As One Who From a Volume Reads: A Study of the Long Narrative Poem in Nineteenth-Century America

Though overlooked and largely unread today, the long narrative poem was a distinct genre available to nineteenth-century American poets. Thematically and formally diverse, the long narrative poem represents a form that poets experimented with and modified, and it accounted for some of the most successful poetry publications in the nineteenth-century United States. Drawing on contemporary theories of form and situating these poems within their literary-historical context, I discuss how our reading practices might be shaped by a greater attentiveness to the long narrative poem. My analysis will focus upon a small set of poems from across the nineteenth century, centering on works by Lucy Larcom and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. More than mere recovery, this project aims to illuminate a tradition in which poets ambitiously melded genres, claimed poetry’s place to shape public discourse, and thought deeply about the reading practices available to their audience. Along the way, I consider how the dominant critical categories in the study of poetry have occluded these poems, and what these poems might offer in terms renewing or revitalizing our analytical tools and concepts

Energy Use and Appliance Ownership in Ireland. ESRI WP277. February 2009

This paper examines household energy use and appliance ownership in Ireland. Logit regression analyses on a large micro-dataset reveal how household characteristics can help explain the ownership of energy using appliances. Using OLS regression models, we explore the factors affecting residential energy demand conditional on appliance ownership. Results suggest that the methods of space and water heating employed by a household are even more important than electrical appliances in explaining domestic energy usage. However, the stock of appliances must be included in such models so that results will not be biased. The methods employed in this paper can be easily adopted for studies of household energy use in other countries where household expenditure survey data are available

EMBEDDING CULTURE IN RELATION TO THE SHOTGUN AT THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

The objective of this study was to determine if the randomization of members in an organization can result in a new organizational culture. This study was conducted following the 2021 shotgun of the Brigade of Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy, where 75 percent of Midshipmen were redistributed into new companies. Different aspects of organizational culture were researched, including the way cultures form, transformational leadership, different configuration models, and Schein’s embedding mechanisms. Focus groups were held for the Midshipmen and their leadership to discuss how the shotgun impacted their company’s culture, if at all. Despite the wide variety of experiences from the Midshipmen, three common themes emerged. Embedding a new culture requires a cohesive environment to create a change, a promulgation of a clear set of goals is needed to align the personnel with the organization, and that establishing a sense of accountability is critical. It was also discovered that a culture would establish itself regardless of the intentionality presented by its members. Limitations of this study included no pre-shotgun data, the voluntary nature of the focus groups, and the sheer amount of data synthesizing required. Recommendations for further attempts of this shotgun should include more oversight to ensure current issues are corrected beforehand, and that new cultures align with the larger organization.Lieutenant, United States NavyLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Electrical Appliance Ownership and Usage in Ireland. ESRI WP421. February 2012

Past research into the determinants of appliance ownership has identified associations with socioeconomic characteristics of households. Few studies have examined the intensity with which different sorts of households use the appliances they have. This paper uses microdata to examine the factors influencing ownership and usage of electrical appliances in Irish households. We also consider the factors influencing the ownership of different cooker types, space and water heating systems and energy saving features. We find that appliance ownership and usage is related to the socio‐economic characteristics of the household’s chief income earner as well as household characteristics such as the type and age of accommodation, tenure and the number of bedrooms. The number of people living in the household has a positive association with both ownership and usage of electrical appliances. However, it does not increase ownership of energy saving features, with the exception of CFLs. The highest earning households are more likely to own electrical appliances but they do not necessarily use them more often, nor are they more likely to purchase energy saving features

Hot Topics: Critical information literacy for global citizenship, social justice, and community participation

Justification for embedding information literacy instruction as part of the college curriculum can come in many forms. From responding to the proliferation of unreliable sources of news in hyper-partisan times, to heeding employers’ calls for improved workplace information-seeking skills, to addressing the integral role of information literacy in critical thinking, there are numerous avenues at our disposal when promoting the value of librarian instruction. But, what about the more entrenched social issues that impact our campuses and communities more broadly? What role does information literacy instruction have in addressing long held prejudices? How might it be a component of efforts to expose and redress hidden injustices? Librarians and a faculty member from one small college will discuss new curriculum developed collaboratively on their campus that embeds and advocates information literacy as a means of action against important issues that today’s students are keen to address. In this session, the presenters will discuss the development of an embedded set of instruction sessions that explore information literacy outcomes through a social justice lens, and situate critical information literacy as integral to integrative thinking and interdisciplinary ways of knowing. Emphasis is placed on exploring ways in which students could apply critical awareness to become active, global citizens and make positive change to their communities, through personal and professional choices. A range of topics, rotating and transforming each academic year, are addressed through the lens of informational and professional/disciplinary perspectives. These topics, which will continue to evolve over time, have included the impact of elections on local and professional communities; gender discrimination in professional settings; contemporary social justice movements; and human trafficking. This session will discuss how the presenters have developed adaptable lessons that address these evolving, highly relevant topics through the lens of critical information literacy. The presenters will outline the steps they have taken to meet both the integrative and interdisciplinary needs of the faculty, as well as the information literacy outcomes of the library. In doing so, this presentation will highlight new paths towards meaningful and sustainable models of librarian and faculty collaboration. This session will also illustrate how librarians can expand the scope of information literacy for their students by relying less on ‘library-centric’ instruction. Through guided inquiry and dialogue, students are encouraged to draw connections between available information, their professional/disciplinary expertise, and efforts to remedy various forms of injustice. This method emphasizes the “real world” implications of the skills, practices, and dispositions that librarian instruction seeks to promote

Review of Facing Gaia

A review of Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour (2017). Pre-print first published online 10/26/201

The Distributional Effects of Value Added Tax in Ireland. ESRI WP366. December 2010

In this paper we examine the distributional effects of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Ireland. Using the 2004/2005 Household Budget Survey, we assess the amount of VAT that households pay as a proportion of weekly disposable income. We measure VAT payments by equivalised income decile, households of different composition and different household sizes. The current system is highly regressive. With the use of a micro-simulation model we also estimate the impact of changing the VAT rate on certain groups of items and the associated change in revenue. We also consider how the imposition of a flat rate across all goods and services would affect households in different categories. The Irish Government has recently announced that it proposes to increase the standard rate of VAT to 22% in 2013 and to 23% in 2014. We examine the distributional implications of such increases. The general pattern of results shows that those hardest hit are households in the first income decile, households in rural areas, 6 person households and households containing a single adult with children

Determinants of Vegetarianism and Partial Vegetarianism in the United Kingdom. ESRI WP360. November 2010

Vegetarianism is increasing in the western world. Anecdotally, this trend can be attributed to heightened health, environmental and animal welfare concerns. In this paper we investigate the factors associated with vegetarianism among adults and children in the UK. Using the 2008 Health Survey for England, we use a logit model to assess the relationship between vegetarianism and the socioeconomic and personal characteristics of the respondents. We also analyse the factors associated with varying levels of meat consumption using an ordered logit model. This paper adds to the existing literature as it is the first paper to estimate the determinants of vegetarianism using a large dataset containing individual level consumption data

The Cost of Natural Gas Shortages in Ireland. ESRI WP397. July 2010

This paper investigates the economic implications of disruptions of one to ninety days to the supply of natural gas in Ireland. We assess the impact of a hypothetical gas supply disruption in both winter and summer in 2008 (with observed market characteristics) and in 2020 (with projected market characteristics). The cost of a natural gas outage includes the cost of natural gas being unavailable for heating and other purposes in the industrial and commercial sectors, lost consumer surplus in the residential sector, the cost of lost electricity in all sectors and lost VAT on the sale of gas and electricity. Ireland produces much of its electricity from natural gas and the loss of this electricity accounts for the majority of the cost of a natural gas outage. Losing gas-fired electricity would cost 0.1 to 1.0 billion euro per day, depending on the time of week, the time of year, and rationing of electricity. Industry should be rationed before households to minimize economic losses, but current emergency protocols favour industry. If gas-fired electricity is unavailable for three months, the economic loss could be up to 80 billion euro, about half of Gross Domestic Product. Losing gas for heating too would add up to approximately 8 billion euro in economic losses. We also discuss some options to increase Ireland’s security of supply, and find that the cost is a small fraction of the avoided maximum damage

Evidence-based instruction: assessing student work using rubrics and citation analysis to inform instructional design

This paper presents the findings of a study carried out by librarians in Champlain College who developed a two-pronged authentic assessment approach to measure the information literacy (IL) levels and determine the information seeking habits of students while conducting research for academic purposes. Librarians devised and developed an IL rubric and a citation analysis checklist for the assessment of first-year annotated bibliography assignment papers. This paper illustrates the merits of rubric-based, citation analysis assessment measures using authentic student coursework as a highly effective method of determining student outcomes assessment and information seeking habits while engaging in academic research. Findings from this study also suggest that authentic assessment is an extremely useful tool for instruction librarians to identify areas of IL that require further instructional support. This study is of importance to librarians wishing to adopt rubric-based and citation analysis authentic methods for student outcomes assessment. This paper is based on a presentation of the same name delivered at LILAC 2014