Search results

Aims to discuss issues relevant to two aspects of research into the effects of cyclones on the north‐east coast of Queensland: personal responses to the experience of cyclones; and organizational and management features of the preparation for, and response to, natural hazards and disasters. Suggests that an understanding of responses at both levels is necessary for effective counter‐disaster action.

Higher education institutions shape the professions which are the conduit for the disciplines’ ways of knowing, the worldview or mindset of the professions, and the intellectual frameworks by which problems and policies are defined. The generational, conscious, and unconscious agreements between higher education and the professions perpetuate the status quo, resulting in continued disproportional impacts based on race, gender, ethnicity, language, orientation, and differing abilities in every major industry sector; including education, health, employment, housing, finance, technology, and the criminal justice system. Cultural responsive pedagogy provides a process of altering these agreements by surfacing the dual consciousness of our multiple social identities and the multidimensional social, political, and economic contexts in our collective co-existence. The connections between culture and mindset, conscious and unconscious, and the social-political context shape teaching and learning. Mindfulness is a pathway for cultivating cultural competency through embodied awareness by building the reflective muscle to recognize, disrupt, and transform deep-rooted beliefs, entrenched assumptions, and well-established behaviors. Mindfulness invites both faculty and students to bring their intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual selves to the learning exchange.

THE Hastings Conference of the Library Association has come and gone, and the battle fought during the Annual General Meeting was in full keeping with the town's historical tradition. But whereas the defeat of Harold in 1066 led to a long era of stability in English history, the results of the A.G.M. vote last month will cause chaos and uncertainty in the immediate future of the Library Association. After protracted debate the Council's proposals for reorganisation went to the vote and gained a majority of very nearly 4 to 1. But just before the ballot it transpired that, at the request of the Privy Council, to which body the bye‐law alterations must be sent for approval, the votes of institutional delegates had to be counted separately from those of personal members. At the count, over 500 personal members voted for, with 35 against, but the institutional delegate vote was 135 for, with 141 against. So, for the present, all is uncertainty, and librarians everywhere will now await the Privy Council's decision with more than usual interest and impatience.

The major research objectives were to identify the differences among the searchers of users of online bibliographic systems who have different backgrounds of training and experience, and the differences among the searches of persons with and without experience of the Eric database. A quasi‐experimental research design used forty‐two searchers separated into five experience levels who conducted two pre‐selected searches using the Dialog system and the Eric database. The results were measured with variables which related to the search outcome, i.e., cost effectiveness, precision, and recall and to the search process and errors.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the nineteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1992. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

The term ‘informatics’ was first advanced formally by the Director of VINITI, A. I. Mikhailov, and his colleagues A. I. Chernyi and R. S. Gilyarevskii, in their paper Informatics—new name for the theory of Scientific Information published at the end of 1966. An English translation was circularized in the beginning of 1967. As the authors state in this paper, they are not the first to use this term, and they quote a review by Professor J. G. Dorfmann of their own book Fundamentals of Scientific Information in which Dorfmann criticizes the use of other terminology, such as ‘documentation’, ‘documentalistics’, ‘information science’, and so on. Although the authors do not object to the use of the word ‘Documentation’ in the name of the International Federation for Documentation, nevertheless they claim that this term has not found application in the USSR and indeed they apologize for spending some time in discussing its suitability as a name for ‘the new scientific discipline which studies the structure and properties of scientific information as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methods, and organization’. It is clear that the authors have made a thorough survey of the literature, as might be expected, and they argue fairly about the meaning of most of the terms that have at one time or another been advanced to name this ‘new discipline’. Their definition is as stated above but they are careful to add the rider that Informatics docs not investigate the specific content of scientific information, only the structure and properties. In their paper they also advance definitions for ‘information’, ‘scientific information’, ‘scientific information activity’, ‘information officer’, and ‘information scientist’. They have backed up their proposal by changing the title of their own book for its second edition, and the title of the information science fascicule of the Referativnyi Zhurnal, which is now called Informatiki.

Research papers on the scientific aspects of combustion have hitherto been published in a great many journals, none of which has been exclusively devoted to the subject. This has made it hard for the research worker and the designer of equipment to keep abreast of developments. The publication of a new quarterly, Combustion and Flame, is therefore greatly to be welcomed. It is under the auspices of the recently‐formed Combustion Institute, which has taken over the organization of the periodic International Symposia on Combustion. The Editor‐in‐Chief is Sir Alfred Egerton; the Editors are Dr Bernard Lewis, of Pittsburgh, and Professor Ubbelohde of Imperial College, and there is an international editorial board. The publishers are Messrs Butterworths; in the United States the journal is distributed by Interscience Publishers Inc.

The issues involved in the construction of an expert system for retrieval are described, together with some of the techniques that have been used in artificial intelligence and information science to tackle them. The solutions adopted by the prototype expert system PLEXUS are described, with particular reference to the semantic processing that takes place. The paper concludes with a discussion of continuing issues on which work is currently proceeding.

The year has been notable for the publication of the first volume of the British Union‐Catalogue of Periodicals. Under the agreement with the publishers, Messrs. Butterworth & Co., Ltd., the work will be issued in four volumes; and this first volume, covering the letters A‐C, was published simultaneously here and in the United States on 3rd October 1955.