Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes

Introduction: library management and the global economic crisis This chapter attempts to take a global, or at least a European, look at the effects of the economic crisis on the dominant, market-driven approaches to library management and at the underlying socio-economic aspects of that crisis. Throughout history, library administrators and managers have certainly demonstrated an active interest in socioeconomic and technological change and crisis. The risks and threats posed to libraries and library collections are typically related to natural causes (earthquakes, floods, etc.) and to human-related disasters (epidemics and wars, terrorism, etc.) resulting from political and social instability. Economic crises, however, have deep philosophical roots, are difficult to predict and even harder to understand (Greene and McMenemy, 2012). This is so in the case of the global economic crisis of 2008, which hit not only libraries but also their dominant underlying library management principles with full force. Indeed, although a number of studies are available (see Kostagiolas et al., 2013, for a review) on the effects of economic crisis on library services and their operations, very few, if any, actually deal with the impact of economic crisis on the library management paradigm itself. Lessons can be learned from the current economic crisis in terms of the role and the socioeconomic positioning of libraries, and obviously the ‘proper’ after-crisis library management still needs to be detailed, elaborated and analysed. This chapter offers a contribution to discussions on the reassessment of the underlying values of library and information services management in the face of economic crisis. This management notion should aim to guide and actually prepare libraries to respond in financially straitened times. For the present analysis, it is not considered necessary to provide detailed definitions of economic (or fiscal) crises or even to detail the literature on the causes of the different types of crises. However, everyone dealing with library management will agree that a deep economic recession can bring about catastrophic socio-economic events that may cause shock to libraries. For example, public library administration will be in a distressed condition when state funding is reduced by 80% in three fiscal years and staffing levels are dramatically reduced.

Column Editor’s Note. It is a privilege to be asked to edit and write a column addressing issues of concern to the general public and the public library community. I will attempt to bring issues forward from the point of view of public libraries, large and small, wealthy and struggling, used and neglected, and those facing the future, as well as those struggling to preserve practices that deserve respect, if not preservation. Although the Journal of Library Administration has peer-reviewed articles, this “In the Public Interest” column is intended to represent all of the perspectives of the public concerning public libraries, and those of persons who are delivering service to the public through public libraries. This column will appear on a rotation, in several issues each year. Submissions are not peer-reviewed, but are reviewed and selected by the column editor. Public library administrators, managers, anyone on the staff of a public library, and those serving in elected and appointed positions in local governments are invited to contribute to the column by contacting Josie Parker at josie@aadl.org email address. Manuscript guidelines and submission timelines will be sent with further instruction for authors.

Many public library administrators are being forced to look toward outsourcing as a way of securing critical support services. Begins with a description of the Charleston County Library’s use of cataloging outsourcing services, followed by an explanation of the various methods employed by vendors to transmit cataloging data to customers. There are practical suggestions for those considering an outsourcing arrangement, with solutions for offsetting the cataloging quality shortcomings inherent in some outsourcing practices. Concludes that with proper planning and vigilance, outsourcing can produce a quality product, one that will allow the technical‐services staff the time needed to construct a unified index for the library’s multifarious materials and information sources.

This article responds to the concern of small libraries that their size puts them at a disadvantage when it comes to advocating for public funds. By means of interviews with public library administrators and local government agents, it is shown that small libraries can be successful in local public funding when they use some of the same techniques of making themselves fundable that large libraries use. These are: emphasizing the dollar value of their activities to local government; taking into account local government agendas; involving the business community as spokespersons; and astutely managing library opposition. Research for the article is based in two states where local public funding has been notoriously weak, California and Pennsylvania. Libraries discussed (selected by convenient sampling) are in library service areas ranging in population from 9,278 (Borough of Carnegie, Pennsylvania) to 54,400 (San Rafael, California).

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to propose and verify a motivational aspect of goal-based innovation that accounts for the effect of goal-directed self-regulation processes on innovative behavior. Its purpose is to extend present knowledge of the motivational antecedents to innovation at work. Additionally, the study assesses the extent to which the positive effect of the proactive generation of goals may increase as a result of role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) (defined as individuals’ perceived capacities to exercise proactive, interpersonal, and integrative activities above and beyond the formal requirements of their job descriptions (Parker, 1998; Parkeret al., 2006).Design/methodology/approach– A survey was conducted with a sample of 395 male and female administrative employees in two institutions in central Italy (city hall).Findings– The results confirmed the two hypotheses: proactive goal generation was a strong predictor of individual work innovative behavior and the RBSE as a psychological state, is directly related to proactive and innovative behavior and it is also moderator in the relationship between proactive goal generation and innovative behavior.Research limitations/implications– The data were collected using one-time, self-report measures and with the cross-sectional research design.Practical implications– The results of this study imply that pro-innovation organizational strategies and practices should stimulate among workers an anticipatory, self-directed approach toward professional action in the workplace. It is management’s task to encourage a proactive environment of change-oriented goals and the corresponding strategies with which they may be realized. Creating such an environment would provide a motivational stimulus that could effectively guide workers’ proactive and innovative conduct.Social implications– The results of this study contribute to change human resources management practices in public administrations where administrative employees have been assigned goals that they were required to meet by performing well-defined tasks. Recently, public administrations have been encouraged to innovate and answer with efficiency to new public policies and customers’ demands. Thus, human resources management needs to find new solutions to address these changing demands and employees’ changing attitudes and behaviors.Originality/value– Furthermore, the results of this study contribute to broadening understanding of the psychological factors that can boost the positive effect of self-regulatory efforts on creativity and individual innovation.

<i>Public Library Law and Administration in California: A Review of Selected Problems</i>. F. Patrick Henry

This paper is intended to provoke thought and discussion rather than to set out any ‘right way’ to communicate geoscience information. Public administration is complex, operating at several levels. It involves a wide variety of people, many of whom have little or no geoscience knowledge. It is important for geoscientists to understand administrative procedures so that results can be provided in the right form at the optimum time. There should also be a good understanding of the views, requirements and capacities of each potential target audience. This is best achieved through direct consultation and discussion. Consultation also helps to build trust and to guide the design of specific products. Results need to be presented logically, clearly and in straightforward language supported by good illustrations. These need to be tailored to fit the needs of each target audience; a single output will seldom meet the specific needs of all. The focus should be on the matters that are of importance to each audience, rather than on the research as such. Good dissemination of results is crucial and may require continuing efforts rather than just taking place at the end of the study. Consultation, presentation for non-specialists, and dissemination are time consuming. There needs to be adequate provision of staff time and money to support these. This may require a change in attitudes of some funding organizations. It is wise to plan consultation, presentation and dissemination from the commencement of work, revising plans as a fuller understanding of systems and audience requirements is gained.

THE “power of the Press” is infinite in almost everything, and none the less in Public Library Administration. In addition to notices of important accessions to the Library, reports of library lectures, paragraphs on every happening with the object of keeping the institution constantly in the public eye the idea of contributing special “publicity” articles to the local newspapers may be worthy of general consideration.

The purpose of this study is to compare, and contrast the resource requirements, and effectiveness of adult literacy programs in Uganda, assess its implementation, and recommend future policy for the development of adult literacy education. The report presents the research, and evaluation background, providing analyses of effectiveness in terms of both the attainment, and retention of reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, including practical knowledge, and attitude changes - particularly, knowledge about HIV/AIDS prevention, and care. It explores the factors affecting the performance of adult education, the costs of activities, and the extent of local commitment under the current socioeconomic conditions. The context of literacy programs in Uganda, and the current state of both government, and nongovernmental organizations' programs, are described, emphasizing on outcomes, and cost-effectiveness, rather than process, or methodology. Conclusions suggest that while the programs are helping the government in redressing the imbalance of educational opportunities, namely between men and women, these programs are nonetheless in danger of missing their primary target, i.e., the people who have had no schooling. Furthermore, the average level of attainment is very limited, revealing the quality of implementation is the major explanation for the variations in learners' attainments. Recommendations suggest consistency in policy, to ensure reconciliation between decentralization, and the priority for universal literacy.

Design for environment and design for disassembly practices in Malaysia: a practitioner's perspectives

The musical content of general readership periodicals remains a largely untapped resource in spite of the potential for a broader understanding of music education from the vantage point of music educators, music students, and the general public. The Ladies' Home Journal provides a particularly unique lens into the history of music education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the first American magazine to reach a million subscribers (with thousands of additional copies sold on newsstands), it had the potential for wide impact. (1) Between 1890 and 1919, the Journal contained over two hundred articles specifically on music and music education with hundreds of other articles providing further information on music in the context of daily life. (2) There were also musical advice columns written by the pianist Josef Hofmann, the vocal pedagogue Mathilde Marchesi, and the music critic William J. Henderson, hundreds of pieces of sheet music (both commissioned by well-known composers and submitted by readers in composition contests), and thousands of advertisements for musical products. (3) Previous studies of the Journal's musical content include research on some of its sheet music, a sampling of Hofmann's advice columns, and biographical studies of important contributors such as Hofmann, Marchesi, and Henderson. (4) Studies of other general readership periodicals include examinations of the Victorian-era Godeys Lady's Book and the Civil War--era children's magazine Our Young Folk. (5) As previous researchers have noted, the musical content of general readership periodicals is important to examine because of the prevalence of periodicals in the home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and because active professional musicians and music educators shared their expertise in a variety of print media. (6) Because the Journal's multifaceted musical offerings have not been thoroughly investigated, the purpose of this study is to document, analyze, and discuss the musical content of the Journal between 1890 and 1919, the years under the editorial tenure of Edward Bok. The focus is on the musical content in the Journal, who contributed to the musical content, and how the Journal's content reflected music education trends of the era. Method A content analysis was conducted on 369 issues of the Journal from 1890 through 1919. (7) This provided a systematic way to analyze the large amount of material (over twenty-eight thousand pages), quantify findings, and seek trends over time such as changes in attitudes, topics of importance, or even values. (8) Resources included bound volumes and microfilm obtained from Michigan State University Library and the Kalamazoo Public Library. (9) With the page as the unit of analysis, the briefest possible reading was used to locate all items of interest. Once musical items were located, broad categories of nonfiction articles, musical advice columns, sheet music, and advertisements were systematically examined in a search for more detailed information on music teaching and learning. (10) The content analysis of the magazine was supplemented with archival research into the Curtis Company records. (11) The Journal was found to contain 227 articles specifically on music or music education as well as 450 nonfiction articles that mentioned music in the context of daily life, public and private school activities, and in the lives of well-known personalities. Along with the articles, there were 154 musical advice columns answering readers' letters, 270 pieces of sheet music (as well as several examples of music embedded within children's plays and nonfiction articles), and over 3,300 advertisements for musical products. Before examining this rich musical content in more detail, an overview of the Journal's early history is provided. An Overview of the Journal Publisher Cyrus Curtis founded the Journal in 1883, with his wife, Louisa Knapp, serving as the editor. …

Związki między funkcjonowaniem ekosystemów a korzyściami czerpanymi przez społeczeństwo rozpatrywano już od lat 70. XX w. Prowadzone badania i analizy w tym zakresie, a także opracowanie i udoskonalenie metod szacowania wartości ekonomicznej usług ekosystemów, są powodem zmian postaw wśród decydentów i polityków. W ostatnich latach można zauważyć wzrost świadomości ekologicznej szczególnie w krajach wysokorozwiniętych, który sprawił, iż coraz częściej, zarówno w pracach naukowych jak i dokumentach dotyczących rozwoju obszarów zurbanizowanych dużo uwagi poświęca się usługom ekosystemów. Zauważono, że kondycja miast zależy od zdrowego środowiska przyrodniczego, które wytwarza szereg korzyści, a zdrowe ekosystemy stanowią podstawę zrównoważonego rozwoju miast, ponieważ pozytywnie oddziałują na dobrobyt człowieka i działalność gospodarczą. Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie aktualnego stanu wiedzy na temat teoretycznych aspektów związanych z pojęciem usługi ekosystemów oraz ich znaczenia dla zrównoważonego rozwoju obszarów miejskich. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na działania podejmowane przez gminy w tym zakresie m.in. problem planowania przestrzennego miast w tym zachowanie: odpowiedniej ilości i jakości terenów zielonych oraz funkcjonowania ekosystemów wodnych i naturalnej retencji wody.

Providing people with feedback about their intergroup biases is a central part of many diversity training and other bias‐education efforts. Although this practice may increase self‐awareness, people sometimes respond negatively to learning about their own biases. In the present review, we provide a framework for understanding when feedback about intergroup bias should lead to behavior change intentions, and when it can work against that goal. Specifically, we suggest that feedback about performance on measures of bias (e.g., the Implicit Association Test) will cause psychological discomfort to the extent that feedback about intergroup bias is: (1) discrepant from self‐reported attitudes, and (2) more personally or socially unacceptable than self‐reported attitudes. We then suggest two possible routes stemming from that psychological discomfort: If people accept personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond to psychological discomfort with compunction and direct efforts toward behavior and attitude change. By contrast, if people reject personal responsibility for feedback, they will respond defensively, derogating the feedback and trying to prove that the results are inaccurate. We use responses to feedback about implicit bias as a test case to demonstrate our model and discuss the current state of the literature on responding to IAT feedback. We also discuss interventions that can move people from defensiveness to compunction and open our metaphorical “file drawer” to discuss lessons learned.

Public administration is incrementally moving on a reform track that leads from responsiveness to collaboration. Attempts to enrich the discussion on the current state of new managerialism in public administration and to explain why and how it makes progress towards higher levels of cooperation and collaboration with various social players such as the private sector, the third sector, and citizens. Argues that in the end this is a socially desirable trend with meaningful benefits that reach far beyond the important idea of responsiveness. The idea of “collaborative” administration thus challenges “responsive” public administration. Maintains that the collaborative model, whether bureaucracy‐driven, citizen‐driven, or private‐sector‐driven, is realistic and beneficial even if it cannot be fully applied. Goes on to describe two major experiences from the Israeli arena. Finally, summarizes the theoretical and practical experiences that can be learned from these ventures and elaborates on the future of collaboration in modern public administration.

The article analyzes the current state and problems of information and analytical provision of localpublic government activities in Ukraine by means of comparative-critical analysis of, first of all, thestructure of relevant state administrations, and secondly, the presence of information and analytical provisiondepartments in the state administrations structure, their names and quantity, and thirdly, these divisions’functions and tasks, and, fourth, the general problems of formation and validation of the information andanalytical provision of the Ukrainian local public administration activities mechanisms.The study was aimed at comparing the current status of the information and analytical provisiondepartments tasks to their basic theoretical purpose of collecting, generalizing, processing information anddeveloping information and analytical documents which are necessary for the making effective managementdecisions.For comparative analysis of the current state of the information and analytical provision of local publicgovernment activities the two groups of local state administrations of different levels have been selected. Thecontent and trends of the current state of the processes of information and analytical provision of local publicgovernment activities are revealed by the example of eight local state administrations, regional and district levels.Based on the results of the comparative analysis, we identified important trends within the processesof information and analytical provision of local authorities activities in Ukraine: the country lacks holisticinformation and analytical provision system for local public government activities; the country's system ofpublic power needs unification or systematic regulations of structural divisions dealing with informationand analytical provision of local authorities; local state administrations have not yet built and are not evenplanning to create their own information databases covering various areas of public administration, social,political, economic and cultural situation, and databases of the regional development, of sectoral statisticsor other fields; local state administrations pay little attention to information security and protection ofinformation resources of public administration; regional and district state administrations lack separatesubdivisions that would be strictly specialized in information and analytical provision of local authorities(usually, information and analytical provision of local authorities is considered an addition to other roles,ranging from the structural and communication functions to the legal one); on the whole, the overall systemof information and analytical provision of local authorities in this country is still at the concept stage of itsdevelopment.