bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Seasonal and sex differences in responsiveness to adrenocorticotropic hormone contribute to stress response plasticity in red-sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis)
Authors: Dayger Catherine A. , Lutterschmidt Deborah I.
Published: February 2016

Like many vertebrates, hormonal responses to stress vary seasonally in red-sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis). For example, males generally exhibit reduced glucocorticoid responses to a standard stressor during the spring mating season. We asked whether variation in adrenal sensitivity to adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) explains why glucocorticoid responses to capture stress vary with sex, season, and body condition in red-sided garter snakes. We measured glucocorticoids at 0, 1, and 4 hours after injection with ACTH (0.1 IU/g body mass) or vehicle in males and females during the spring mating season and fall pre-hibernation period. Because elevated glucocorticoids can influence sex steroids, we also examined androgen and estradiol responses to ACTH. ACTH treatment increased glucocorticoids in both sexes and seasons. Spring-collected males had a smaller integrated glucocorticoid response to ACTH than fall-collected males. The integrated glucocorticoid response to ACTH differed with sex during the spring, with males having a smaller glucocorticoid response than females. Although integrated glucocorticoid responses to ACTH did not vary with body condition, we observed an interaction among season, sex and body condition. In males, ACTH treatment did not alter androgens in either season, but androgens decreased during the sampling period. Similar to previous studies, plasma estradiol was low or undetectable during the spring and fall and therefore any effect of ACTH treatment on estradiol could not be determined. These data provide support for a mechanism that partly explains how the HPA axis integrates information about season, sex, and body condition: namely, variation in adrenal responsiveness to ACTH.
Development of endothermy and concomitant increases in cardiac and skeletal muscle mitochondrial respiration in the precocial Pekin duck (Anas platyrhynchos domestica)
Authors: Sirsat Sarah K. G. , Sirsat Tushar S. , Faber Alan , Duquaine Allison , Winnick Sarah , Sotherland Paul R. , Dzialowski Edward M.
Published: February 2016

Attaining endothermic homeothermy occurs at different times post-hatching in birds and is associated with maturation of metabolic and aerobic capacity. Simultaneous measurements at the organism, organ, and cellular levels during the transition to endothermy reveal means by which this change in phenotype occurs. We examined development of endothermy in precocial Pekin ducks (Anas platyrhynchos domestica) by measuring whole animal O2 consumption (V̇o2) as animals cooled from 35 to 15°C. We measured heart ventricle mass, an indicator of O2 delivery capacity, and mitochondrial respiration in permeabilized skeletal and cardiac muscle to elucidate associated changes in mitochondrial capacities at the cellular level. We examined animals on day 24 of incubation through 7 days post hatching (dph). V̇o2 of embryos decreased when cooling from 35 to 15°C; V̇o2 of hatchlings, beginning on day 0 dph increased during cooling with a lower critical temperature of 32°C. Yolk-free body mass did not change between internal pipping and hatching but, the heart and thigh skeletal muscle grew at faster rates than the rest of the body as the animals transitioned from an externally pipped paranate to a hatchling. Large changes in OXPHOS capacity occurred during ontogeny in both thigh muscles, the primary site of shivering, and cardiac ventricles. Thus, increased metabolic capacity necessary to attain endothermy was associated with augmented metabolic capacity of the tissue and augmented increasing O2 delivery capacity, both of which were attained rapidly at hatching.
Stress, nutrition and parental care in a teleost fish: Exploring mechanisms with supplemental feeding and cortisol manipulation
Authors: Zolderdo A. J. , Algera D. A. , Lawrence M. J. , Gilmour K. M. , Fast M. D. , Thuswaldner J. , Willmore W. , Cooke S. J.
Published: February 2016

Parental care is an essential life-history component of reproduction for many animal species, which entails a suite of behavioural and physiological investments to enhance offspring survival. These investments can incur costs to the parent, reducing their energetic and physiological condition, future reproductive capabilities, and survival. In fishes, relatively few studies have focused on how these physiological costs are mediated. Male smallmouth bass provide parental care for developing offspring until the brood reaches independence. During this energetically demanding life stage, males cease active foraging as they vigorously defend their offspring. Experimental manipulation of cortisol levels (via implantation) and food (via supplemental feeding) in parental males was used to investigate the fitness consequences of parental care. Improving the nutritional condition of nest guarding males increased their reproductive success by reducing premature nest abandonment. However, supplemental feeding and cortisol treatment had no effect on parental care behaviours. Cortisol treatment reduced plasma lymphocyte numbers, but increased neutrophil and monocyte concentrations, indicating a shift in immune function. Supplemental feeding improved the physiological condition of parental fish by reducing the accumulation of oxidative injury. Specifically, supplemental feeding reduced the formation of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) on DNA nucleotides. Increasing the nutritional condition of parental fish can reduce the physiological cost associated with intensive parental activity and improve overall reproductive success, illustrating the importance of nutritional condition as a key modulator of parental fitness.
Urchins in a high CO2 world: partitioned effects of body-size, ocean warming and acidification on metabolic rate
Authors: Carey Nicholas , Harianto Januar , Byrne Maria
Published: February 2016

Body-size and temperature are the major factors explaining metabolic rate, and the additional factor of pH is a major driver at the biochemical level. These three factors have frequently been found to interact, complicating the formulation of broad models predicting metabolic rates and hence ecological functioning. In this first study of the effects of warming and ocean acidification, and their potential interaction, on metabolic rate across a broad body-size range (two-to-three orders of magnitude difference in body mass) we addressed the impact of climate change on the sea urchin Heliocidaris erythrogramma in context with climate projections for east Australia, an ocean warming hotspot. Urchins were gradually introduced to two temperatures (18 and 23 °C) and two pH (7.5 and 8.0), and maintained for two months. That a new physiological steady-state had been reached, otherwise know as acclimation, was validated through identical experimental trials separated by several weeks. The relationship between body-size, temperature and acidification on the metabolic rate of H. erythrogramma was strikingly stable. Both stressors caused increases in metabolic rate; 20% for temperature and 19% for pH. Combined effects were additive; a 44% increase in metabolism. Body-size had a highly stable relationship with metabolic rate regardless of temperature or pH. None of these diverse drivers of metabolism interacted or modulated the effects of the others, highlighting the partitioned nature of how each influences metabolic rate, and the importance of achieving a full acclimation state. Despite these increases in energetic demand there was very limited capacity for compensatory modulating of feeding rate; food consumption increased only in the very smallest specimens, and only in response to temperature, and not pH. Our data show that warming, acidification and body-size all substantially affect metabolism and are highly consistent and partitioned in their effects, and for H. erythrogramma near-future climate change will incur a substantial energetic cost.
Validation of the Polish version of the Penn Alcohol Craving Scale (PACS)
Authors: Chodkiewicz Jan , Ziółkowski Marcin , Czarnecki Damian , Gąsior Krzysztof , Juczyński Artur , Biedrzycka Beata , Nowakowska-Domagała Katarzyna
Published: February 2016

Cel

Celem przeprowadzonych badań było dokonanie polskiej adaptacji Skali Głodu Alkoholu Penn (Penn Alcohol Craving Scale, (PACS) B. Flannery i współpracowników. Skala jest metodą samooceny składającą się z 5 twierdzeń i przeznaczoną do oceny nasilenia głodu alkoholu występującego u pacjenta w tygodniu poprzedzającym badanie.

Metoda

Zbadano 550 pacjentów ze zdiagnozowanym zespołem uzależnienia od alkoholu, a do ostatecznej analizy przyjęto wyniki 510 osób. W badanej grupie znalazło się 396 mężczyzn i 114 kobiet. Badanie przeprowadzono w 3 tygodniu terapii. Zastosowano: Skalę Głodu Alkoholu Penn, Skalę Rozwoju Uzależnienia od Alkoholu (SRUA) (część dotycząca głodu), wywiad kliniczny zawierający specjalnie przygotowane pytania dotyczące odczuwanego w ostatnim miesiącu i tygodniu głodu alkoholu oraz Skalę Yale-Brown Obsesyjno-Kompulsywnego Intensywnego Picia.

Wyniki

Polska wersja Skali Głodu Alkoholu Penn charakteryzuje się bardzo dobrymi właściwościami psychometrycznymi - jest narzędziem rzetelnym i trafnym. Eksploracyjna i konfirmacyjna analiza czynnikowa potwierdziła istnienie jednego czynnika. Zgodność wewnętrzna, oceniona na podstawie alfa Cronbacha, wynosiła 0,89. Metoda wykazuje istotne statystycznie (większość p<0,001) związki z nasileniem głodu w ostatnim roku, miesiącu i tygodniu przed badaniem a także z wynikiem ogólnym w Skali Yale-Brown.

Wnioski

Rezultat przeprowadzonych prac nad adaptacją Skali Głodu Alkoholu Penn przemawia za rekomendowaniem metody do badań naukowych oraz zastosowania w praktyce terapeutycznej.
Polish Adaptation of the Psychache Scale by Ronald Holden and Co-workers
Authors: Chodkiewicz Jan , Miniszewska Joanna , Strzelczyk Dorota , Gąsior Krzysztof
Published: February 2016

Cel

Celem badania było dokonanie polskiej adaptacji Skali Bólu Psychicznego Ronalda Holdena i współpracowników (Scale of Psychache). Skala jest metodą samooceny składającą się z 13 twierdzeń i przeznaczoną do oceny subiektywnie odczuwanego bólu psychicznego.

Metoda

Zbadano 300 osób - studentów oraz słuchaczy studiów podyplomowych Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego i Politechniki Łódzkiej. Wśród badanych było 185 kobiet i 115 mężczyzn. Dodatkowo zbadano 150 mężczyzn uzależnionych od alkoholu, 50 współuzależnionych kobiet oraz 50 osób z rozpoznaniem epizodu dużej depresji.

Wyniki

Polska wersja Skali jest narzędziem rzetelnym i trafnym. Eksploracyjna i konfirmacyjna analiza czynnikowa potwierdza istnienie jednego czynnika. Zgodność wewnętrzna, oceniona na podstawie alfa Cronbacha wynosi 0,93. Metoda wykazuje dodatnie, istotne statystycznie związki z poziomem depresji, beznadziejności, lęku i anhedonii oraz ujemne z poziomem optymizmu, zadowolenia z życia i orientacji pozytywnej. Mężczyźni uzależnieni od alkoholu, u których aktualnie stwierdzono występowanie myśli samobójczych charakteryzowali się istotnie wyższym poziomem bólu psychicznego w porównaniu z alkoholikami nie przejawiającymi takich myśli. Wyższy poziom bólu psychicznego odnotowano także u osób z depresją, u których występowały w przeszłości próby samobójcze, w porównaniu z tymi, u których takich prób nie było.

Wnioski

Rezultat przeprowadzonych prac nad adaptacją Skali Bólu Psychicznego przemawia za rekomendowaniem metody do badań naukowych oraz zastosowania w praktyce terapeutycznej.
Polish adaptation of Sexual Addiction Screening Test - Revised
Authors: Gola Mateusz , Skorko Maciej , Kowalewska Ewelina , Kołodziej Aleksandra , Sikora Małgorzata , Wodyk Mateusz , Wodyk Zuzanna , Dobrowolski Paweł
Published: February 2016

Cel pracy

Nałogowe zachowania seksualne są coraz częściej spotykane w praktyce psychoterapeutycznej, psychiatrycznej oraz seksuologicznej. Zyskują również coraz więcej uwagi ze strony naukowców. Obecnie dostępnych jest 25 anglojęzycznych kwestionariuszy służących do pomiaru poziomu natężenia utraty kontroli nad zachowaniami seksualnymi. Żadnego z nich nie zaadaptowano do polskich warunków. Celem naszych badań było opracowanie polskiej wersji Sexual Addiction Screening Test (SAST-R) – testu najczęściej używanego w badaniach nałogowych zachowań seksualnych.

Metoda

Oszacowanie właściwości polskiej adaptacji kwestionariusza SAST-R (SAST-PL-M) przeprowadzono na grupie 558 heteroseksualnych mężczyzn.. W grupie tej 116 uczestników stanowiły osoby korzystające z pomocy psychologicznej w związku z nałogowymi zachowaniami seksualnymi, spełniające kryteria zaburzenia hiperseksualnego. Pozostałe osoby nie korzystały nigdy z pomocy psychologicznej, seksuologicznej lub psychiatrycznej w związku ze swoimi zachowaniami seksualnymi.

Wyniki

Wartymi podkreślenia cechami SAST-PL-M są jego wysoki współczynnik rzetelności (Alfa Cronbacha = 0,904) oraz dobre właściwości przesiewowe w identyfikowaniu osób z ryzykiem nałogowych zachowań seksualnych (krzywa ROC w odniesieniu do progu 5 na 20 maksymalnych punktów charakteryzuję się czułością = 99,1% i specyficznością = 78,3%).

Wnioski

SAST-PL-M może być stosowany jako narzędzie do badań przesiewowych pod kątem nałogowych zachowań seksualnych zarówno w badaniach klinicznych, jak i naukowych. Wyniki poniżej 5 punktów wskazują na bardzo niskie prawdopodobieństwo nałogowych zachowań seksualnych, podczas gdy punktacja powyżej 5 punktów wskazuje na potrzebę dodatkowego wywiadu klinicznego dotyczącego zachowań seksualnych. Wyniki SAST-PL-M można porównywać do wyników SAST-R z zagranicznych badań prowadzonych na populacjach heteroseksualnych mężczyzn.
Relationship Between Teachers’ Effective Communication and Students’ Academic Achievement at the Northern Border University
Authors: Al-Madani Feras Mohammed
Published: February 2016

Effective communication between faculty members and students is one of the concerns of the educational stakeholders at the Northern Border University, Saudi Arabia. This study investigates the relationship between teachers’ effective communication and students’ academic achievement at the Northern Border University. The survey questionnaire containing 26 items was administered on 100 students, 50 males and 50 females to ask about their perception towards the effective communication of the faculty members and their academic achievement at the Faculty of Education and Arts, Northern Border University in the City of Arar, Saudi Arabia. The results of the Descriptive statistics method showed that, almost more than half of the students agreed that, the friendly and understanding position maintained by their faculty members had helped them to highly achieve academically. The results of the independent sample T-test found no statistically significant differences between the students ‘academic achievement and their faculty members’ verbal communication across the respondents’ gender and year of study. The study recommended for the Northern Border Authority as well as the Saudi Government looking into other areas that might bring about the effective communication of the staff and the students’ academic achievement in the University.
Spinning Hercules: Gender, Religion, and Geography in Propertius 4.9
Authors: Panoussi Vassiliki
Published: February 2016

In this paper, I argue that Propertius 4.9 connects the religious framework of the cults of Bona Dea and Ara Maxima with geographical distinctions between East and West. Hercules’ association with the West grants him a place in early Roman religion by situating his worship alongside that of the native Italian goddess Bona Dea. The poem, however, also connects Hercules with the East, thus complicating his Roman identity. I argue that the poem uses the etiology of religious custom as a means to explore notions of inclusion and exclusion with regard to Roman identity, and, in particular, that it posits a model of inclusivity associated with female authority. This model, although ultimately rejected by Hercules, offers an alternative ideological proposition to the one the poem ostensibly affirms.
Achilles and the Poetics of Manhood: Re(de)fining Europe and Asia in Statius’ Achilleid
Authors: Augoustakis Antony
Published: February 2016

This article examines the binarism Europe/Asia in Statius’ Achilleid as a means to understand the polarities of male/female, West/East, Greek/barbarian, and ultimately Roman/non-Roman. I demonstrate that Helen’s abduction by Paris and the discourse on the succession of empires in Statius’ poem reflect Thetis’ own transformation of Achilles into a woman. Through his cross-dressing and the impregnation of Deidamia, marked in the text as a violent attack, Achilles comes of age on the liminally other island of Scyros by replicating Paris’ rapina . The “European” Achilles incorporates both the effeminate traits of the East and the warlike manliness of the West; he also ultimately embodies the “Asian” other , which he is destined to conquer.
Gender and Ethnicity in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika
Authors: Lye Suzanne
Published: February 2016

This essay examines gender and ethnicity as performative categories in the ancient Greek novel. In the Arsake episode of the Aithiopika , Heliodorus questions classical Greek stereotypes of male versus female and Greek versus non-Greek by demonstrating the fluidity of markers for these categories. Thus, characters can act more or less “manly” or “Greek,” depending on their immediate situations and regardless of actual gender or ethnic identity. I argue that the novel presents gender as the more fixed of the two categories, but that every character operates within a wide range of behaviors, often contradicting the reader’s expectations.
The Irony of Romantic Mathematics: Bridging the Historiographies of Literature and Mathematics
Authors: Thomasen Laura Søvsø , Sørensen Henrik Kragh
Published: February 2016

This essay juxtaposes a particular a set of novel mathematical ideas from the early nineteenth century with a synchronous development in literary criticism. Important mathematical discoveries of the 1820s, such as non-Euclidean geometries, new impossibility results, and new proof ideals, exhibit structural similarities with notions of Romantic irony expressed by literary critic and philosopher Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829). The essay shows how both fields—mathematics and literary criticism—were at the time attempting to come to terms with the Kantian divide between the Ding an sich and Ding für uns , and thereby both fields reacted to profound shifts in perspective. By analyzing Schlegel’s notion of Romantic irony in relation to these key mathematical examples the essay presents new insights into the historiographical fields regarding literature and mathematics. This contribution to historiography is twofold: the essay sheds new light on a set of important mathematical developments, while at the same time bringing the historiography of mathematics and literature to bear on each other on a deeper, structural level.
“That Inscrutable Thing”: Holography, Nonlocality, and Identity in American Romanticism
Authors: Loots Christopher
Published: February 2016

Recent decades have seen a surge in interdisciplinary scholarship into the relationship between Emerson and science. The majority of these works illuminate Emerson’s indebtedness to science so to dispel the haze of mysticism surrounding his Transcendentalism. Resultantly, such studies have expelled direct treatment of Emerson’s primary concern—holistic oneness—for lack of any new or scientifically sound way to engage or understand this seemingly mystical notion. This essay introduces an interdisciplinary theory informed by the science of quantum nonlocality and optical holography, David Bohm’s holomovement theory that allows for new, more comprehensive ways to reconsider the reality of oneness; then reincorporates Emerson’s central concern back into the contemporary humanities-science scholarly field. Thereafter the essay applies Transcendental-holomovement concepts to a reading of Whitman and Emerson to demonstrate the ways in which to use these findings toward new interdisciplinary understandings of American Romanticism.
Creaturely Conditions: Acknowledgment and Animality in Kafka, Cavell, and Uexküll
Authors: Uhall Michael
Published: February 2016

A considerable amount of attention has been directed to the animal/human distinction in recent years, but there remains a fundamentally productive, if unsettling ambiguity within the distinction itself. The distinction operationalizes a generalized skepticism about other minds. This essay argues that Stanley Cavell’s account of acknowledgment, once appropriately considered and modified so as to include animal minds within its purview, can allow for the navigation and negotiation of the distinction in question without either collapsing the human into the animal entirely or lionizing the human as such. Accordingly, the essay advocates for a reclamation and reconsideration of the creaturely as a category and a condition within which dwell the subjects of skepticism. In order to do this the essay intervenes in a number of areas simultaneously, including reflections on animality and skepticism in the short fiction of Franz Kafka, the species problem in the philosophy of biology, the relational status of companionate animals, and the theoretical biology of Jakob von Uexküll.
Seeing Things: The Dilemma of Visual Subjectivity at the Dawn of the Bacteriological Age in Strindberg’s The Father
Authors: Nixon Kari
Published: February 2016

This essay presents a new reading of Strindberg’s The Father in the light of developing lens technology during the late nineteenth century. By situating this play within the late-nineteenth-century material culture of microscopes and alongside Strindberg’s own writings about his encounters with microscopic experimentation, the essay exposes the play as darkly comedic, upending its traditional reading as a tragedy. Recasting the play in this light concomitantly allows for further awareness of its wholesale rejection of the notion that knowledge of objective truth is possible, with science or any other epistemological system. Contextualizing the scientific influences on Strindberg’s often very spiritual dramas, then, cyclically allows for even greater awareness of the contemporary scientific rhetoric—often vicious critiques of it—packaged into his dramatic cosmology, expanding the ways in which he must be understood as one of the first Modernist playwrights.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Literary Giant: Thirty Years of Joyce Scholarship in China
Authors: Weiping Li , Huijuan Cheng
Published: February 2016

This paper presents “a portrait of the artist” as a literary giant, based on the thirty years of Joyce scholarship in China, with the focus on translations and criticism of his fiction. Joyce’s works have received a diversity of competing Chinese translations, which, in turn, have influenced his reception and criticism, as well as more general translation theories in China. In the last thirty years, there have been continuous outpourings of monographs, articles, and dissertations on Joyce in China. The progress of these publications not only follows significant national and cultural events from the early 1980s to the present but also reflects the changing trends of ideology, politics, and aesthetics in the country. By reviewing the reception of Joyce in a relatively heterogeneous cultural environment, this essay critically examines the development of Chinese scholars’ academic interest in this legendary literary figure since the 1980s.
Freddy, Gabriel, Gretta, Nietzsche, and Joyce’s “The Dead”
Authors: Lorsch Susan E.
Published: February 2016

From the perspective of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy , Joyce’s “The Dead” takes on new meaning as a struggle between the Apollonian (educated and repressed Gabriel) and the Dionysian (drunken, laughing Freddy Malins). The Nietzschean synthesis into something akin to tragedy in the story’s enigmatic and ambiguous conclusion is enriched by the long-overlooked suggestions in the text that Gretta may have been pregnant with Michael Furey’s child during their farewell at the postlapsarian “end of the garden” in the rain.
Vicking With the Censors: Joyce’s Bold Use of the Suppressed in an Unsuppressed Finnegans Wake
Authors: McBride Margaret
Published: February 2016

Because of its daunting linguistic ambiguity, Finnegans Wake often seems designed merely to baffle. The story’s polysemous complexity, however, may be Joyce’s most potent weapon against censorship. Insinuated throughout the indecipherable narration are sexual terms that were essentially unprintable in 1939. The highly charged diction, moreover, often proceeds to fuse with sly allusions to authors whose works were censored or banned, from Ovid to Edgar Quinet. This veiled aspect only intensifies as apparently unrelated paronomasia references entities that were also once forbidden; items like Eve’s apple, hootch, fez hats, and slot machines constantly cross the narrator’s mind. Through ingeniously subversive language, which can never be precisely pinned down, the text daringly invites—and simultaneously thwarts—its own bowdlerization.
Ulysses and the Fiction of Trademark
Authors: Goldman Jonathan
Published: February 2016

The essay reads Joyce through the prism of trademark registration law as it began in the late 1800s and evolved during Joyce’s life and career. It argues that Joyce, and modernist culture more broadly, share concerns that underlie the legal regime governing trademark. Trademark is based on the premises of instant recognition and distinction, thus differing from the contemporary regime of copyright whose emphasis is on originality. The laws necessitate that trademarks have no representational connection to commodities and thus are linked only through the authority of the state. Trademark laws, designed to protect consumers from fraudulent vendors, collapse recognition of the trademark with consumption of its referent. Joyce explores these ideas in Ulysses , particularly in the moment when Leopold Bloom fixates on the Bass Ale trademark, and throughout Finnegans Wake . Mirroring trademark, Joyce’s style created recognizable visual and linguistic shorthand to distinguish himself and the experience of reading his work. His foregrounding of style makes style in the abstract his distinguishing characteristic.
The Other Ancient Quarrel: Ulysses and Classical Rhetoric
Authors: Wiedenfeld Logan
Published: February 2016

Although it is a commonplace among Joyceans that the “Aeolus” episode in Ulysses is concerned with classical rhetoric, the degree and manner of the concern has not been well understood. This essay addresses both, arguing first that, besides the often-mentioned attention to rhetorical figures, the episode as a whole mirrors formally—and thus parodies—classical treatises on rhetoric like Cicero’s De Oratore and Plato’s Phaedrus and, second, that, with “Scylla and Charybdis,” “Aeolus” constitutes yet another entry in the ancient debate between the philosophers and the sophists. Unlike its classical forebears, however, Ulysses offers no easy answers to the problem of rhetoric, underscoring its dangers in “Aeolus” and its aesthetic potential in “Scylla and Charybdis.”
Information Technology and School Libraries: A Social Justice Perspective
Authors: Dadlani Punit , Todd Ross J.
Published: February 2016

This research takes an emergent approach to data analysis (Charmaz, 2008) through the use of an emic/etic data coding process, and proposes a typology for understanding the connection between social justice principles and the provision of information technology services in school libraries. The study used data from seven school libraries in the state of New Jersey, obtained from focus groups consisting of forty-eight teachers, eighteen librarians, ten department supervisors, eleven principals/assistant principals, four district directors, and three librarian-teachers. The emergent process and typology employed in this research can aid school libraries in assessing how particular factors of the school/school library environment influence the provision of IT services to school library users. This study confirmed that school librarians and teachers rely on several social justice principles, such as distributive justice, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism, in making decisions regarding how to provide information technology services within the school environment. In particular, it was found that the type of social justice principle used in the school environment depended on the school librarians’ and teachers’ perceptions of the information competencies of their constituents and the availability of resources within the school environment. This research contributes to the study of social justice in the library and information science (LIS) professions in the following ways: first, by expanding ideas of “social justice” in LIS beyond traditional notions of “disenfranchised groups”—such as people having lower socioeconomic status, racial/ethnic or sexual minorities, and individuals with physical or mental disabilities—to include any group that may experience injustice in the context of information, such as school teachers, librarians and students; second, by portraying how social justice principles are enacted as strategies in school librarianship and pedagogy that advance student information-seeking and learning objectives; third, by highlighting the value of social justice to both practice and scholarly research in school and school library environments; and fourth, by proposing a methodology for studying social justice in a library environment.
Antiviolence and Marginalized Communities: Knowledge Creation, Community Mobilization, and Social Justice through a Participatory Archiving Approach
Authors: Allard Danielle , Ferris Shawna
Published: February 2016

The Digital Archives and Marginalized Communities Project (DAMC), at the University of Manitoba, is an interdisciplinary collaboration to design and develop three separate but related digital archives using a participatory archiving approach with stakeholder community groups. Working titles for these collections are the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Database (MMIWD), the Sex Work Database (SWD), and the Post-Apology Residential School Database (PARSD). This article discusses research and development from the project’s inception in 2012 through the end of 2014, reflecting on the practical and theoretical considerations that arise for researchers and practitioners in the information science professions as a result of engaging with anticolonial and antiviolence feminist methodologies. These methodological perspectives place the experiences and knowledge of Indigenous and sex worker communities at the center of decolonizing processes, foregrounding the need for archival processes that not only captures but also uses these knowledge(s) as the organizational scaffolding upon which to build socially just and representative archives for specific marginalized communities. Using examples drawn from all three archives, this article demonstrates how the goals, intentions, and knowledges of marginalized communities might be built into digital archives projects through a participatory archiving approach. This discussion is followed by an examination of how fostering and maintaining respectful relationships between all members involved with DAMC collaborations is fundamentally connected to both participatory archiving processes and broader social justice objectives.
Finding “Diversity Levers” in the Core Library and Information Science Curriculum: A Social Justice Imperative
Authors: Kumasi Kafi D. , Manlove Nichole L.
Published: February 2016

In this exploratory study, the researchers examined the core library and information science (LIS) curriculum, looking for diversity levers, or conceptual access points, where transformative academic knowledge related to diversity and social justice could be meaningfully integrated. Multicultural curriculum reform, conceptualized as a social justice approach, was the guiding framework for the research design and analysis. The researchers began by establishing what constitutes the core curriculum and essential knowledge taught across thirty-six ALA-accredited master’s of library and information science degree programs. These data were then used to construct a survey that went to one hundred LIS faculty at ALA institutions who provided pedagogical knowledge, ideas, and resources for infusing diversity and social justice into the core curriculum. The findings suggest that there are certain core LIS courses that have explicit diversity levers, or areas where there are natural connections to diversity and social justice content, while others have emergent or implicit diversity levers. The differences among these types of diversity levers are explained, and some of the pedagogical resources that were shared by the survey respondents are included. The Information Technology core course shows the most promise for integrating diversity and social justice pedagogies.
In Pursuit of Antiracist Social Justice: Denaturalizing Whiteness in the Academic Library
Authors: Brook Freeda , Ellenwood Dave , Lazzaro Althea Eannace
Published: February 2016

This article examines racism and the culture of Whiteness in academic libraries in three major areas of public services: space, staffing, and reference service delivery. The authors perform a critical discourse analysis, drawing on critical race theory, critical geography, critical education, and social psychology to examine foundational library scholarship and professional standards. Academic libraries, as products and representations of their parent institutions, are situated within the well-documented systemic and institutional racism of higher education in the United States. This is reflected in the monocultural geography and spaces of academic libraries. It is seen in the organizational culture and hiring practices of libraries, which are overwhelmingly staffed by White workers, while serving an increasingly diverse student body. Finally, it is reflected in the traditional tenets of reference service delivery, including approachability, responsiveness, and objectivity. The authors argue that racism is embedded in academic libraries through a culture of Whiteness. Consistent with social justice traditions in librarianship, they offer tools and suggestions to realign the profession with antiracist values and practices that will enable libraries to better serve their communities.
Mix IT Up!: A Blending of Community Informatics and Youth Services Librarianship to Further Social Justice in Library and Information Science Education
Authors: Montague Rae-Anne
Published: February 2016

Mix IT Up! is a library and information science (LIS) education initiative blending theories and approaches in community informatics and youth services librarianship in order to further social justice agendas. It is based on collaboration with community partners who share similar interests and objectives. Prior to launching Mix IT Up!, community members identified a pressing need to engage with local youth more effectively. Mix IT Up! was developed to address this critical gap. From 2011 to 2015, Mix IT Up! enabled a broad array of community-based connections and projects related to youth advocacy and information technologies—the “IT” in the title—and provided robust opportunities for LIS students to gain experience in community engagement. Mix IT Up! serves as a model of effective practice in LIS education.
Why Do We Need to Bother?: Public Library Services for LGBTQI People
Authors: Vincent John
Published: February 2016

In considering social justice, many commentators overlook (or disregard) the needs of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, or intersex (LGBTQI), assuming, for example, that they do not require any particular support or recognition, or that they “self-exclude” by “choosing” to be LGBTQI. This article aims to challenge these perceptions. Young (and not-so-young) people may find it easier to come out today—and, indeed, the necessity to have life framed by coming-out stories may be fading. Nevertheless, we know that many people still struggle and still have to face hostility, threats, even violence. Suicide rates among young LGBTQI people, often the result of bullying, are unacceptably high. The cultural sector, including public libraries, can play a huge part in combating prejudice by providing safe, informed (and informative) spaces where people can explore who they are, and be who they are as well. However, not all public libraries understand this, or want to play this role. This article identifies some of the needs and demands of LGBTQI people, demonstrates the good practice that public libraries have developed, and examines gaps where this is not happening. The focus will be primarily on public libraries’ work in the UK. It looks at some of the key background issues (prejudice against LGBTQI people, for example), then focuses on the ways in which the public library can intervene, concluding with practical examples of the range of work that is being undertaken and some suggestions of what still needs to be done.
E-Book Perceptions and Use in STEM and Non-STEM Disciplines: A Comparative Follow-Up Study
Authors: Carroll Alexander J. , Corlett-Rivera Kelsey , Hackman Timothy , Zou Jinwang
Published: February 2016

This article describes the results of a survey that gathered data on perceptions and use of e-books from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. The investigators analyzed the results based on user affiliate status and subject discipline and compared the results with the findings of a similar, smaller-scale study conducted in 2012. The study concludes with a discussion of the major findings and their implications for academic libraries and publishers, as well as areas for further inquiry.
Assessing Digital Humanities Tools: Use of Scalar at a Research University
Authors: Tracy Daniel G.
Published: February 2016

As librarians increasingly support digital publication platforms, they must also understand the user experience of these tools. This case study assesses use of Scalar, a digital humanities publishing platform for media-rich projects, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Based on a survey, interviews, and content analysis, the study highlights the platform’s usability, its functionality, and its successes and failures in meeting user expectations. The media upload process, image annotation, and aesthetics factored into user issues. Writing pedagogy also emerged as an important consideration. Results suggest lessons for digital literacy instruction, as well as how and when Scalar might serve patrons’ publishing needs.
Rediscovering Renaissance Research: Information Literacy Strategies for Success
Authors: Gilchrist Sarah Burns
Published: February 2016

While remaining cognizant of several aspects of current information literacy (IL) instruction methods, including threshold concepts, the author re-created experiences shared by students as she searched for, analyzed, and compiled resources pertaining to the Renaissance. Good IL instruction supports education of the whole person, develops new modes of thinking, and defines scholars’ relationships to their disciplines, their institution, and their communities. In short, good information literacy instruction draws from the ideals of the Renaissance and often results in a change of perspective after discovering deeper meanings in materials, concepts, and processes.
Information Literacy for Archives and Special Collections: Defining Outcomes
Authors: Carini Peter
Published: February 2016

This article provides the framework for a set of standards and outcomes that would constitute information literacy with primary sources. Based on a working model used at Dartmouth College’s Rauner Special Collections Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, these concepts create a framework for teaching with primary source materials intended to produce expert users at the undergraduate level. At the same time, these concepts establish a structure for archivists and librarians to use in assessing their work with faculty and students.
Assessment of a Professional Development Program on Adult Learning Theory
Authors: Malik Melinda
Published: February 2016

Librarians at colleges and universities invested in graduate education must understand and incorporate adult learning theories in their reference and instruction interactions with graduate students to more effectively support the students’ learning. After participating in a professional development program about adult learning theory, librarians in this study reported that, in many ways, they already employed teaching and learning strategies grounded in one or more adult learning theories. They also indicated gaining a greater awareness of student development, enabling them to more successfully tailor their interactions.
“I Felt Like Such a Freshman”: First-Year Students Crossing the Library Threshold
Authors: Dempsey Paula R. , Jagman Heather
Published: February 2016

Qualitative analysis of reflective essays by first-year students in an academic skills course documented outcomes related to the Association of College and Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Student narratives showed how novices encounter the clusters of concepts described in the Framework as “Scholarship as Conversation,” “Searching as Strategic Exploration,” and “Research as Inquiry.” Assessing students’ metacognition—that is, their thinking about the learning process—revealed that they connected personal identity with academic conversations, developed strategies for exploring subject classification, and balanced persistence with help-seeking. The open-ended exercise was effective as a collaborative approach to academic engagement and information literacy.
The Value of Chat Reference Services: A Pilot Study
Authors: Jacoby JoAnn , Ward David , Avery Susan , Marcyk Emilia
Published: February 2016

This article explores student, instructor, and librarian perceptions of chat reference in the context of an introductory composition course. Participants in a mixed-method study responded to an anonymized chat transcript. While student respondents valued speed and efficiency, they were willing to receive instruction and open to questions that demonstrated interest or moved the research forward. Librarian and instructor comments focused on how these chats supported or could better support student learning, as well as on the interplay between classroom teaching, library instruction, and reference. The authors also identify implications that these findings have for the development of best practices in chat reference.
A Sensorimotor Collapse?: Deleuze and the Practice of Cinema
Authors: Bewes Timothy
Published: February 2016

This essay discusses the central historical proposition of Gilles Deleuze’s cinema books, the “sensorimotor break” that separates the classical cinema of the movement-image from the modern cinema of the time-image. That proposition is more or less in line with dominant accounts of the politics of periodization in twentieth-century aesthetics. Jacques Rancière’s thought offers a powerful challenge to any such notion of a break or rupture, and Rancière pays particular critical attention to Deleuze’s work on cinema. A work by the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi ( The Mirror ) is introduced in order to show up some shortcomings of Rancière’s critique insofar as it impacts Deleuze’s project, and to illustrate the difference between understanding cinema as a medium of thought and as a practice.
Musical Affect, Musical Citation, Music-Immanence: Kurt Weill and the White Stripes
Authors: Brown Nicholas
Published: February 2016

Beginning from an analysis of the anomalous position of music within Hegel’s system of aesthetics—a position that brings forth the peculiar quality of music as a medium—this essay asks how we are to conceive of musical meaning in an era when music’s relation to the market must be considered not separate from its formal specificity, but part as of the medium of music itself.
Changing identity, roots, plurality, fluidity: The film and video installations of Singaporean artists
Authors: Teo Phyllis
Published: February 2016

Drawing upon the film and video installations of Singaporean artists Ho Tzu Nyen and Ming Wong, this article aims to make a critical enquiry into methodological and theoretical intersections between film and fine art. Drawing from the cultural particularities of Singapore, there are dimensions in these artists’ works that are relevant for the discussion of an imaginative identification with local histories. Contested issues relating to representation, identity, roots, performativity and history are engaged and negotiated in their works. Ho and Wong foreground the significance of the Malay heritage in the Singaporean identity, notwithstanding being Chinese. The artists are careful to underline the notion that identities are constructed and fluid, and their works reveal a resistance against a singular, constructed definition or an essentialist interpretation of the Singapore national identity, in favour of one that is able to reflect pluralities of diverse societies and the multiplicity of culture. The endeavours to devise alternative modes of exhibition in the art gallery are directed in part at transforming the exhibition environment and how viewers relate to the artwork. In their moving image installations, Ho Tzu Nyen and Ming Wong have developed various visual strategies that explore the dynamic relation between filmic space and time. Proposing a more fluid approach in the understanding of spectatorial positions, both artists have produced a visual and experiential language that enable the audience to develop a new consciousness about their environment and themselves. By engaging the aural-visual, conceptual and physical aspects of the artists’ works, the analysis of the moving image as a series of assertions made within the fields of contemporary art and film seeks to explore new possibilities about what is meant by the ‘cinematic’ in Singapore.
Found materials: Paul Gladston in conversation with Rudi Stanzel
Authors: Gladston Paul , Stanzel Rudi
Published: February 2016

Rudi Stanzel is an artist who lives and works in Vienna. He produces concrete, largely monochrome non-figurative paintings and objects often structured around loosely defined geometric patterns, including grids and stripes, and modular arrangements. Stanzel regards his work as resistant to precise conceptual interpretation. He also eschews conventional painterly concerns with part-by-part composition and spatial illusion, placing emphasis instead on the materiality of surface. Stanzel has taken up positions as an artist in residence in the People’s Republic of China on two occasions: first at the Ningbo Museum of Art from September to December 2006, and subsequently at the Organhouse in Chongqing from September to December 2013.1 In this conversation he discusses the development of his practice as an artist and the impact on that development of local materials appropriated during his residences in China.
Conversations with Chen Shaoxiong and Qian Weikang
Authors: Ding Liu , Lu Carol Yinghua , Wei Su
Published: February 2016

The following conversations with the artists Chen Shaoxiong and Qian Weikang were conducted by Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Su Wei as part of their research as curators of the 7th Shenzhen Biennale, ‘Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, not a World’, which was staged in 2012. The interviews were originally published in Mandarin Chinese in Individual Experience: Conversations and Narratives of Contemporary Art Practice in China from 1989 to 2000, a collection of conversations Liu, Lu and Su conducted with artists and curators active in China from 1989 to 2000. Chen Shaoxiong is a founding member of the art groups the Southern Artists Salon and the Big Tail Elephant Group, both of which were formed in Guangzhou – the former in 1986 and the latter in 1990. Qian Weikang was active as a conceptual artist in China during the early to mid-1990s. Both interviews explore the concerns of artists in China during the 1990s as well as the socio-economic, cultural and political circumstances surrounding their practice at the time.