What Words Would You Use to Describe the Library?

The library is a growing, evolving organism. Without change, the library will cease to be relevant. With the addition of technology, ebooks, virtual reference, and databases, we have the 21st century academic library. Despite the changes over the decades, ask most people what a library is meant for and you’ll still likely get an answer that suggests a quiet space for books and studying. [excerpt

Get Them in the Door

If blowout sales bring crazed shoppers to department stores on Black Friday and the perfect 75⁰ day draws people outside to enjoy the fresh air, then what brings the students to the library? With countless books, journals, and videos available at the click of a button, it might be easy or obvious to suppose that the library building would be an empty space gathering dust. It might be surprising, but quite the opposite is true. What makes a college library appealing? How can the academic library, as a place, continue to be important to the life of campus? [excerpt

A New Face at the Reference Desk

Hi there! I’m Sarah and I’m a graduate reference intern this fall at the Musselman Library. I’m currently in my last semester of completing my Master of Library Science degree with Clarion University of Pennsylvania. I graduated from Susquehanna University with a degree in history. I wanted a profession that combines my love of research with my passion for teaching so that’s how I found my way to library science. My professors and librarians at Susquehanna were helpful in guiding me to this profession where I will never stop learning. [excerpt

Postnatal depression and reproductive success in modern, low-fertility contexts

Background and objectives: Postnatal depression (PND) presents a puzzling phenomenon to evolutionary anthropologists as it is highly prevalent and yet detrimental to child development and maternal health. Adaptive explanations have been proposed, but have not been tested with data that directly link PND to female fertility. Methodology: A survey was designed to gather complete reproductive histories and retrospective measures of PND to measure the effects of PND on fitness. Respondents were born between 1930 and 1967, with the majority based in the UK during their childrearing years. The hypothesis that PND is detrimental to fitness is assessed using Mann–Whitney U tests on completed fertility. Binary logistic regression modelling is used to test the hypothesis that PND reduces the likelihood of parity progression. Results: Women experiencing PND at their first or second birth have lower completed fertility, with PND at the first birth leading to lowered fertility. Logistic regression analyses show that this is the result of reductions in the likelihood of parity progression to a third birth when PND is experienced at the first birth or when repeat bouts occur. Conclusions and implications: Our results call into question adaptationist arguments, contribute to the growing understanding of the importance of emotional wellbeing to fertility decision making, and given the economic consequences of markedly below replacement fertility, highlight a potential new source of financial incentive to invest in screening and preventative measures to ensure good maternal mental health

Energy conservation in the one-phase supercooled Stefan problem

© . This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/A one-phase reduction of the one-dimensional two-phase supercooled Stefan problem is developed. The standard reduction, employed by countless authors, does not conserve energy and a recent energy conserving form is valid in the limit of small ratio of solid to liquid conductivity. The present model assumes this ratio to be large and conserves energy for physically realistic parameter values. Results for three one-phase formulations are compared to the two-phase model for parameter values appropriate to supercooled salol (similar values apply to copper and gold) and water. The present model shows excellent agreement with the full two-phase model.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Building Murray Library, 1977 (Photo Exhibit)

Murray Learning Resources Center was named in honor of the college’s architect, William Lynch Murray and his wife Geraldine. The library expansion project was completed at Messiah College, now Messiah University, in 1977

Behind the Scenes: Secrets of Preparing for Successful Research Appointments

Have you ever noticed how librarians are stereo-typically portrayed in movies and on TV? There is the perception that librarians are extremely uptight, awkward, and boring, that they require nearly complete silence, and they rarely offer any actual help. That is definitely not what being an academic librarian is about. For me, it’s about helping, learning new ideas, exchanging information, and making the research process (which I love!) a bit easier. Remember the librarians in Matilda or on Arthur? They were always willing to help and make the process of finding resources a little bit easier. That’s what I want to do. Over the last couple weeks, I have been helping students navigate the research process through one-on-one research appointments. [excerpt

Barrow and Gilt Vocalizations during a Human Approach Test

Swine vocalizations may provide information on behavioral states. Previous studies have reported that an increased total number of high calls (≥1000 Hz) may be an indicator of a negative state in male pigs (Kluivers-Poodt et al., 2011). However, few studies have investigated if vocalizations differ between male and female pigs. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate differences between barrow and gilt vocalizations during a human approach test (HAT). Twenty barrows and 20 gilts were tested over two consecutive weeks. Each pig was individually tested in an arena with an unfamiliar human for 10 minutes. Digital audio recordings of pig vocalizations during HAT were captured with a Marantz recorder. Raven software was used to produce spectrograms and manually identify vocalizations. Two call categories were developed based on published literature: low (\u3c 0.01). These data suggest barrows and gilts differ in their vocal response to HAT

Access your Ancestors: Introduction to Free Online Genealogy Resources

Wednesday, March 10, 202110:00 am - 11:00 am Virtual on Zoom Are you interested in finding out about your family history and climbing your family tree? This course will be an introduction to online genealogy resources that are free to use and easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Find census, birth, marriage, military, and death records with ease and without spending a dime. This class will energize you to make discoveries on what makes your family unique, special, and downright interesting. All participants will receive a resource packet to organize and keep track of their findings. In addition to a resource packet provided for this session, Messiah University’s Murray Library will provide an online virtual help desk for one evening (details to be shared during the class) to help you one-on-one with your individual family history research questions

Maternal Investment and Postnatal Depression - An Evolutionary Approach

Postnatal depression is detrimental to maternal health and wellbeing, associated with poor developmental outcomes in children, and has prevalence estimates ranging from 13-60%; as such it is of significant public health concern and its origins are of interest from an evolutionary perspective. A growing movement within evolutionary research highlights the utility of evolutionary theory to elucidate the origins of health issues and indicate both novel approaches to treatment and prevention. A relatively longstanding, yet largely untested, existing evolutionary approach to postnatal depression proposes that it is a mechanism facilitating maternal investment decisions. More recently it has also been framed, somewhat complementarily, as the result of an evolutionary mismatch. Using the responses to a retrospective survey study which collected the complete reproductive histories of women and was uniquely designed to capture their experiences of postnatal depression, the first data chapter of this thesis explores whether there is support for adaptationist hypotheses that postnatal depression exhibits good design as a mechanism guiding maternal reproductive trade-offs. The results, combined with critiques put forward here and by other authors, suggest an alternative approach to postnatal depression is warranted. A limitation of both evolutionary and more traditional approaches to postnatal depression is that the commonly recognised risk factors for the condition fail to capture all the women who develop the condition. Recent developments in research into general depression, as opposed to postnatal depression, have highlighted the role of the immune system in symptom aetiology. This has led to a number of evolutionary researchers proposing that depression reflects an evolved inflammatory response to biological and social threat, with perceived social threat acting as an indicator of the likelihood of imminent biological threat. Inflammation then acts as the ultimate risk factor in the causal pathway to depression, and by extension postnatal depression, and suggests more attention needs to be paid to the social perceptions of women during pregnancy and early motherhood. Data chapters 3-6 explore the social pressures surrounding women about motherhood, the role such pressures play in generating feelings of shame (an emotional marker of social threat causally linked to general depression development), and the ability of shame to predict postnatal depression. Particular attention is paid to pressures surrounding socially approved levels of maternal investment, namely in the form of bonding. Bonding is of interest due to the documented association between postnatal depression and poor bonding as well as the pressures placed on women in contemporary, developed populations, highlighted by sociologists and feminist scholars, as a result of the emphasis on the importance bonding for child development. The role of social isolation, another form of social threat linked to general depression, in postnatal depression risk is also assessed. In so doing, a new model for maternal emotional investments is developed based on embodied capital theory and the results of two further data sets are presented - the first is a longitudinal survey study tracking women across the perinatal period assessing their experience of social pressure, shame, and postnatal depression, and the second an experimental priming study designed to assess if social threat can be primed using popular and social media relating to mothering. Results derived from these studies are supportive of the perception of social threat being a largely unrecognised risk factor in postnatal depression and the thesis concludes with a discussion of the public health implications which stem from this novel insight