In light of the recent revival of the creationism versus evolution issue, the author briefly summarizes both positions, defends evolution on the basis of fossils and rock ages, and refutes six creationist arguments against evolution. For journal availability, see SO 505 260. (AV)

The author reviews research on the origins of life, beginning with Thales (636 B.C.), synthesized by C. Darwin in "The Origin of Species," continued by H. DeVries' mutation theory, and enhanced by the discovery in 1944 of DNA. For journal availability, see SO 505 260. (AV)

Explains the development of standardized coding for digital text, especially for multilingual text, that has culminated in the Unicode standard. Topics include the University of Michigan's Humanities Text Initiative (HTI); a history of character sets; transliteration; non-Roman languages; fonts; and barriers to adoption of the Unicode standard. A…

This report on the Getty Online Searching Project, which studied the end-user searching behavior of 27 humanities scholars over a 2-year period, focuses on previous familiarity with retrieved documents. Topics include document familiarity and relevance; document familiarity and information retrieval; measuring retrieval success; and document…

Presents results of an analysis of 476 Latin American databases in the social sciences and humanities. Variables studied include country of origin, subject, type of database and access, number of records, time span, geographical coverage, and language. Problems of user access and visibility are discussed. (Author/LRW)

Describes a seminar course for underprepared college students which focuses on the study of the hero's quest and solves many of the difficulties inherent in the remedial writing course previously taught. Aims to teach critical thinking, close critical reading, and critical and creative writing as necessary for making the journey of inquiry. (PA)

Describes a methodology for developing bibliometric performance indicators which provide a framework or paradigm for application-oriented research in the field of evaluation quantitative science and technology studies, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Aims at identifying characteristics of scholarly publications that reflect…

Considers how the university might respond to the electronic text revolution in offering an undergraduate education in the arts and humanities. Discusses how the University of South Australia might provide a program for prospective teachers in the world of texts, and it might offer different ways of reading and writing. (SG)

Pre/posttest data from 177 graduate and 196 undergraduate students in business ethics courses involving case studies and class debate showed that women and undergraduates made the most postcourse gains. Humanities majors had markedly higher posttest scores than any other majors. (Contains 13 references.) (SK)

Discusses the proposal by South Africa's grant-making National Research Foundation (NRF) to introduce a ratings system for the humanities and social sciences comparable to that which pertains in the natural sciences. Welcomes this development and argues for full and open consultation with the research community regarding appropriate ratings…

From the humanities sample of the Survey of Doctoral Recipients 1977-95, a cross-sectional sample of tenured/tenure-track faculty and a longitudinal sample of doctoral recipients 1975-89 were studied. Gender salary differences were largely explained by rank. Substantial gender differences in tenure were found, with a slight decline in the gap for…

Humanities-oriented instruction can form the basis for or become an enriching part of social studies classes. Describes interdisciplinary humanities courses at a Virginia school. Provides six suggestions for principals who want to develop or expand the role of the humanities in social studies courses. (MLF)

Describes Grammateion, a hypertext system developed to simplify the use of ancient language symbols in scholarly work by providing basic grammatical and lexical information about Greek. A sidebar discussing the benefits of such technologies to the humanities argues that they allow teachers more time to interact with students and students to work…

Discussion of humanities research focuses on the humanist patron as author of the text. Highlights include the research process; style of expression; interpretation; multivocality; reflexivity; social validation; repatriation; the image of the library for the author; patterns of searching behavior; and reference librarian responses. (37…