Digital Commons Network^™

Know-It-All Librarians, Beth Posner

Publications and Research

Librarians are depicted as know-it-alls by some, and as know-nothings by others. Similarly, they are seen as both utterly powerless and preternaturally powerful. This essay offers examples of these contradictory images, examines their implications, and proposes a more realistic view of librarians and their relation to knowledge and power.

"The Homosexual" As Problem Patron, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

Libraries host a range of human activity, some of which is overtly sexual. What's a librarian to do about public displays of affection? cruising? public sex? First, we read up on the issue. Unfortunately, problem patron library literature is spotted with vivid illustrations of irrational bias against gay men, male-to-female transgender women, and men-cruising-men. It also discounts the private nature of most consensual sex in public places. This article discusses sex and gender biases in library literature, arguing that gender equitable, privacy-respecting practices will better serve librarians administering public space.

The Data Game: Colorado State University’S Animated Library Research Tutorial, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The Data Game, produced by Colorado State University (CSU) Libraries, is a web-based multimedia tutorial designed to teach basic research skills. Using interactive contests and animated presentations, The Data Game introduces and reinforces essential ideas. This paper discusses the tutorial's design, construction, and implementation.

The Lunatic's Fancy And The Work Of Art, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Hip-Hop/Scotch: "Sounding Francophone" In French And United States Cultures, Francesca Sautman

Publications and Research

This essay adresses the relationship between "being/speaking Francophone" and forms of ethnic-cultural dissent in France and the U.S. In both countries, terms such as Francophone and Francophonie are often captured by specific political agendas and practicies. What it means to be "Francophone" involves complex interfacings between various langages, including English and French, between competing discursive claims made on the basis of linguistic home and the particular forms of cultural and linguistic hybridity, such as French hip-hop culture and world music.

Ipsilesional Biases In Saccades But Not Perception After Lesions Of The Human Inferior Parietal Lobule, Tony Ro, Chris Rorden, Jon Driver, Robert Rafal

Publications and Research

We examined the effects of chronic unilateral lesions to either the inferior parietal lobe, or to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex including the frontal eye fields (FEFs), upon human visual perception and saccades in temporal-order-judgment (TOJ) tasks. Two visual events were presented on each trial, one in each hemifield at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In the saccade task, patients moved their eyes to whichever stimulus attracted gaze first. In the perceptual-manual task, they pressed a button to indicate which stimulus was perceived first. Frontal patients showed appropriate TOJs for visual targets in both tasks. Parietal patients showed appropriate TOJs in …

Applying Information Competency To Digital Reference, Lisa A. Ellis, Stephen Francoeur

Publications and Research

Presented at the 67th IFLA Council and General Conference (2001), this paper presents a case for applying information competency (IC) standards to digital reference services at academic libraries. Practical reasons for applying standards or guidelines to e-mail and online chat reference services are given with some insight to the nature of digital reference interactions. The standards that arose from the information competency movement in academic libraries are described and offered as a touchstone for planning and designing digital reference services. The paper concludes with preliminary ideas for how IC standards could be applied to the provision of digital reference.

The Outbreak Of West Nile Virus Infection In The New York City Area In 1999, Denis Nash, Farzad Mostashari, Annie Fine, James Miller, Daniel O'Leary, Kristy Murray, Ada Huang, Amy Rosenberg, Abby Greenberg, Margaret Sherman, Susan Wong, Marcelle Layton

Publications and Research

Background In late August 1999, an unusual cluster of cases of meningoencephalitis associated with muscle weakness was reported to the New York City Department of Health. The initial epidemiologic and environmental investigations suggested an arboviral cause.

Methods Active surveillance was implemented to identify patients hospitalized with viral encephalitis and meningitis. Cerebrospinal fluid, serum, and tissue specimens from patients with suspected cases underwent serologic and viral testing for evidence of arboviral infection.

Results Outbreak surveillance identified 59 patients who were hospitalized with West Nile virus infection in the New York City area during August and September of 1999. The median age …

Ionic Mechanisms Underlying Repetitive High-Frequency Burst Firing In Supragranular Cortical Neurons, Joshua C. Brumberg, Lionel G. Nowak, David A. Mccormick

Publications and Research

Neocortical neurons in awake, behaving animals can generate high-frequency (.300 Hz) bursts of action potentials, either in single bursts or in a repetitive manner. Intracellular recordings of layer II/III pyramidal neurons were obtained from adult ferret visual cortical slices maintained in vitro to investigate the ionic mechanisms by which a subgroup of these cells generates repetitive, high-frequency burst discharges, a pattern referred to as “chattering.” The generation of each but the first action potential in a burst was dependent on the critical interplay between the afterhyperpolarizations (AHPs) and afterdepolarizations (ADPs) that followed each action potential. The spike after depolarization and …

A Distance Education Collaboration: The Learning Café Experience, Miriam B. Deutch, Beth Evans, Lori Scarlatos

Publications and Research

As distance education collaborations between high schools and colleges increase, there is a concern that little has been done to assess the quality and effectiveness of the resulting virtual courses (Carr & Young, 1999). Yet it is equally important to address or consider the many challenges and issues of the collaboration itself. How these issues are addressed will seriously impact the success of any college distance education project in collaboration with other institutions of learning, including K-12 schools, community centers, and private industry. This article is about collaboration issues between high schools and colleges. It focuses on what the developers …

Teaching Social Justice Through Legal Writing, Pamela Edwards, Sheilah Vance

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

International Standards In Ecuador's Amazon Oil Fields: The Privatization Of Environmental Law, Judith Kimerling

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Invisible Can Or, Gendering Corporate Globalization Trouble: Technological Utopianism And The Language Of Erasure, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

In the following, noted science fiction scholar Marleen S. Barr argues for an increased attention to science fiction as a literature of the potentials of globalization, a genre that has largely been marginalized in discussions of the future of a globalized techno-culture. Further, Barr argues for greater attention being paid to feminist utopian fiction which helps to reimagine women's roles in the increasingly complex, and increasingly capitalistic, globalized techno-culture that has continued to marginalize the female body (and consciousness) in much the same way that scholars have denied the possibilities of utopian science fiction.

From Gender Apartheid To Non-Sexism: The Pursuit Of Women's Rights In South Africa, Penelope Andrews

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Special Focus: Personal Writing, Jane E. Hindman

Publications and Research

This introduction to a special section of College English treats the nature, role, and problematics of personal academic discourse and professional work. It address the place of personal writing in professional contexts and aims to clarify the myriad denotations of "the personal" in academic discourse and to suggest viable criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of personal writing's contributions to knowledge-making in English studies.

Historical Fabrications On The Internet: Recognition, Evaluation, And Use In Bibliographic Instruction, John A. Drobnicki, Richard Asaro

Publications and Research

Although the Internet provides access to a wealth of information, there is little, if any, control over the quality of that information. Side-by-side with reliable information, one finds disinformation, misinformation, and hoaxes. The authors of this paper discuss numerous examples of fabricated historical information on the Internet (ranging from denials of the Holocaust to personal vendettas), offer suggestions on how to evaluate websites, and argue that these fabrications can be incorporated into bibliographic instruction classes.

Letter To The Editor: Libraries, The Homeless, And Fax Policies, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Responding to the article by Karen M. Venturella ("Disparity of Internet Access and the Role of the Librarian") in the previous issue of JRTI, the author points out that some libraries also discriminate against the poor and the homeless through their fax policies.

Recruit, Recruit, Recruit: Organizing Benefits For Employees With Unmarried Families, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

This article argues that librarians should work to adopt domestic partner benefits for employees in unmarried same- and opposite-sex couples given the inequities in compensation manifest in their absence. It provides new information about the domestic partner practices of Tier 1 and Tier 2 institutions based on a spring/fall 2000 telephone survey. The article includes an outline of actions to institute domestic partner benefits in university settings.

Humboldt’S Alleged Subterranean Fish From Ecuador, Aldemaro Romero Jr., Kelly M. Paulson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Agrammatic Verb Errors In Spanish Speakers And Their Normal Discourse Correlates, Jose G. Centeno, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

Agrammatic verb errors are characterized by a reliance on simple verb forms without elaborated inflectional markings. Yet agrammatism studies on verbs have not addressed the possible correlations that might exist between pre-morbid verb use patterns and agrammatic verb production, especially frequency in oral discourse. Spanish, a language with a highly inflected verb system, is a useful context to explore this interaction. This study investigated agrammatic and normal verb use for those Spanish verb tenses found in daily conversation (Silva-Corval/m, 1983; Bentivoglio and Sedano, 1992). We analyzed agrammatic verb performance in spoken discourse and a sentence repetition task, and compared it …

On The Grounds Of Globalization: A Topography For Feminist Political Engagement, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Globalization is nothing new. Global trade has been going on for millennia—though what constitutes the "globe" has expanded dramatically in that time. And trade is nothing if not cultural exchange, the narrow distinctions between the economic and the cultural having long been rendered obsolete. Moreover, our forbears, like us, were great "miscegenators." If here I gloss the racialized and gendered violence often associated with miscegenation, I do so strategically to note that all recourse to purity, indigeneity, or aboriginality—however useful strategically—should be subject to at least as much scrutiny as the easy romance with hybridity (see Mitchell 1997). Globalization has …

A Space For Co-Constructing Counter Stories Under Surveillance, María Elena Torre, Michelle Fine, Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, 'Missy', Rosemarie A. Roberts, Pamela Smart, Debora Upegui

Publications and Research

Using our experiences as members of a participatory action research committee (from the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility) documenting the impact of college in a maximum security prison, this essay illustrates the power of Participatory Action Research in the construction of counter stories. We raise for discussion a set of theoretical, methodological and ethical challenges that emerged from the co-production of counter stories under surveillance: the creation of a critical space for producing 'counter knowledge'; the co-mingling of counter and dominant discourses, the negotiation of power over and within research in prison, …

Holocaust-Denial Literature: A Fourth Bibliography, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

This bibliography is a supplement to three earlier ones that were published in the Bulletin of Bibliography. Holocaust denial is a body of literature that seeks to prove that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen. This bibliography includes both works about Holocaust denial and works of Holocaust denial.

Epitope-Tagged P0glycoprotein Causes Charcot-Marie-Tooth–Like Neuropathy In Transgenic Mice, Stefano C. Previtali, Angelo Quattrini, Marina Fasolini, Maria Carla Panzeri, Antonello Villa, Marie T. Filbin, Wenhui Li, Shing-Yan Chiu, Albee Messing, Lawrence Wrabetz, M. Laura Feltri

Publications and Research

In peripheral nerve myelin, the intraperiod line results from compaction of the extracellular space due to homophilic adhesion between extracellular domains (ECD) of the protein zero (P0) glycoprotein. Point mutations in this region of P0 cause human hereditary demyelinating neuropathies such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth. We describe transgenic mice expressing a full-length P0 modified in the ECD with a myc epitope tag. The presence of the myc sequence caused a dysmyelinating peripheral neuropathy similar to two distinct subtypes of Charcot-Marie-Tooth, with hypomyelination, altered intraperiod lines, and tomacula (thickened myelin). The tagged protein was incorporated into myelin and was associated with the morphological …

The Evolution Of Audit Committee Responsibilities Within The Context Of Personal, Political, And Corporate Governance, H Stephen Grace Jr., Phd

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Peer Facilitator In The Experiential Learning Model Of Communication, Gordon Alley-Young

Publications and Research

Abstract: This research examines how peer facilitators in an experiential learning model of communication in introductory speech communication courses offered at the University College of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada, are able to meet the specific learning needs of male and female students simultaneously. Also examined is the perceived role of these facilitators within the model. Data in the report are based on focus group interviews with peer facilitators and literature on experiential learning and Cape Breton cultures. The report details facilitators' attempts to establish authority, rapport and an informal educational environment in ways that do not increase power …

Both Sides Of The Looking Glass: Librarian And Teaching Faculty Perceptions Of Librarianship At Six Community Colleges, Devin Feldman, Susan Sciammarella

Publications and Research

Librarians and teaching faculty often have different perceptions of the roles of the library and the librarian in undergraduate education. A study surveying six community colleges reveals that there is much room for improvement in the interrelationship between librarians and teaching faculty. More effective communication and mutual respect would enhance the educational experience for students and provide a richer learning environment.

Review Of The Book The Holocaust: Memories, Research, Reference, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book The Holocaust: Memories, Research, Reference.

Women's Work And Economic Development, Kristin Mammen, Christina Paxson

Publications and Research

Using a cross-country dataset and microdata from India and Thailand, we examine how women's work status changes with economic development. Several clear patterns emerge: women's labor force participation first declines and then rises with development; women move from work in family enterprises to work as paid employees; fertility declines; and gender gaps in education narrow. Women's education levels, and those of their spouses, appear to be important determinants of women's labor market activities. Broad welfare indicators, such as mortality rates and education levels, indicate that women's well-being improves on average with development, both in absolute terms and relative to men.

International Institute Of Social History, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the International Institute of Social History's website.