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Using a modem, telephone, and telecommunications software, a computer can put you in touch with people and services. A computer isn't needed to go online. With a computer, however, services can be used more effectively and cheaply. The author defines and discusses modems, software, and several services, and notes one major problem with telecommunications: money.

Discusses the microcomputer policy implemented by Las Vegas‐Clark County Library District. Examines the goals of the computer public access facility, the software used, the staff, the access policies, and the staff training program. Summarises that public access to computers should be kept manageable, that Macs have proved as popular as IBMs, and that only the most popular software should be used initially.

Purpose – This study explored agentive and sustainable teacher development as part of literacy coaching that employed a reflective framework and video with an apprenticeship stance. This chapter examines principles of apprenticeship and the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model to analyze the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher.

Design/methodology/approach – An earlier seven-month multiple case study of literacy coaching with four secondary level teachers revealed seven joint actions (i.e., revoice, build, ask questions to develop understanding, ask dissonant questions, suggest, disagree, reconceptualize) and four categories of joint action (i.e., directive/consonant, directive/dissonant, responsive/consonant, and responsive/dissonant) within a model of joint action for literacy coaching (Reichenberg, 2018). This analysis mapped those joint actions onto the GRR model (McVee, Shanahan, Hayden, Boyd, & Pearson, 2018; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). This chapter explicates reasoning for variability in responsibility and the potential relationship between variability and the development of teachers’ thinking and action through in-depth analysis of a single coaching session. Examples from other teachers’ coaching sessions are included.

Findings – Synthesis of the two models shows that joint actions initiated by the coach that were directive/dissonant fell on the left side of the GRR model with primary coach responsibility. Actions initiated by the coach that were classified as directive/consonant came next on the journey toward the middle, followed by responsive/dissonant actions. Responsive/consonant actions encompassed the middle region of shared responsibility. The same actions initiated by the teacher mirrored this progression. Principles of apprenticeship in this gradual release of responsibility highlight the bi-directionality of expertise in situated action informed by historical and dynamic context (Mercer, 2008). Evidence of teachers’ growing agency and sustainability were present in joint actions they initiated within the context of literacy coaching.

Research limitations/implications – Analysis of the actions of a literacy coach and teacher as directive, responsive, consonant, and dissonant add complexity to the discussion about how to transfer responsibility for reflection from coaches to teachers. Awareness of how joint actions map onto the GRR model can inform coaches’ and teachers’ decisions as they thoughtfully move toward greater teacher agency within coaching interaction.

Practical implications – The reflective framework employed in this study is applicable to a variety of settings such as instructional coaching across the disciplines, coaching by in-service literacy specialists, and the preparation of pre-service literacy coaches. The model of joint action for analyzing coaching interaction could be used by in-service literacy coaches, pre-service literacy coaches, and teachers who are being coached.

Originality/value – This chapter analyzes the transition of responsibility for reflection from coach to teacher. Principles of both the GRR model and apprenticeship theory provide a theoretical explanation for how these teachers achieved greater agency and sustainable development of a reflective stance.

For almost a decade, some libraries have offered access to electronic bulletin boards (Bulletin Board System, or BBS) for a variety of community service purposes. Public libraries, in particular, have been at the forefront of this development. Patrick Dewey has documented the BBS development he pioneered at the North‐Pulaski public library and other activity in this field.

“Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of “good” and “evil” as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter… It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil.” Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West, 1975.

This study examines how a social studies methods course, with an emphasis in civic education, is taught and carried through from its original implementation within a teacher education social studies course to practicing teachers’ classrooms. Findings suggest that by implementing social action curriculum projects teachers: 1) effectively integrated emerging curriculum, 2) facilitated student-led instruction in a democratic classroom, 3) increased effective communication and built partnerships beyond the classroom, and 4) used structured reflections as a tool for growth and evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to present two models of human cognition. The first narrow model concentrates on the mind as an information-processing apparatus, and interactions with information as altering thought structures and filling gaps in knowledge. A second model incorporates elements of unconsciousness, embodiment and affect. The selection of one model over the other, often done tacitly, has consequences for subsequent models of information seeking and use.

A close reading of embodied engagements with pornography guided by existential phenomenology.

The paper develops a phenomenology of information seeking, centered primarily around the work of Merleau-Ponty, to justify a more expansive concept of cognition. The authors demonstrate the roles of affect and embodiment in document assessment and use, with a prolonged example in the realm of browsing pornography.

Models of information seeking and use need to account for diverse kinds of human-document interaction, to include documents such as music, film and comics that engage the emotions or are perceived through a broader band of sensory experience to include visual and auditory components. The authors consider how those human-document engagements form virtual communities based on the similarity of their members’ affective and embodied responses, which in turn inform the arrangements, through algorithms, of the relations of documents to each other. Less instrumental forms of information seeking and use – ones that incorporate elements of embodiment and affect – are characterized as esthetic experiences, following the definition of the esthetic provided by Dewey. Ultimately the authors consider, given the ubiquity of information seeking and its rhythm in everyday life, whether we can meaningfully characterize information seeking as a distinct human process.

The recent trend in globalization has had a positive impact on international education, in that it has compelled many societies to transcend national boundaries in an effort to exchange knowledge and expertize in teaching, curriculum and education policy. The practice of cultural borrowing and lending, in which one country adopts or borrows policies and practices from another, is a significant feature of international education, and has been accelerated by these globalizing trends. According to Tilly, internationalization of “capital, trade, industrial organization, communications, political institutions, science, disease, atmospheric pollution, vindictive violence, and organized crime has been producing a net movement toward globalization since the middle of the twentieth century” (Tilly, 2004, p. 13). In the area of international education, an intensification in international communication and cooperation has had a positive impact on educational research, planning and policy development (Schriewer & Martinez, 2004), and may, as some have argued, brought about a convergence of patterns in the organization of education across national boundaries. Nevertheless, globalization in education carries with it the potential to undermine developing and transitional societies in their efforts to maintain indigenous approaches to educating future citizens – a potential that may contribute to the “clash of localities” that is inherent in the globalization process, in which local tradition is frequently at odds with international trends (Mitter, 2001). A measured approach to transnational projects in education development will ensure that the process of cultural borrowing does not lead to the inadvertent export of ideas and values that are at variance with a given country's social, political and historical context, while simultaneously allowing for knowledge transfer across borders. Cultural borrowing is a necessary element in the transfer process, as it may provide the transitioning society with a model in the form of a curriculum, set of standards, or practices. However, as Dewey points out in Democracy and Education, any model or “ideal” must be adapted to meet the needs of the local context:We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. (Dewey, 1997, p. 45)

To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool.

Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positions; neo‐pragmatism as a non‐dualist, both purpose and communication oriented, epistemology; and a sociocultural perspective within pedagogy, originated from the Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky.

Brought together, a neo‐pragmatist, sociocultural perspective contributes to a focus on people's actions through the use of linguistic and physical tools. As a tangible example of how neo‐pragmatism can be applied as an epistemological tool within LIS, information seeking seen as communicative participation is discussed. This article unites a perspective on information seeking as communicative participation with the neo‐pragmatist concepts of “tools” and “communities of justification”. The article is concluded by an assessment of neo‐pragmatism as an epistemological position within LIS, including those research issues that arise from this position and that are introduced along the way.

In its focus on usability, the neo‐pragmatist position provides a possible bridge between academic and other professional practices in the field of LIS.

Provides, through the means of neo‐pragmatism, an argument for the necessity of epistemological argumentation within LIS.

The idea that education should be made relevant to students is long-standing and pervasive in American society. Recently, motivation scientists have clarified important characteristics of students’ relevance beliefs, ways to intervene, and individual characteristics moderating intervention effects. Yet, there has been little consideration of the role of situational constraints and sociocultural influences on students’ relevance appraisal processes. We describe how societal changes and broader educational purposes affect the issues that students consider to be relevant to their educational experiences and the values they subsequently attribute to their studies. After differentiating components of relevance and highlighting ways in which particular components may be influenced by changing sociocultural milieus, we consider the implications of these processes for the development of subjective task value beliefs. Specifically, we show how the proposed model of relevance helps to parse out aspects of relevance appraisals that can be used to differentiate between components of subjective task value and argue that there is need to expand current models proposed in expectancy-value theory (EVT). Finally, we explore how recent global events may impact the social construction of educational relevance and constrain students’ developing beliefs about the value of their educational opportunities and implications for future research and educators.