In the spring of 2006, Hennepin County Library (HCL) in Minneapolis set out to create a compelling new reader's advisory website. Inspired by Web 2.0 principles, the library wanted to engage users as active participants, to integrate resources in ways that made sense to them, and to blend staff- and patron-contributed content to create an…

This publication follows the tradition of publishing selected papers from Pacific Islands Association of Libraries, Archives and Museums (PIALA) annual conferences. This 20th annual conference was held in Weno, Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia, November 15-19, 2010. The volume begins with a listing of the members of the PIALA 2010…

Although data driven-decision making has been the mantra of school reform for the last 10 years, school leaders benefit from frequent discussions in how to engage teachers in the process. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to apply Reeves' (2004) framework concerning Antecedents of Excellence in creating a school culture that routinely uses…

For more than 30 years, underrepresentation of certain racial, cultural, and income groups in gifted and talented programs has been documented as a serious problem. Not only does this issue make gifted programs appear as if they are designed solely for upper class, dominant-culture individuals, but it also means that talented students from diverse…

Background: Researchers have identified numerous policies and programs effective in reducing public health problems, yet many of these programs and policies have not been implemented throughout communities and states. Purpose: To assess the use of research-based information among leaders in the local public health system. Methods: We conducted a…

In the information-rich, rapidly changing 21st-century, educators are faced with unprecedented challenges. While new technologies have brought the people of the planet closer together, they have also brought them into contact with an overwhelming array of information sources. The Library of Congress is positioned to help educators respond to these…

In the experimental phase of this mixed-methods study, 49 middle school students receiving special education services took notes from the Internet under either a written notes or a copy-and-paste notes condition. Immediate, cued-recall measures of factual learning showed that students who wrote their notes were better able to recall what they had…

This article presents a commentary on "Making the Most of Information-Gathering Interviews With Children," in which, according to Jones, Larsson and Lamb provided a helpful overview on memory retrieval and communicative ability and on ways these may be fostered in interviews with children. They explored three interview protocols that have been…

Internet health--here, the public use of information Web sites to facilitate decision making on matters of health and illness--is a rhetorical practice, involving text and trajectories of influence. A fulsome account of it requires attention to all parts of the rhetorical triangle--the speaker, the subject matter, and the audience--yet most…

In the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe, the need for education for sustainable development and global citizenship has recently been emphasised. This emphasis has arguably found its major home in the social studies in higher education. Concurrently, there has been a decline in interest in "the sciences" as evidenced by a reduction in the…

This paper examines the extent of patients' health-related learning from a range of sources and aims to identify psycho-cognitive variables that predict learning. Using a survey design, we found that people higher in perceived health competence were lower in anxiety and took a more logical approach to decision making. Low perceived health…

In 2002, 45 percent of American adults had used the Internet to search for health information. However, according to a 2009 report, the number had increased to 71 percent of adults ages thirty to forty-nine and 46 percent of those 50 and older who had sought health information online. While the number of adults using the Internet to search for…

Internet usage logs captured during self-directed learning sessions were used to determine how undergraduate medical students used five popular sites to locate and access biomedical resources. Students' perceptions of each site's usefulness and reliability were determined through a survey. Google and Wikipedia were the most frequently used sites…

This investigation demonstrates the effect that peers have on students' academic engagement and educational aspirations. Forty-nine African American university students retrospectively discuss the manner by which their friends influenced their academic commitment and activity while in high school; their postsecondary education aspirations,…

A study was conducted to investigate the accessibility and use of e-resources in Tanzania. The methodology adopted for the study was survey in which questionnaires, interviews and observations were used in collection of the data. A total of 50 respondents participated in the study. The study revealed that livestock research institutes in Tanzania…