230 research outputs found
Cataloguing the internet: CATRIONA feasibility study : report to the British Library Research & Development Department
No full textThe idea of a distributed catalogue of Internet resources integrated with standard Z39.50 library system OPAC interfaces (and hence with retrieval of information on hard copy resources) is already practical at a basic level. Geac's Z39.50 GUI OPAC client. GeoPac, can search remote Z39.50 OPACs, retrieve USMARC records with URLs in 856$u, respond by loading a viewer like Mosaic or Netscape, and utilise it to retrieve and display the remotely held electronic resources on the local workstation. A range of Z39.50 OPACs can be searched server by server, making a basic-level distributed catalogue of Internet resources feasible. At least one other Z39.50 client, Dynix Horizon is close to having similar capabilities.
Significant further development and investigation is nevertheless required. A proposed demonstrator project - based around Scottish University Libraries and the BUBL Subject Tree initiative, but sufficiently 'open' to encompass other sites and approaches - is both feasible and essential, and would provide a focus for Z39.50 developments in the UK.
Z39.50 clients and associated Z39.50 OPACs describing resources could become preferred network navigation tools with other specific NIDR client types (WWW, gopher, WAIS, others) loaded as required. Library involvement is essential to sustainable Internet cataloguing initiatives
Building Quality Assurance into Metadata Creation: an Analysis based on the Learning Objects and e-Prints Communities of Practice
No full textThis paper challenges some of the assumptions underlying the metadata creation process in the context of two communities of practice, based around learning object repositories and open e-Print archives. The importance of quality assurance for metadata creation is discussed and evidence from the literature, from the practical experiences of repositories and archives, and from related research and practices within other communities is presented. Issues for debate and further investigation are identified, formulated as a series of key research questions. Although there is much work to be done in the area of quality assurance for metadata creation, this paper represents an important first step towards a fuller understanding of the subject.
Thinking the Feminist Vegetal Turn in the Shadow of Douglas-Firs: An Interview with Catriona Sandilands: An Interview with Catriona Sandilands
No full textThis is an interview with Catriona Sandilands, an environmental literary critic and ecocultural scholar whose work brings together questions of ecology, gender and sexuality, and multispecies biopolitics. She coined the term queer ecologies to describe and intervene in the manifold intersections running between sexuality, nature, and power in contemporary ecological conversations. The concept has made a powerful contribution to feminist and queer environmental scholarship, and to the larger environmental humanities. An intuitive gardener as well as plant scholar, she writes about plants in a unique way that pairs wonder about botanical materiality and evolutionary history with a concern about the biopolitical mechanisms that govern both vegetal and other, nonhuman and human, forms of life. Cate is a Professor of Environmental Studies at York University in Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy (1999) as well as over 80 essays, reviews, journal articles, and chapters in edited collections. She edited, with Bruce Erickson, the much-celebrated scholarly volume Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010); her edited collection of creative writing Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times will be published in September, 2019. Marianna Szczygielska and Olga Cielemęcka caught up with Cate on Galiano Island, BC, to discuss the recent vegetal turn in the humanities, feminist commitments to critical plant studies, and the lessons to be learned from paying close attention to the plants around us
Inconsistencies within the proposed framework for stabilizing fungal nomenclature risk further confusion
No full textSarah E. Kidd, Ferry Hagen, Catriona L. Halliday, Alireza Abdolrasouli, Teun Boekhout, Pedro W. Crous, David H. Ellis, Juliet Elvy, Graeme N. Forrest, Marizeth Groenewald, Rosane C. Hahn, Jos Houbraken, Anderson M. Rodrigues, James Scott, Tania C. Sorrell, Richard C. Summerbell, Clement K. M. Tsui, Andrey Yurkov, Sharon C.-A. Che
Climbing the coconut tree : three South Indians use their personal memories of colonial education to influence the decolonisation of education after independence
No full textThe chapter addresses strategies in late colonial schooling through the lens of the autobiographical accounts of three different Southern Indian authors. It highlights the potential of autobiographical sources in recovering marginalised voices. The author shows how self-testimonies, beyond simplistic concepts of authenticity, can help to open a ‘ground-level’ dimension of liberation struggles and decolonisation. The analysis brings to light common traits as well as differences: the experience of late colonial schooling, including questions of discrimination, as well as the dichotomisation of time – between ‘those days’ and the present – all appear as resources used by the authors to strategically position their narratives in the post-colonial context. This proposes a double approach to these critical sources: accordingly, one should consider not only their referential value with regard to late colonial education. Rather, she convincingly argues that it is their character as carriers of meaning that defines their high strategic value as an indicator for educational discourses in a post-colonial context
ROTOЯ Review
No full textThe ROTOЯ partnership between Huddersfield Art Gallery and the University of Huddersfield was established in 2011. ROTOЯ I and II was a programme of eight exhibitions and accompanying events that commenced in 2012 and was completed in 2013. ROTOЯ continues into 2014 and the programme for 2015 and 2016 is already firmly underway. In brief, the aim of ROTOЯ is to improve the cultural vitality of Kirklees, expand audiences, and provide new ways for people to engage with and understand academic research in contemporary art and design.
Why ROTOЯ , Why Now?
As Vice Chancellors position their institutions’ identities and future trajectories in context to national and international league tables, Professor John Goddard1 proposes the notion of the ‘civic’ university as a ‘place embedded’ institution; one that is committed to ‘place making’ and which recognises its responsibility to engaging with the public. The civic university has deep institutional connections to different social, cultural and economic spheres within its locality and beyond.
A fundamental question for both the university sector and cultural organisations alike, including local authority, is how the many different articulations of public engagement and cultural leadership which exist can be brought together to form one coherent, common language. It is critical that we reach out and engage the community so we can participate in local issues, impact upon society, help to forge well-being and maintain a robust cultural economy. Within the lexicon of public centered objectives sits the Arts Council England’s strategic goals, and those of the Arts and Humanities Research Council – in particular its current Cultural Value initiative. What these developments reveal is that art and design education and professional practice, its projected oeuvre as well as its relationship to cultural life and public funding, is now challenged with having to comprehensively audit its usefulness in financially austere times. It was in the wake of these concerns coming to light, and of the 2010 Government Spending Review that ROTOЯ was conceived. These issues and the discussions surrounding them are not completely new. Research into the social benefits of the arts, for both the individual and the community, was championed by the Community Arts Movement in the 1960s. During the 1980s and ‘90s, John Myerscough and Janet Wolff, amongst others, provided significant debate on the role and value of the arts in the public domain. What these discussions demonstrated was a growing concern that the cultural sector could not, and should not, be understood in terms of economic benefit alone. Thankfully, the value of the relationships between art, education, culture and society is now recognised as being far more complex than the reductive quantification of their market and GDP benefits. Writing in ‘Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century)’, Ernesto Pujol proposes:‘…it is absolutely crucial that art schools consider their institutional role in support of democracy. The history of creative expression is linked to the history of freedom. There is a link between the state of artistic expression and the state of democracy.’ When we were approached by Huddersfield Art Gallery to work collaboratively on an exhibition programme that could showcase academic staff research, one of our first concerns was to ask the question, how can we really contribute to cultural leadership within the town?’ The many soundbite examples of public engagement that we might underline within our annual reports or website news are one thing, but what really makes a difference to a town’s cultural identity, and what affects people in their daily lives? With these questions in mind we sought a distinctive programme within the muncipal gallery space, that would introduce academic research in art, design and architecture beyond the university in innovative ways
History of colonial education : key reflections
No full textThe history of education in India has long been a contentious but also particularly productive research field, not only for what it reveals about the philosophies and practice of education but also because the transmission of knowledge to the young has been continuously contested and is intimately connected to wider political structures, institutions, and ideologies. Traditionally the focus for historians has been on the role, relevance, and impact of Western knowledge on colonial educational policies and pedagogical practices and the ways in which colonial education was used to provide justification for colonialism as Britain’s gift to the subcontinent, a narrative which has been consistently disputed by Indians themselves. However in the last 30 years, there has been a significant shift towards an engagement with the details of both education policy and practice, so that the reader is now impressed with the vibrancy of the field and the wide range of approaches taken. In short, colonialism is now viewed as only one of many power dynamics involved in the transfer of knowledge alongside other, of course intersectional, social relationships based on region, class, caste, religion, and gender which reflect a wide variety of views and hierarchies within both the British and Indian positions
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder diagnosis and counselling
No full textThe Foetal Alcohol Syndrome has long gone unrecognised and undiagnosed in Australia. In the last few years of the 21st Century (2010-14) health practitioners are finally seeking ways of diagnosing the effects of alcohol in pregnancy on the next generation. The author offers a power point presentation which gives guidance on making an accurate diagnosis
Family policy and gender-role attitudes in Germany - A quantitative analysis of the relationship between public policy and public opinion
No full textTitle: Family policy and gender-role attitudes in Germany
Author: Catriona Hansbauer
Supervisor: Prof. Björn Halleröd
Semester: Spring 2015
Using data from the 1991-2012 German General Social Survey, this thesis examines the relationship between family policy reform and gender-role attitudes among different socio-demographic groups in Germany. The research question is: What is the relationship between family policy reform and changing attitudes toward gender roles? More specifically the thesis ask: What is the directionality of the interaction between policy change and mass preferences and to what extent does social class matter in this relationship? Based on previous research it is argued that the attitudes of the upper class play a more important role compared to the attitudes of the lower and middle class. The empirical analysis shows that, overall, gender-role attitudes have become less traditional in Germany since the beginning of the 1990s. It is also shown that the majority of the policy reforms have created more incentives for mothers to re-enter the labour force. However, the empirical results do not allow any conclusions about the directionality of the relationship between policy change and attitudes, since the attitudinal change has been constant over the observed period of time. Moreover, there is no clear evidence that upper class attitudes have been more important for policy-makers than the attitudes of the lower and the middle class
Thinking the Feminist Vegetal Turn in the Shadow of Douglas-firs: An Interview with Catriona Sandilands
No full textCatriona Sandilands is an environmental literary critic and ecocultural scholar whose work brings together questions of ecology, gender, and sexuality, and multispecies biopolitics. She coined the term queer ecologies to describe and intervene in the manifold intersections running between sexuality, nature, and power in contemporary ecological conversations. The concept has made a powerful contribution to feminist and queer environmental scholarship, and to the larger environmental humanities. An intuitive gardener as well as plant scholar, she writes about plants in a unique way that pairs wonder about botanical materiality and evolutionary history with a concern about the biopolitical mechanisms that govern both vegetal and other, nonhuman and human, forms of life. Cate is a professor of environmental studies at York University in Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy (1999) as well as over eighty essays, reviews, journal articles, and chapters in edited collections. She edited, with Bruce Erickson, the much-celebrated scholarly volume Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010); her edited collection of creative writing Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times was published in September 2019. Marianna Szczygielska and Olga Cielemęcka caught up with Cate on Galiano Island, British Columbia, to discuss the recent vegetal turn in the humanities, feminist commitments to critical plant studies, and the lessons to be learned from paying close attention to the plants around us.</p
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