Up to two-thirds of African languages have a system of noun classification of some sort. This paper proposes an alternative approach to the noun class system of the Dagaare and Akan languages based more on an interaction between morphology and phonology than on semantics. Dagaare and Akan are two West African languages that exhibit mainly suffixal…

Between 1876 and 1883, Melvil Dewey worked as a Boston entrepreneur promoting a variety of educational schemes that addressed the nation's library, metric, and spelling reform interests. During that time he started and lost one business and started another within weeks. In addition, he used his reform zeal to develop credibility with a number of…

Describes LASH (project for a list of Australian subject headings) through its development and demise. (RAO)

Discussion of Wayne Wiegand's criticism of library and information science focuses on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu to help form a new set of frameworks. Topics include social institutions and symbolic power; cultural production and librarianship; and classification as symbolic power. (LRW)

This project looks at the body of literature related to visual communication and the categories that emerge from the writings to develop a taxonomy of topics and some sense of the location of the most important, or at least the most frequently written about, areas of study. (Author/LRW)

Provides a critical analysis of the development and deployment of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), focusing on discourse surrounding creation of the system's "information" category. Suggests that it functions to position information as a major sector of the economy and to organize data about information as a…

Suggests eight guidelines to aid the analyst in optimizing the manner in which rating scale categories cooperate to improve the usefulness of the resultant measures. Presents these guidelines in the context of Rasch analysis, but notes that they reflect aspects of rating scale functioning that impact all methods of analysis. (SLD)

Presents a broad definition of "testlet" and suggests a framework for classifying types of testlets. Considers several issues that bear on the conceptualization of testlets and analyses of scores from tests composed of testlets. Suggests some research topics that seem particularly important to advancing the meaningful and appropriate use…

Discusses T. D. Wilson's research emphasis on situating the investigation of information behavior within the context of the everyday world of work; considers embodied cognition; and presents two approaches to the investigation of classification in context: classification as scaffolding, and classification as infrastructure. (Author/LRW)

Early in the 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee had a powerful idea--the concept of the World Wide Web. The success of this vision produced an unparalleled explosion of information, which in turn resulted in a parallel problem--how to locate the right piece of information. A 2005 study by Hanson and Carlson, published by the Educational Development Center,…

This is the second in a two-part special issue on the nation's research agenda on violence against women (VAW). As introduced in Part 1, this special issue is not the definitive word on what the nation's research agenda should be, nor is it the final critique on the current state of research in this critical area. Rather, this special issue is an…

This report summarizes an analysis of AISD 2006-2007 high school students' attendance and grade point average.

Organization is believed to be related to understanding and memory. Whether this belief was applicable in biochemical education was examined about two years after students had experienced biochemistry classes in their first year. The ability of organizing information in biochemistry was judged from the number of correct links of 886 biochemical…

Decisions about the classification of eating disorders have significant scientific and clinical implications. The eating disorder diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) reflect the collective wisdom of experts in the field but are frequently not supported in…

This article discusses the life course perspective on drug use, including conceptual and analytic issues involved in developing the life course framework to explain how drug use trajectories develop during an individual's lifetime and how this knowledge can guide new research and approaches to management of drug dependence. Central concepts…