Academic literature on the topic 'Michigan Library Association'

The Medical Library Association (MLA) held its 123rd annual meeting May 16-19, 2023, in Detroit, Michigan. This was also a joint meeting with the Special Libraries Association (SLA). The meeting was entitled “MLA | SLA ’23: Looking Back, Forging Ahead” and utilized a hybrid model with some events in person, and some virtually.

Purpose The Association of Library Collections and Technical Services, better known as ALCTS, is a division of the American Library Association. Design/methodology/approach Approximately once a month, ALCTS hosts an “eForum”, which is a moderated email-based discussion. The February 2016 ALCTS eForum was called “Career Progression in Cataloging and Metadata”. Findings It was led by Lisa Robinson of Michigan State University and Stacie Traill of the University of Minnesota. Lisa and Stacie have provided a summary of the discussion on a publicly accessible website which is referenced at the end of the column. Originality/value There were a number of comments and discussion threads which reflect the changing nature of library data or metadata; how it is created and managed; and the specific skill sets of catalogers and metadata librarians. This installment of the Data Deluge contains an examination and discussion of challenges associated with the role and career progression of catalogers and metadata specialists as they establish their place in the emerging linked data movement in libraries.

Abstract.The aim of this review was to determine the association between carotenoid status and body composition in children 2 – 18 years of age. Obesity is often related to poor dietary habits and lower fruit and vegetable consumption in children. Fruit and vegetables are the primary sources of antioxidant-rich dietary carotenoids; decreased intake may lead to increased risk of chronic diseases. Identifying those with lower carotenoid status in childhood could be an important target for public health intervention. Research methods for the review were conducted using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) checklist and the Central Michigan University library, via multiple scientific databases. Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms were utilized to identify relevant studies for inclusion. Twenty-three studies were included in the review (n = 16,285). Thirteen studies reported a significant inverse association between carotenoid status and body composition in children (p < 0.05), (n = 15,206). Five additional studies had varying associations between body composition and carotenoid status based on the type of carotenoid and/or measure of carotenoid status (n = 763). Carotenoid status is inversely associated with body composition; however, varying degrees of association were observed in this review. It remains to be determined whether this association is related to intake, fat mass or a combination of the two.

As electronic books and electronic journals have become more prevalent, so too do the number of electronic resources outages related to those resources. This paper, distilled from a presentation delivered at the 2015 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting, describes the implementation of a new tracking system for electronic resources outages at the University of Michigan (UM). It elaborates on the decisions that went into building the system and the insights gleaned from analyzing a year’s worth of outages. It is hoped that such data might better inform decisions related to electronic resources at UM, and that its collection might inspire similar data-driving tracking elsewhere.

A Review of: Powell, Ronald R. and Susan E. Boling. “Post-Master’s Educational Needs of Information Professionals.” Journal of Access Services 3.4 (2005): 29-43. Objective – To investigate post-master’s educational needs and interests of information professionals. Design – Survey research using print and electronic questionnaires. Setting – The geographic area surrounding Wayne State University in Michigan, United States of America. Subjects – Members of the library associations of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Methods – Systematic random samples were derived from the membership lists of the library associations in Ohio, Indiana, and Southwestern Ontario. Paper questionnaires were mailed to those selected. Michigan Library Association’s official policy barred the release of its membership list to researchers. Consequently, announcements of the survey were placed in three successive issues of the Association’s electronic newsletter. Interested members were directed to a web site to complete an electronic version of the questionnaire. This option was also extended to members of the other three library associations. The overall research question was investigated through specific questions that sought to ascertain the overall level of interest in professional library and information studies (LIS) education, levels of interest in specific types of programs, factors that favoured or deterred enrolment in doctoral programs, as well as the fields of study that were preferred for combination with LIS in doctoral programs. With the exception of demographic type questions (e.g., place of residence and educational qualifications) and two questions that required open ended responses, the questionnaire design encompassed questions with Likert scale type responses. Analysis of the responses included descriptive statistics, the use of Pearson chi-square to determine statistically significant relationships, and, to a lesser extent, content analysis. Main Results – A total of 270 questionnaires (33%) were returned from three populations: Ohio, Indiana, and Ontario. A self-selected sample of 101 members (6%) of the Michigan Library Association responded. In general, almost 80% of the respondents admitted some importance to adding to their LIS qualification. However, only 41% felt that this was important or extremely important. From a choice of six educational offerings, namely, continuing education activities, non-degree master’s coursework, a second master’s degree, post-master’s certification, doctoral programs, and other, continuing education activities was the most valued, by 65.5% of the respondents. Participants were asked about their reasons, and the importance of these, for considering or deciding to enrol in an LIS doctoral program. The yearning to acquire knowledge was reported by 69.7% as the major reason, followed by 45.8% of the respondents who cited the wish to increase their income potential. In terms of major factors, prestige received the lowest rating, 21.1%. The time involved (73.8%), cost (66.3%), and distance from the program (63.2%) were cited as the major deterrents to enrolling in doctoral programs. When asked about the likelihood of pursuing a doctoral LIS program in combination with business administration, computer science, or without any combination, “not likely” was the most popular choice. Those who were very likely or likely to pursue a joint program totalled approximately 30% of the respondents, while 37% indicated an interest in undertaking a doctorate in LIS only. The most frequent reasons proffered by those who selected “not likely” or “definitely not” for any of the three doctoral offerings included lack of interest, mitigating factors (e.g. time, cost, age, and program location), unfavourable cost/benefit analysis, preference for another area of knowledge, and the view that Ph.D.s were only useful for university faculty. Given the option to name subject areas that they desired to see combined with LIS in a doctoral program, 23 of 101 respondents proposed education, while 19 opted for public administration. A question inviting any other comments on the issue of post-master’s education yielded a predominant desire for “non traditional instruction,” particularly online courses as well as classes held in convenient locations. In terms of relationships between geographic location and factors that influenced interest in enrolling in a doctoral program, the desire “to become a more effective manager,” and “other” were statistically significant. The analysis also revealed a strong positive relationship between willingness to pursue an LIS-only doctoral program and the availability of such a program in geographic proximity. Similarly, there was a strong relationship between willingness to pursue an LIS program in close vicinity and the importance that was given to further LIS education. Conclusion – Online instruction and geographic proximity are key determinants of information professionals’ interest in pursuing post-master’s education at the doctoral level. Continuing education activities, non-degree coursework, and certificate programs are preferred over doctoral LIS programs, despite the finding that the major reason for enrolling in doctoral LIS programs is to fulfill the desire for knowledge acquisition. Schools offering Library and Information Science studies need to explore options for providing distance-education doctoral LIS programs as a means of reversing the current shortage of LIS faculty.

The Association for the Publication of African Historical Sources (presently headquartered at the Department of History, Michigan State University) is now administering one umbrella National Endowment for the Humanities grant for editing, translating, and publishing significant African texts, and hopes to administer more in the future. In aid of this, the following guidelines, which should for the moment be considered to be in a draft stage, are offered in an effort both to bring uniformity to these editions and to stimulate thinking towards making the guidelines more thorough and enduring. Readers are urged to send suggestions for the latter to: David Henige, Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706, U.S.A. If all goes well, it might be possible to publish an improved set of guidelines in next year's HA.As discussed briefly below, efficient mobilization of word processing programs should enable intending editors to achieve better results at less cost. Such word processing programs as are now available are probably not equally suitable and any readers who have used any programs extensively or who have developed variants of their own, with respect either to editing or to linguistic transcription, are also urged to submit brief statements (up to ca. 1000 words) as to their experiences, whether good or bad. These could then be published en ensemble, also (probably) in the 1991 HA.

Objective – To determine whether library and information science (LIS) doctoral research at North American institutions has, over the last eighty or so years, displayed a clear trend toward addressing topics other than those associated with librarianship and traditional library functions; and whether one can discern, in this regard, any significant differences among those institutions. Design – Conceptual content analysis of dissertation titles and abstracts. Setting – North American universities with American Library Association accredited LIS programs in the period 1930 through 2009. Subjects – The titles and, to the extent available, the abstracts of 3,230 LIS doctoral dissertations completed at these institutions during this period. Methods – Having opted for a directed, single-category type content analysis, the researchers began by pre-establishing a group of terms which they assumed could “represent the core curriculum of the master’s in library science”: terms which they surmised would therefore be able to function, where they appeared in “the records of doctoral output”, as good indicators that that output itself can rightly be judged to have had “an explicit focus on libraries/librarianship” (pp. 36, 44). The terms selected were: “librar*”, “catalog*”, “circulat*”, “collection develop*”, “collection manag*”, “school media”, and “reference” (where “*” indicates truncation, and that any term beginning with the respective letter string was acceptable). The researchers then simply tallied for each of the 3,230 dissertations under investigation how many times one or more of the pre-chosen terms occurred in its title and in its abstract, not recording which term or terms that occurred. (They do not make entirely clear to what extent data collection was computerized.) They subsequently analyzed the data longitudinally and by institution, with only one, nominal and dichotomous, variable for the title as well as for the abstract: whether or not any of the pre-chosen terms occurred at least once. Multiple occurrences, whether of the same term or of varying terms, played no role. Their analysis for the entire period of 1930 through 2009 was based on title data only, and did not take doctorate-granting institution into account. The separate analysis (N=2,305) for the period 1980 through 2009 excluded the thirty cases in which one or more of the terms occurred in the title but none of them occurred in the abstract. Main Results – One occurrence of any of the specified terms in the title was, for the overall period of 1930-2009, enough for any given dissertation to be qualified as having an explicit focus on libraries/librarianship. The percentage of such dissertations remained fairly stable from the 1930s through the 1980s, at between 56% and 62%, with the exception of an unexplained dip for the 1950s to 44.1%. Then, for the 1990s, the researchers discovered a fall-off from 57.9% to 36.0%, and in the following decade a further decrease, down to a level of 21.5%. During the separately-analyzed period 1980-2009, the percentage of dissertations with at least one of the specified terms in the title as well as in the abstract diminished steadily from well over half (58.4%) for 1980-1984 to less than 1 in 5 (19.8%) for 2005-2009. A chi-square test revealed that the relationship between year of dissertation and term occurrence is statistically significant. By far the greatest decrease, of 15 percentage points, was that between the first half and the second half of the 1990s. Interestingly, during the whole thirty-year period, the percentage where a term appeared not in the title but only in the abstract remained fairly constant, at around 20%, give or take about 2.5 percentage points. Yet when one looks at how many of the dissertations displayed none of the terms in the title and none in the abstract, one sees a continuous increase starting at 20.7% for 1980-1984 all the way up to 61.0% for 2005-2009, with the sharpest climb, of more than 17 percentage points, occurring around the mid-1990s. The distinction between the year 1980 and the year 2009 is even greater: from just over 1 in 7 (14.7%) to more than 3 out of 5 (62.2%). The analysis by institution revealed a statistically significant relationship for the period 1980-2009 between institution at which the dissertation was written and the occurrence of any of the terms at least once in both title and abstract. Certain institutions (most notably SUNY-Albany, Syracuse, Missouri, Hawaii, Montréal, and Long Island) showed a much higher than average overall level of no occurrence, and some (Michigan in particular, but also, for example, Florida State and the University of North Carolina) displayed a remarkably consistent decline in occurrence. Conclusion – The researchers conclude that their study, insofar as North America is concerned, “has provided empirical evidence for . . . the lessening focus in LIS dissertations on topics commonly associated with librarianship” and that it “supports the assertion that this focus varies significantly between schools—with some schools demonstrating a more explicit connection to library-related topics than other schools” (p. 43). They are unsure how best to interpret these findings or how they could be applied, but they do offer certain suggestions for possible interpretations and pose a few questions regarding what those interpretations might imply (p. 44). One could, they suggest, argue that the terms employed in the study “are themselves antiquated, and dissertations are charting new territory, pushing the boundaries of both research and practice.” Another possibility is that “while the dissertations may not be immediately applied work, the work could be utilized for application.” On the other hand, it may simply be the case that the selected terms indeed remain trustworthy indicators, and that doctoral candidates “are no longer studying topics that are relevant to the practical field” of librarianship. One could perhaps even justifiably assert that LIS is in effect no longer a single unified discipline but, rather, has split into a library field and an information field, whereby the latter has been steadily gaining the upper hand in LIS programs, albeit less so at some institutions than at others. In pondering the above alternatives for interpretation of this study’s results, the library practitioner will probably also be inclined to reflect, the authors suggest, on the prospects for adequate academic research support of actual library practice, while keeping in mind, furthermore, that the formal education of future practitioners will largely remain in the hands of those trained as LIS doctoral students. To what extent will these educators feel an affinity with, and possess an understanding of, the world of practical librarianship?

- M.A. van Bakel, H. Esen-Baur, Untersuchungen über den vogelmann-kult auf der Osterinsel, 1983, Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 399 pp. - Leen Boer, Bronislaw Malinowski, Malinowski in Mexico. The economics of a Mexican market system, edited and with an introduction by Susan Drucker-Brown, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982 (International Library of Anthropology)., Julio de la Fuente (eds.) - A.P. Borsboom, Betty Meehan, Shell bed to shell midden, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1982. - H.J.M. Claessen, Peter Geschiere, Village communities and the state. Changing relations among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon since the colonial conquest. Monographs of the African Studies Centre, Leiden. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. 1982. 512 pp. Appendices, index, bibliography, etc. - H.J.M. Claessen, Jukka Siikala, Cult and conflict in tropical Polynesia; A study of traditional religion, Christianity and Nativistic movements, Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1982, 308 pp. Maps, figs., bibliography. - H.J.M. Claessen, Alain Testart, Les Chasseurs-Cueilleurs ou l’Origine des Inégalités, Mémoires de la Sociéte d’Ethnographie 26, Paris 1982. 254 pp., maps, bibliography and figures. - Walter Dostal, Frederik Barth, Sohar - Culture and society in an Omani town. Baltimore - London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, 264 pp., ill. - Benno Galjart, G.J. Kruyer, Bevrijdingswetenschap. Een partijdige visie op de Derde Wereld [Emancipatory Science. A partisan view of the Third World], Meppel: Boom, 1983. - Sjaak van der Geest, Christine Okali, Cocoa and kinship in Ghana: The matrilineal Akan of Ghana. London: Kegan Paul International (in association with the International African Institute), 1983. 179 pp., tables, index. - Serge Genest, Claude Tardits, Contribution de la recherche ethnologique à l’histoire des civilisations du Cameroun / The contribution of enthnological research to the history of Cameroun cultures. Paris, CNRS, 1981, two tomes, 597 pp. - Silvia W. de Groot, Sally Price, Co-wives and calabashes, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1984, 224 p., ill. - N.O. Kielstra, Gene R. Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs. A documentary analysis of the Bakhtiary in Iran, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983. 213 pp. - G.L. Koster, Jeff Opland, Xhosa oral poetry. Aspects of a black South African tradition, Cambridge Studies in oral and literate culture 7, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge , London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney, 1983, XII + 303 pp. - Adam Kuper, Hans Medick, Interest and emotion: Essays on the study of family and kinship, Cambridge University Press, 1984., David Warren Sabean (eds.) - C.A. van Peursen, Peter Kloos, Antropologie als wetenschap. Coutinho, Muidenberg 1984 (204 p.). - Jerome Rousseau, Jeannine Koubi, Rambu solo’: “la fumée descend”. Le culte des morts chez les Toradja du Sud. Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1982. 530 pages, 3 maps, 73 pictures. - H.C.G. Schoenaker, Miklós Szalay, Ethnologie und Geschichte: zur Grundlegung einer ethnologischen geschichtsschreibung; mit beispielen aus der Geschichte der Khoi-San in Südafrika. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1983, 292 S. - F.J.M. Selier, Ghaus Ansari, Town-talk, the dynamics of urban anthropology, 170 pp., Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983., Peter J.M. Nas (eds.) - A.A. Trouwborst, Serge Tcherkézoff, Le Roi Nyamwezi, la droite et la gauche. Revision comparative des classifications dualistes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris:Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1983, 154 pp. - Pieter van der Velde, H. Boekraad, Te Elfder Ure 32: Verwantschap en produktiewijze, Jaargang 26 nummer 3 (maart 1983)., G. van den Brink, R. Raatgever (eds.) - E.Ch.L. van der Vliet, Sally Humphreys, The family, women and death. Comparative studies. London, Boston etc.: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983 (International Library of Anthropology). xiv + 210 pp. - W.F. Wertheim, T. Svensson, Indonesia and Malaysia. Scandinavian Studies in Contemporary Society. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies: Studies on Asian Topics no. 5. London and Malmö: Curzon Press, 1983, 282 pp., P. Sørensen (eds.) - H.O. Willems, Detlef Franke, Altägyptische verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen im Mittleren Reich, Hamburg, Verlag Born GmbH, 1983.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of English, 1998.
eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 315-328).

This chapter recounts John Henry Comstock's 65th birthday on February 24, 1914, which he willingly celebrated. To him, it symbolized freedom from executive slavery and unfettered opportunity to do the work he loved best. The principal event in the Comstocks' lives that spring were the retirement of Henry and the 40th reunion of his class. He was very busy much of the time with correspondence in connection with the reunion and in making arrangements for the entertainment of the returning members. In addition, he was more or less anxious regarding his part in the exercises in connection with the presentation of the Comstock Memorial Library Fund. Meanwhile, in the fall, Anna Botsford Comstock was busy lecturing at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and at Dayton, Ohio. Her Pet Book, which she had written with the idea of making the lives of all sorts of pets happier, was published on December 2, 1914. She also attended the meetings of the Nature Study Society of America with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At the same time, the Comstock Publishing Company already had enough books to make a display in the Corner Book Store of Ithaca windows.