Tales from the Other Side: Librarians and Vendors Get Real

Three professionals who have worked as vendors and as librarians throughout their careers discussed overlapping competencies for both roles. These were outlined as adaptive negotiation, managing and prioritizing tasks, optimizing the library/vendor partnership, coping with unique stressors, understanding how to frame your own career, clear communication and expectation setting, recognizing patterns and adapting, and empathy. The presenters encouraged listeners to move beyond understanding the relationship between librarians and vendors as adversarial or as one of simply buying and selling products. They advocated instead to think of the relationship as one of mutual respect and collaboration, where people in both roles share common goals of delivering excellent customer servic

The Impact of Giving Together

Giving circles are made up of individuals who pool their resources and then decide together where these should be distributed. They also include social, educational, and engagement components that seem to engage participants in their communities and increase members’ understanding of philanthropy and community issues. This study examines if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ behaviorrelated to giving, volunteering, and civic engagement. In addition, we asked if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ awareness or knowledge about philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and community issues. Finally, we wanted to know if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ perceptions or attitudes about philanthropy, community issues, citizen, government and nonprofit roles and responsibilities or political and social values. To address these areas, data were gathered through a survey of 341 current and past members of 26 giving circles of various types, sizes, and identity groups across the U.S., as well as a control group of 246 donors and public service graduate students and practitioners; semi-structured interviews with 30 giving circle members and past members from 11 giving circles; and participant observation in four giving circles.Aspen Institute Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University University of Nebraska at Omaha School of Public Administratio

Snapshot: The Impact of Giving Together

Donors in giving circles give more, give more strategically, and are more engaged in their communities, according to a new study by Dr. Angela Eikenberry and Jessica Bearman with research assistance from Melissa Brown, Hao Han, and Courtney Jensen. ever since giving circles—groups of individual donors who pool their money and other resources and decide together where these should be distributed—emerged as a philanthropic trend, we have speculated about their impact. Do donors give more or give differently because they are involved in a giving circle? Do they become more engaged and active in their communities? Are they more politically active? Until now, the evidence of giving circles’ impact on donors was mainly qualitative. Now, this new study examines, in a more comprehensive and quantitative manner, the impact of giving circles on their members’ giving and civic engagement.

The Impact of Giving Together: Giving Circles’ Influence on Members’ Philanthropic and Civic Behaviors, Knowledge and Attitudes

Giving circles are made up of individuals who pool their resources and then decide together where these should be distributed. They also include social, educational, and engagement components that seem to engage participants in their communities and increase members’ understanding of philanthropy and community issues. This study examines if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ behavior related to giving, volunteering, and civic engagement. In addition, we asked if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ awareness or knowledge about philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and community issues. Finally, we wanted to know if and how participation in a giving circle has changed members’ perceptions or attitudes about philanthropy, community issues, citizen, government and nonprofit roles and responsibilities or political and social values

Potential Use for Serosurveillance of Feral Swine to Map Risk for Anthrax Exposure, Texas, USA

Anthrax is a disease of concern in many mammals, including humans. Management primarily consists of prevention through vaccination and tracking clinical-level observations because environmental isolation is laborious and bacterial distribution across large geographic areas diffi cult to confi rm. Feral swine (Sus scrofa) are an invasive species with an extensive range in the southern United States that rarely succumbs to anthrax. We present evidence that feral swine might serve as biosentinels based on comparative seroprevalence in swine from historically defi ned anthrax-endemic and non–anthraxendemic regions of Texas. Overall seropositivity was 43.7% (n = 478), and logistic regression revealed county endemicity status, age-class, sex, latitude, and longitude were informative for predicting antibody status. However, of these covariates, only latitude was statistically signifi cant (β = –0.153, p = 0.047). These results suggests anthrax exposure in swine, when paired with continuous location data, could serve as a proxy for bacterial presence in specifi c areas

Transcriptional activation of integrin beta6 during the epithelial-mesenchymal transition defines a novel prognostic indicator of aggressive colon carcinoma

We used a spheroid model of colon carcinoma to analyze integrin dynamics as a function of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a process that provides a paradigm for understanding how carcinoma cells acquire a more aggressive phenotype. This EMT involves transcriptional activation of the beta6 integrin subunit and a consequent induction of alphavbeta6 expression. This integrin enhances the tumorigenic properties of colon carcinoma, including activation of autocrine TGF-beta and migration on interstitial fibronectin. Importantly, this study validates the clinical relevance of the EMT. Kaplan-Meier analysis of beta6 expression in 488 colorectal carcinomas revealed a striking reduction in median survival time of patients with high beta6 expression. Elevated receptor expression did not simply reflect increasing tumor stage, since log-rank analysis showed a more significant impact on the survival of patients with early-stage, as opposed to late-stage, disease. Cox regression analysis confirmed that this integrin is an independent variable for these tumors. These findings define the alphavbeta6 integrin as an important risk factor for early-stage disease and a novel therapeutic candidate for colorectal cancer