collection Library Objects, F. Barry Wheeler, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

As cultural institutions continue to digitize their collections’ objects, millions of images now exist in TIFF, JPEG, and JPEG 2000 color still image formats. Commonly, however, the colors of the original objects are not accurately reproduced when such digital image files are rendered on a computer monitor or on a print [1]. Such renderings are acceptable to a degree based upon user intent, but a direct comparison of the original and the image rendering will show easily visible differences upon closer inspection. The chain from the object itself, to the digital imaging device through color encoding, storage, color decoding, and …

Work-School Conflict And Work School Enrichment: A Student's Perspective On Taking On Multiple Roles Through On-Campus And Off-Campus Employment, Flora Dakas

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigated how the location of employment, on or off-campus, may affect student experiences of negative and positive spillover from the work role to the academic role. It was hypothesized that work-to-school conflict (WSC) would be positively associated with the number of hours devoted to the employment role. Beyond that, it was hypothesized that both WSC and work-to-school enrichment (WSE) would be greater for students who are employed in off-campus jobs as opposed to students who work in on-campus positions. In addition, it was hypothesized that negative and positive spillover from work roles to school roles will contribute to …

Moving United States Health Care Forward, Thomas R. O'Neill

Honors Scholar Theses

Substantive Health Care reform poses one of the greatest current challenges to the American political system. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 marks the most recent attempt at approaching this daunting task. Charged with expanding coverage while controlling costs, it pursues a sundry number of legislative solutions to achieve these seemingly incompatible goals. Despite the strides the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has made, lingering educational, pharmaceutical, and legal concerns stand to derail progress made on fixing the health care system. If these goals are to be successful, a number of additional measures are needed to …

Prosecutorial Discretion: Do Selection Methods Matter?, Jennifer Valenti

Honors Scholar Theses

Prosecutors play a key role in the United States criminal justice system. They hold a significant amount of power through the use of discretion. While many attain the position of prosecutor by election, some attain the position through appointment. In this study, I examine prosecutorial discretion in terms of these different selection methods. I use a comparative case study between Hartford, Connecticut and Worcester, Massachusetts to determine if there are differences in how elected and appointed District Attorneys exercise their discretion.

Residents' Perceptions Of Social Interaction And Social Activity In An Affordable Assisted Living Facility, Elena Garcia

Honors Scholar Theses

This study is a qualitative study looking at the social interactions and social activities in an assisted living facility, based on the residents’ perceptions. In this study I interviewed 20 residents of an affordable assisted living facility. The participants were male and female, 65 or older, and any ethnicity. Inclusion criteria include: (1) Residing in the assisted living facility at least 6 months and no more than 2 years; and (2) being mentally competent to give informed consent. I recruited the participants based on a list of who was eligible from the facilities administration and then asked the eligible participants …

Analyzing Sexual Expression: Marriage, Prostitution, And The Law, Leah Christiani

Honors Scholar Theses

Marriage and prostitution laws solidify and propagate norms about sexual expression. Marriage law functions positively to dictate the kind of expression that is acceptable, normal, and natural while prostitution law frames the illegal, deviant, and unnatural. The legal benefits offered to those who marry function as an endorsement of a particular type of sexual expression: monogamous, faithful, loving, long term, and procreative. Equally, the criminalization of prostitution solidifies norms about the wrong, illegal unnatural kind of sexual expression; one focused on pleasure and money, not monogamy, fidelity, love, or procreation. These valuations of sexual expression solidified by the law impact …

The Politics Of Health Outcomes And Income Inequality: A Time Series Cross-Sectional Analysis Of County-Level Mortality Rates In The United States, Timothy H. Callaghan

Honors Scholar Theses

: Health inequalities are pervasive in the United States today. Despite social epidemiologists frequently citing political and economic factors for this variance, political science has largely ignored these issues. Given this gap in the literature and the importance of the issue, more research is clearly needed to better understand the political and economic causes and implications of these health disparities. This study analyzes the topic in depth, examining how income inequality, which is believed to be a key factor in explaining health inequalities, is related to mortality rates at the county level. Examining aggregate data from all US counties from …

Assessing Food Security Across Connecticut Towns For 2009, Kendall Erskine

Honors Scholar Theses

Assessing Food Security Across Connecticut Towns for 2009 Food security is an increasingly critical issue in the United States with health-related issues consistently on the rise. Community food security, an extension of household food security, should be measured in order to better understand the food systems of towns and cities in Connecticut.

This study measured community food security on the town level in Connecticut through quantifying approximately 40 indicators of food security including socio-demographic factors, community food resources, household food security, food resource accessibility, food availability and affordability, and community food production resources. The towns and cities in Connecticut are …

Language-Specific Tuning Of Audiovisual Integration In Early Development, Juliana Flynn

Honors Scholar Theses

According to the perceptual narrowing hypothesis, older infants look longer towards speech in a native language than towards a non-native language. We presented speech in English, Spanish, and mis-matched English and Spanish speech, and recorded looking-time towards the speech. Results suggest that the synchrony of speech plays a strong role in infants' attention to speech, whereas nativeness of language does not.

The Technocratic Birthing Model As Seen In Reality Television And Its Impact On Young Women Age 18-24, Michelle Elizabeth Farber

Honors Scholar Theses

In the Western ethnomedical tradition, childbirth follows the technocratic model, a concept developed by Davis-Floyd (1992). Within such a system, the woman’s body produces a fetus, much like a machine produces and product, and is delivered unto society by the physician (mechanic) in the proper manner and time. This cultural conception of birth has lead to a society in which maternal and child health has suffered, as many of the practices employed by a physician during a managed labor and delivery are not backed by evidence-based medicine. This thesis argues that reality television shows, specifically A Baby Story enable the …

Surviving To Thriving: Advancing The Institutional Mission, Brinley Franklin

Published Works

Academic research libraries can employ several approaches to advance the institutional mission. First, libraries can shift from goals focused on collections and traditional library services and instead align with their campus academic plan and an emphasis on supporting the institution’s strategic initiatives. A second approach is for libraries to modify their organizational structures from being function-based on the tasks that traditional libraries performed (e.g., public services, technical services, collection development) and move instead toward organizational units that directly support their university’s missions (e.g., undergraduate education; graduate and professional education; research, scholarship, and creative activity; and public engagement). The key is …

Volume 17, Number 1, March/April 2011, Jean C. Nelson

UConn Libraries Newsletter

Page 1 - We look at the University's transition to requiring Master Theses be placed into UConn's Digital Commons Institutional Repository. The Archives & Special Collections receives the collection of African-American poet and artist Allen Polite.

Page 2 - The Vice Provost for University Libraries presents the results of the recent LibQual+® survey. The Director of the UConn Health Center Library provides an overview of the new efforts to communicate across the campuses on issues of copyright and access to research.

Page 3 - Our regional campus libraries give us a glimpse of what is happening on their campuses. We …

Installing Archivematica V0.7 On A Custom-Sized Xubuntu V10.04.2 Virtual Machine Hosted In Virtualbox V4.0.4, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

A basic outline for installing Archivematica in a more production-level environment in order to test larger-sized SIP > AIP creation. This configuration can also be used to test the feasibility of production level SIP ingest > processed AIP export. In this example, digital objects ready for archiving originate in a Windows source directory that is ingested into a Linux-based Archivematica virtual machine then exported back out to a Windows network file share through SFTP.

Beliefs About Racism And Health Among African American Women With Diabetes: A Qualitative Study, Julie A. Wagner, Lisa M. Budris, Sophia Belay, Howard A. Tennen

UCHC Articles - Research

Exposure to racism has been linked to poor health outcomes. Little is known about the impact of racism on diabetes outcomes. This study explored African American (AA) women’s beliefs about how racism interacts with their diabetes self-management and control. Four focus groups were conducted with a convenience sample of 28 adult AA women with type 2 diabetes who were recruited from a larger quantitative study on racism and diabetes. The focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by the authors. Women reported that exposure to racism was a common phenomenon, and their beliefs did in fact link racism to …

Utilizing Libqual+® To Identify Best Practices In Academic Research Library Website Design, Raynna Bowlby, Brinley Franklin, Carolyn A. Lin

Published Works

The intent of this research paper is to discover if LibQUAL+® results can be used to identify “best practices” in academic research library website design. As demonstrated by responses to the LibQUAL+® survey item “A library Web site enabling me to locate information on my own”, website design is an important consideration for academic research library users. This paper examines websites from members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) who participated in LibQUAL+® in 2010, with a particular focus on the websites with the highest scores for this specific LibQUAL+® question. Three primary functional criteria – Visual Layout, Information …