The introduction of new market institutions in former socialist countries has produced economic and social dislocations in people?s lives. Researchers have focused on the impact of these changes on inequality and poverty, but have not given much attention to changes in community relationships. Panel data from surveys of Russian rural households…

This article draws on one year of qualitative data concerning a foreign-born English as a second language teacher. Findings reveal the key role that the foreign-born English as a second language teacher's shared personal experiences play in creating curriculum and conducting instruction that confirms the students' ethnic identities and pushes them…

It is tough to make the staff of a large, highly centralized urban library system believe they should make their own decisions and even take risks--all to serve their community better. But that is what Mary Graham has achieved as Brooklyn Public Library's director of the Office of Neighborhood Services. A study of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) in…

Building on the tradition of agricultural extension, this article discusses several changes in thinking regarding the relations between communication and innovation. Starting from the idea that network building, social learning and conflict management are key processes to be supported by communication professionals, the article makes critical…

To date e-Learning material has usually been accessed and delivered through a central web server. As the number of users, the amount of information, the frequency of accesses and the volume of data increase, together with the introduction of multimedia streaming applications, a decentralized content distribution architecture is necessary. In this…

Purpose: This paper seeks to look into Gabriel--the Worldwide web server for those European national libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), providing a single point of access on the internet for the retrieval of information about their functions, services and collections. Above all, it serves as a gateway…

The present paper examines existing links between identities and the social structure in the context of identity control theory. I point out that, whether social structure is conceived as positions (roles and group memberships) to which identities are tied, or as the human organization of resource flows and transfers that are controlled by the…

In the contemporary library environment, the presence of the Internet and the infrastructure of the integrated library system suggest an integrated internal organization. The article describes the example of Douglass Rationalization, a team-based collaborative project to refocus the collection of Rutgers' Douglass Library, taking advantage of the…

This article discusses some important aspects of Web Intelligence (WI) in the context of educational applications. Some of the key components of WI have already attracted developers of web-based educational systems for quite some time- ontologies, adaptivity and personalization, and agents. The paper focuses on the application of Computational…

To investigate the process through which the educational research community can become more vibrant and cohesive, the authors of this article ask: How can the numerous networks that constitute the field of educational research be analyzed in an effort to understand and influence the pattern through which knowledge of educational phenomena are…

We investigate incentive mechanisms to increase active participation in Learning Networks (LNs). The LN under study is LN4LD, an LN for the exchange of information about the IMS Learning Design specification. We examine how to encourage learners in LN4LD to contribute their knowledge, and whether incentive mechanisms can increase the level of…

The concept of social organization provides an important framework for understanding families in the context of communities and focuses our attention on norms, networks, and associated processes that typify community life. We discuss the significance of community for understanding family outcomes, discuss challenges in defining community context,…

In "EDUCAUSE Quarterly," Volume 25, Number 3, 2002, Joan Getman and Nikki Reynolds published an excellent article about getting the most from a conference. They listed 10 strategies that a conference attendee could use to maximize the conference's yield in information and motivation: (1) Plan ahead; (2) Set realistic expectations; (3) Use e-mail…

Fourteen years after its establishment, the Distance Learning Section is one of the fastest growing sections in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association. Based on Section archives and secondary literature, this article traces the organization's development from its beginnings as a…

The article is based on a review, commissioned by the East Midlands Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (EMMLAC), of the East Midlands Museums Service (EMMS) Regional Emergencies and Disaster Squad (REDS). Research methods used included: literature and Internet review, review of REDS documentation, interviews with REDS personnel, questionnaire…