The impact of conference attendance on Australian academic librarians and libraries

The focus of this research project is the impact of conference attendance, in the context of Australian academic librarians and libraries. The impact of conference attendance is shown to consist of three key themes: informational; social; and affective impact. In addition, the study found nine factors that can influence the impact conference attendance can have on the delegate and on their institution, and it presents connections between key themes of impact and influencing factors

Attending IFLA was amazing: Benefits of conference attendance as reported by delegates

A large amount of time and resources is spent every year in the library and information science (LIS) sector in Australia to organise, fund and attend conferences. However, the possible benefits of conference attendance for librarians have not been a focus of research in the field. This article, reporting on the findings of a pilot study conducted in the context of a PhD research project, addresses this gap and analyses conference attendance benefits as reported by librarians who attended a specific international conference. The findings of this study link directly to issues and themes that are relevant to all library sectors in Australia

Effect of Exercise on Photoperiod-Regulated Hypothalamic Gene Expression and Peripheral Hormones in the Seasonal Dwarf Hamster Phodopus sungorus

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Dana Wilson, Susan Hay, David Brown and Vivienne Buchan at RINH, Siegrid Hilken and Esther Lipokatic-Takacs at UVMH for the excellent technical support and advice provided. Many thanks are due to Claus Mayer of Biomathematics, Statistics Scotland for assistance with the statistical analysis of data. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: IP SS FS PB. Performed the experiments: IP RD FS. Analyzed the data: IP RD FS SS PB. Wrote the paper: PB SS FS IP.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ebook usage at Curtin University Library: patterns, projections and strategy

Since Curtin University Library began to collect ebooks in the early 2000s, we have used a variety of collection development and access models for different purposes. To a large extent different acquisition models have been aligned to different collection development goals. For example, acquisition of publishers' collection sets has been directed to providing long-term infrastructure for researchers; purchase of individual ebooks has been intended primarily to address short-term demand for materials required to support teaching and learning. This paper will examine the patterns of usage of different categories of ebooks to establish the extent to which method or philosophy of acquisition has an impact on ebook usage

Interactions between view changes and shape changes in picture-picture matching

Four studies presented pictures of different morphs of novel, complex, three-dimensional objects, similar to objects which we must identify in the real world. We investigated how viewpoint changes influence our ability to discriminate between morphs. View changes had a powerful effect on performance in picture-picture matching tasks when similarly shaped morphs had to be discriminated. Shape changes were detected faster and more accurately when morphs were depicted from the same rather than different views. In contrast, view change had no effect when dissimilarly shaped morphs had to be discriminated. This interaction between the effects of view change and shape change was found for both simultaneous stimulus presentation and for sequential presentation with interstimulus intervals of up to 3600ms. The interaction was found following repeated presentations of the stimuli prior to the matching task and following practice at the matching task as well as after no such pre-exposure to the stimuli or to the task. The results demonstrate the importance of view changes relative to other task manipulations in modulating the shape discrimination abilities of the human visual recognition system