But You’re So Far Away: Issues in Providing Library Services to Students in Online Courses

In this session, we will address the issues involved in providing library services to remote students, including technology readiness and support, reference and research services, interlibrary loan, and collection development. We will also address some of the legal issues in providing library services to students in online courses

SCHOOL SHOULDN’T END WHEN THE BELL RINGS: AN EXPLORATORY HOMESCHOOLING STUDY

Homeschooling has experienced significant growth over the last several decades, yet little to no research has explored the relationship between homeschoolers and the public education system. Being the first to explore this relationship, the current study collected and examined data from 3 semi-structured interviews and 15 online homeschooling blogs in order to understand the growth of homeschooling in Ontario and the relationship between homeschooling and the public education system. The results of this study reveal the relationship between homeschoolers and the public education system varies significantly over time and locale, the challenges within each system and the difficulty of transitioning in and out of both systems for students, professional educators, and parents. Results suggest there is a lot to be learned from both forms of education and that there are possible benefits of a blended model of education

Movement kinematics and proprioception in post-stroke spasticity: assessment using the Kinarm robotic exoskeleton

Background Motor impairment after stroke interferes with performance of everyday activities. Upper limb spasticity may further disrupt the movement patterns that enable optimal function; however, the specific features of these altered movement patterns, which differentiate individuals with and without spasticity, have not been fully identified. This study aimed to characterize the kinematic and proprioceptive deficits of individuals with upper limb spasticity after stroke using the Kinarm robotic exoskeleton. Methods Upper limb function was characterized using two tasks: Visually Guided Reaching, in which participants moved the limb from a central target to 1 of 4 or 1 of 8 outer targets when cued (measuring reaching function) and Arm Position Matching, in which participants moved the less-affected arm to mirror match the position of the affected arm (measuring proprioception), which was passively moved to 1 of 4 or 1 of 9 different positions. Comparisons were made between individuals with (n = 35) and without (n = 35) upper limb post-stroke spasticity. Results Statistically significant differences in affected limb performance between groups were observed in reaching-specific measures characterizing movement time and movement speed, as well as an overall metric for the Visually Guided Reaching task. While both groups demonstrated deficits in proprioception compared to normative values, no differences were observed between groups. Modified Ashworth Scale score was significantly correlated with these same measures. Conclusions The findings indicate that individuals with spasticity experience greater deficits in temporal features of movement while reaching, but not in proprioception in comparison to individuals with post-stroke motor impairment without spasticity. Temporal features of movement can be potential targets for rehabilitation in individuals with upper limb spasticity after stroke.York University Librarie

Between Retrenchment and Recalibration: The Impact of Austerity on the Irish Social Protection System

This article analyzes the impact of austerity on the Irish social protection system. The analysis is situated in Ireland’s wider financial and economic crisis and its status as an ‘early adopter’ of an austerity response which has continued under European Union/International Monetary Fund intervention. We focus on how the crisis instigated a political narrative about the cost and design of the social protection system, leading to a programme of retrenchment and reform which has blended a politics of blame avoidance with credit claiming. Three core elements in this narrative— generosity, sustainability and suitability— are identified, and against this background, a pattern of multi-dimensional change in social protection across the life course dealing with working age, pensions, and child income supports is analyzed

Pressbooks and Associated Technologies: Innovative Projects, Creating and Publishing Books by Libraries

This panel presentation shares innovative ways to engage patrons from a variety of library types and patrons including students, faculty, and teachers. In one case study, Winona State University has collaboratively published three books written by graduate students in Leadership Education. WSU used a variety of technologies, one of which is Pressbooks. Fortunately WSU has supported and has access to the subscription level Pressbooks through the statewide subscription available by Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project (MLPP) initiative. In addition to Pressbooks, Canva, Ingramspark, Adobe Creative Cloud, and bepress Digital Commons are all used in our process to create and publish print and ebooks written and edited by our graduate students. This process can be replicated in a variety of ways with alternative platforms

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is a poetic cross-genre (creative writing) manuscript in three parts that interrogates techno-colonial-capitalism’s and the medical and wellness industrial complexes’ individualizing constructions of mental health and illness. The first part is comprised of lyric poems that conceptually foreground the mediated and/or dissociated psychology of the speaker in the digital age. The second part draws on the form of the feminist surrealist short story to defamiliarize themes such as nature, medicalization, and neoliberal routine. Finally, the third part hybridizes poetry and the essay in a case study of three monuments from 1962 that I see as co-featuring in creating our dominant societal affective atmosphere: the International Style building, Place Ville Marie, erected as an “archetype of technological know-how” in its “physical, aesthetic, and emotional presence” (Place Ville Marie: Montreal’s Shining Landmark, Vanlaethem, France et al., 9), and the concurrent publication of two psychological texts by major emotion theorists, Silvan Tomkins’s Affect Imagery Consciousness and Magda Arnold’s Story Sequence Analysis.    With references, mainly, to affect theory and various figures of the modernist canon, I plumb the material and ideological origins of our cruelly optimistic state of political and climate crisis. I examine, further, the technological prescriptions and products that have become ubiquitous. How does our dependence on such products and diagnostic and commodifying formulas of thinking shape our emotional and physical dynamics with ourselves, others, and the land? How do our products and formulas alter or distort the way we project ourselves in the past, present, and future? Pareidolia—inspired by contemporary thinkers like Lisa Robertson and Dionne Brand as much as Sianne Ngai and Anna Tsing—attends to the porous and temporally fluid relationship between the body, mind, technology, and environment

Recommodification and the welfare state in re/financialised austerity capitalism: Further eroding social citizenship?

This article reviews the recommodification of social policy in the context of financialised austerity capitalism and post-crisis welfare states. It sets out an understanding of recommodification as a multiple set of processes that involve the state in labour market-making, by shaping labour's 'saleability'. Under conditions of finance-dominated austerity capitalism, the article argues that recent dynamics of recommodification complicate the long established Piersonian observations. For Pierson, recommodification signifies how elements of the welfare state that shelter individuals from market pressures are dismantled and replaced with measures which buffer their labour market participation. This article examines ways in which recent policy trends in recommodification, whether by incentivising or coercive means, increase exposure to labour market risks and connect with the growing inequalities between capital and labour under post-crisis re/financialised austerity capitalism. This analysis is paired with a synoptic review of recent labour market trends and reforms across the European Union. As recommodification evolves, the insecurity it institutes raises fundamental questions about the underlying nature of social citizenship which are also addressed

Quarterly report on the ferrocyanide safety program for the period ending June 30, 1996

This quarterly report provides a status of activities underway on the Ferrocyanide Safety Issue at the Hanford Site, including actions in response to Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) Recommendation 90-7 (FR 1990). In March 1991, a DNFSB implementation plan (Cash 1991) responding to the six parts of Recommendation 90-7 was prepared and sent to the DNFSB. A ferrocyanide safety program plan addressing the total Ferrocyanide Safety Program, including the six parts of DNFSB Recommendation 90-7, was released in October 1994 (DOE 1994b). Activities in the program plan are underway or are completed, and the status of each is described in Sections 2.0 and 3. 0 of this report

Disciplinary neoliberalism: coercive commodification and the post-crisis welfare state

Fiona Dukelow and Patricia Kennett examine the post-2008 welfare states in Ireland, Britain, and the US. They explain how each of these countries experienced an acceleration in the operation of disciplinary neoliberalism - through punitive regimes of surveillance and sanctions - and consider the implications of these contemporary welfare policies