Examines the practical details of setting up live online reference services in libraries. Topics include choosing software; differences between licensed and hosted applications; models used to implement virtual reference services; how libraries are using these services in day to day operations; and marketing strategies. (Author/LRW)

Describes the positive results when a high school English teacher decided to have her students choose poems to be presented to and discussed by the class. Notes that Alice Walker's poems were chosen often by the students. Suggests students began to have a genuine interaction with these poems they chose themselves. (RS)

Presents annotations of 30 works of adolescent literature (published in 1999) chosen as the result of voting by students in five different regions of the United States. Notes that the goals of the project are to encourage young people to read and to make teens, teachers, librarians, and parents aware of new literature for young adults. (SG)

Explores the relationship between fathers and sons in two very different books. Notes that David and Daniel Hays'"My Old Man and the Sea" describes a journey around Cape Horn providing both sailors with a new perspective on their relationship. Considers how Tony Early's "Jim the Boy" takes readers into a happy North Carolina family. (SG)

This article discusses electric motors and the many ways in which they are used. Selecting the most appropriate miniature DC electric motor wisely will contribute toward success and satisfaction in designing and building motorized projects and activities. Typical parts suppliers stock a variety of miniature DC motors and provide sufficient…

The CIO (Chief Information Officer) is a relatively new concept in higher education. There have been directors of college and university computer centers for over half a century, but the first CIOs did not appear until the late 1970s. The need for the position in academia really began with the need to manage and coordinate computing and…

When it comes to selecting science trade books, there are plenty of lists and guides that identify good books; however, when it is time to create a unit or add to the classroom library, selecting appropriate books can still be a challenge. Recommended books may not be available in the school or local libraries, and budget constraints may prohibit…

This article provides a comprehensive review of research regarding five types of validity for each of four major tests used to measure emotional intelligence (EI). It culls and synthesizes information scattered among a host of articles in academic journals, technical reports, chapters, and books, as well as unpublished papers and manuscripts. It…

In this article, the authors examine the key factors that influence student choice of a business major and how business schools can help students make that choice more realistically. Investigating students at a regional university, the authors found that whereas those with better quantitative skills tended to major in accounting or finance, those…

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been raised repeatedly. However, a computational model specifying how people select strategies from their repertoire is still lacking. The proposed strategy selection learning (SSL) theory predicts a strategy selection process on the basis…

N.O. Schiller and A. Caramazza (2003) and A. Costa, D. Kovacic, E. Fedorenko, and A. Caramazza (2003) have argued that the processing of freestanding gender-marked morphemes (e.g., determiners) and bound gender-marked morphemes (e.g., adjective suffixes) during syntactic encoding in speech production follows distinct principles, with only…

In the corporate world, more and more companies have begun to use a more effective method of evaluating prospective employees. It is estimated that by 1996, approximately 20 to 30 percent of the nation's large companies had begun to use this more effective method known as behavioral-based interviewing (BI). This article explains what BI is and…

Approval plans are used by many libraries as an adjunct to title-by-title selection, and sometimes as a substitute for it. The author examines this approach to purchasing library materials, considering positive and negative effects approval plans may have on collection balance as well as on acquisitions budgets and workflow. The article also…

Educators have several reasons to follow the volatile debate over immigration in Congress--a debate that ground to a halt last week before lawmakers' spring recess. In the long term some of the plans would allow more teachers from other countries to work in schools or change the enforcement of rules governing other school related jobs. More…

Wilfrid Laurier University would consider only women for an opening in the psychology department, and credentials be damned. Clive Seligman protested on the grounds that the university's blatant attempt at social engineering fatally interferes with the epistemological mission of higher education. It confuses academic merit with biology, he…