Becoming Director: An Internal Candidate\u27s View

Articles reviewing the challenges of assuming a library directorship typically begin in the middle of the story. The new hire arrives from another campus to face a range of challenges. The accounts from there go on to extract a general map of the initial experiences along with helpful tools to navigate this intimidating terrain. That view, we suggest, obscures natural fault lines within the community of new directors. These divisions can fundamentally influence the initial experiences upon which the authors are offering their advice. On such variable concerns the route by which the successful applicant has been named the new director. Some are in-house candidates with specific experience in the library they will now lead, while others are outside candidates who face the added challenge to understand the ways that their understanding of other institutions will translate to the new context. The latter is so much the more common that it is often taken for granted. On the contrary, we suggest that this distinction impacts not only the early actions of the new director, but the hiring process as well. To bring greater balance to the literature of director hiring, we offer the personal experience of the lead author as a successful internal candidate, and put this personal account into the broader context of the hiring process for library leadership positions

A randomised controlled trial of the effects of a web-based PSA decision aid, Prosdex. Protocol

Contains fulltext : 51771.pdf ( ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Informed decision making is the theoretical basis in the UK for men's decisions about Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) testing for prostate cancer testing. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of a web-based PSA decision-aid, Prosdex, on informed decision making in men. The objective is to assess the effect of Prosdex on six specific outcomes: (i) knowledge of PSA and prostate cancer-related issues - the principal outcome of the study; (ii) attitudes to testing; (iii) decision conflict; (iv) anxiety; (v) intention to undergo PSA testing; (vi) uptake of PSA testing. In addition, a mathematical simulation model of the effects of Prosdex will be developed. METHODS: A randomised controlled trial with four groups: two intervention groups, one viewing Prosdex and the other receiving a paper version of the site; two control groups, the second controlling for the potential Hawthorn effect of the questionnaire used with the first control group. Men between the ages of 50 and 75, who have not previously had a PSA test, will be recruited from General Practitioners (GPs) in Wales, UK. The principal outcome, knowledge, and four other outcome measures - attitudes to testing, decision conflict, anxiety and intention to undergo testing - will be measured with an online questionnaire, used by men in three of the study groups. Six months later, PSA test uptake will be ascertained from GP records; the online questionnaire will then be repeated. These outcomes, and particularly PSA test uptake, will be used to develop a mathematical simulation model, specifically to consider the impact on health service resources

Paradox, performance and food:managing difference in the construction of femininity

This paper explores the personal and interpersonal complexities of women’s’ food-related behaviours. Drawing from the postmodern concept of paradoxical juxtapositions, the authors examine women’s discourses around food, cooking and eating to discuss the embedded negotiations of tensions arising from maintaining hetero-normative femininities while accounting for their own personal and social subjectivities. Data were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with 45 women. Moving across the analyses, identity complexity plays out for women through the simultaneous presence of strain and gratification in their performance as “caregivers” and an ongoing dialectic of ascetism/discipline and hedonism/transgression in their food-lives. We argue women work to construct desirable experiences and self-identifications from balancing an assemblage of constituent food behaviours across different settings. Our analysis highlights the continuing presence of postmodern paradox as an important theoretical consideration and contributes to our understanding of how femininity is skilfully performed through the management of difference