Modular symbols and Hecke operators

We survey techniques to compute the action of the Hecke operators on the cohomology of arithmetic groups. These techniques can be seen as generalizations in different directions of the classical modular symbol algorithm, due to Manin and Ash-Rudolph. Most of the work is contained in papers of the author and the author with Mark McConnell. Some results are unpublished work of Mark McConnell and Robert MacPherson.Comment: 11 pp, 2 figures, uses psfrag.st

Entrepreneurship resources in US public libraries: website analysis

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the entrepreneurship resources patrons can discover and/or access on the web pages of the largest 46 US public libraries to assess the strength of public libraries’ current support to their entrepreneur-patrons, and where, and by what means, public libraries may wish to expand, or further promote, their support. Design/methodology/approach – The author completed a website analysis of the largest 46 US public libraries, as defined by the criteria in the ALA publication The Nation’s Largest Public Libraries. Website analysis was completed via a standardized checklist assessment of each library website. Findings – Public libraries often have print and electronic resources, meeting spaces and programming that could be of use to entrepreneur-patrons, but these resources are sometimes difficult to discover on library websites. Libraries have strong partnering relationships with other government and nonprofit organizations, but they may wish to expand these partnerships further. Practical implications – Public libraries in the US often have multiple support services to offer entrepreneur-patrons. However, if libraries would like to reach entrepreneur-patrons beyond their walls, as well as within them, they may wish to consider further refining the resources both accessible via their website and promoted on it. Originality/value – While there are research articles exploring how both academic and public libraries support entrepreneur-patrons, as yet, there has been no in-depth research into how public libraries support their entrepreneur-patrons through not only their in-library offerings but also the materials highlighted and/ or available via their website. This research addresses this gap in the literature.Publisher does not allow open access until after publicatio

Dress Behind Bars: Prison Clothing as Criminality

Research for this sole-authored book was undertaken during AHRC-funded Research Leave (2007). It represents Ash’s expertise as a dress historian and interest in the history and current organisation of prisons, which evolved from her teaching experience in Holloway women’s prison and Wakefield top security men’s prison in the 1970s. Crossing the disciplines of dress history, social history and film studies, this is the first book to examine the history of prisoners' clothing. Focusing on UK, American and European prison clothing, this history analyses waves of reform, sandwiched between regimes of punishing clothing restraints. Prison clothing, as Ash demonstrates, raises issues of regional, colonial, post-colonial, gender, fashion and class variations, contested by collective, political and individual tactics devised by inmates to survive and subvert cultures of punishment. This book is based on research into penal history, dress history in relation to uniforms and corporeal identity, criminological debates, oral histories, and 19th- and 20th-century prison art and literature. Material from correspondence and interviews with prisoners, prison reform groups, those who work as designers in prisons, and curators of prison photography and dress informed the study. To demonstrate the value of the clothes themselves to researchers, Ash also wrote an article for the Journal of Design History on ‘The prison uniforms collection at the galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK’ (2011). The book was reviewed by journals including Journal of Design History (2011), British Journal of Criminology (2011), Textile History (2011), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (2010) and Crime Media Culture (2010). Related talks included ‘Prison clothing as political resistance’ at NCAD Dublin (2010). BBC Radio 4 made the book the focus of an episode of Thinking Allowed (2009), and Ash was interviewed about women prisoners' attitudes to uniforms and prison clothing for ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2013)

A Systematic Review of Financial Literacy as a Termed Concept: More Questions Than Answers

'Financial literacy', as a concept by that name, has only been explored in library science literature for a little over a decade. The concept, and especially the role of libraries in furthering this literacy, is still evolving. This systematic literature review examines the current definition of 'financial literacy', why financial literacy matters, where the public has been accessing financial literacy education to date, the difficulties encountered, by libraries and others, in providing this education, and how these challenges might be addressed moving forward.Publisher does not allow open access until after publicatio

Financial literacy education in the United States: Exploring popular personal finance literature

As libraries work to define their roles within the global financial literacy education movement, it will serve them well to understand the popular literary component to this movement: the personal finance self-help genre. In this literature study, the author read 12 of the most popular books of this genre, as determined by simulations of likely Google searches, and conveys herein some of the beliefs and strategies these books may have imparted to library patrons. This study will benefit librarians by enhancing their understanding of the personal finance genre, conveying the genre’s interrelation to the current financial literacy movement, and even prompting librarians to question their own understanding regarding certain financial literacy components.Publisher does not allow open access until after publicatio

The Untruthful Source: Writings, official and reform documentation 1900 - 1930

Ash’s article, ‘The untruthful source: Prisoner’s writings, official and reform documentation, 1900–1930’, published following her 2009 book on prison dress, questions how myths arose about the history of prisoners’ clothing in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Ash shows that, although there was little critical writing about prisoners’ clothing in this period, the inmates’ own writing and archival documentation provide us with the means to achieve a new understanding of the political encounters played out in courtrooms. Ash’s research material included interwar Home Office circulars that announced the abolition of ‘broad arrow’ prison uniforms in 1920 and responses of prison governors that reveal their continuance after this date. Other key reform documents consulted by the author included those of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Fenner Brockway’s 1922 Prison System Enquiry Committee Report, later published as English Prisons Under Local Government, which proposed radical prison reforms including the abolition of prison dress as criminal stigmatisation, and inmate testimonials of the continuance of the broad arrow uniform. The article demonstrates the difficulty for design historians investigating prison dress in establishing the truth about specific penal reform dates and practices on the basis of official government documents alone. Ash argues that the publications of penal reformers and the prison writings of inmates at the time also need to be read, in order to establish the clothing prisoners actually wore in confinement. Ash first presented this research as a paper to the 2009 Design History Society annual conference hosted by the theorising Visual Art and Design (tVAD) Research Group, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire. It was then selected to be peer reviewed and published in the University of Hertfordshire Working Papers on Design web-based journal