Search results

Self-documentation is an increasingly common phenomenon, but it is not yet well understood. The purpose of this paper is to provide a philosophical framework for analyzing examples of self-documentation on the dimensions of ontology, epistemology and ethics.

The framework addresses these three major areas of philosophic thought by operationalizing insights from philosophy, chiefly the work of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s concepts of authenticity and fallenness inform the poles of each dimension of the framework.

Ontologically, self-documentation may manifest as document (authentic) or data (fallen); epistemologically, as understanding (authentic) or idle curiosity (fallen); and ethically, as self-care (authentic) or diversion (fallen). These dimensions are presented separately but are understood to be intermingled.

This unified framework offers a lens for examining and comparing cases of self-documentation and self-documents. No such framework has previously been articulated, but given the ubiquity and growing importance of self-documentation, it is needed.

AT the Exeter Conference, Dr. Kenyon, in his presidential address, touched upon an aspect of library work in such a manner as found a ready agreement in my mind as to its importance and far‐reaching effects. His address was based upon the solid ground of the public utility of libraries, and he proved, right to the hilt, the necessity of the advancement of the library movement on wide lines.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the prestige of the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) among Roman Catholics in leadership positions, who may be a potential market for this degree.

In a mail survey employing a comparative rating scale, respondents rated the prestige of the DMin relative to six other doctorates: PhD, EdD, PsyD, DBA, MD, and JD.

Ratings were provided by 184 priests, 73 deacons, and 95 directors of religious education (69 lay, 26 sisters). The DMin carried the least prestige with priests and the most with religious educators, particularly the sisters. In all groups, the DMin fared best on prestige when compared to the professional doctorates (DBA, EdD, PsyD) and worst relative to the traditional degrees (MD, JD, and PhD). When submitted to a cluster analysis, three groups emerged, corresponding to negative (46 percent), neutral (38 percent), and positive (16 percent) impressions of the prestige of the DMin. The majority of the priests (44 percent) were in the negative cluster whereas the largest proportion of deacons (45 percent) and most lay religious educators (71 percent) fell into the neutral cluster. In contrast, the largest proportion of the religious educators who were sisters by background went into the positive cluster (40 percent). With the exception of the sisters, the percentage of each group falling into the positive cluster was quite small and approximately the same size across the remaining three groups (16 percent, 15 percent, and 13 percent). A discriminant analysis of the clusters identified two discriminating functions; the primary function involved perceptions of the DMin relative to the traditional degrees (MD, JD, and PhD), whereas the very minor second function involved how the DMin is perceived in comparison to the newer practice doctorates (EdD, DBA, and PsyD).

The response rate was low.

Currently, owing to its low prestige, the DMin probably does not have a sizable potential market among Roman Catholic priests, but it may appeal more to religious educators.

The DMin may be subject to the same concerns and prejudices as raised about other professional doctorates.

Roman Catholics are a non‐traditional audience for the DMin. This degree's perceived prestige was not previously studied in this emerging market.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

This piece explores the philosophical origins of sense-making as defined in Brenda Dervin’s methodology.

This conceptual paper locates the origins of sense-making's rich ontological, epistemological and etymological heritage to the Classical Greece and the Pre-Socratic period. The Greek origins of sense-making‘s philosophical undercurrents surface again in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit before the idea is picked up again in twentieth century philosophy and library science.

This is a conceptual paper and no empirical findings are presented.

This paper makes an original contribution to the study of information seeking and to sense making theory and methodology.