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There is a strong connection between cities and literature; they inhabit and shape each other. Sociologists have studied the relationship between them, looking at how literary meaning is developed and how it shapes urban and social milieus. While there is a large body of poetry-based research, newspaper poetry remains largely unexplored in the United States. Drawing on discourse and content analysis of a new and never-used set of poems published in Milwaukee's two major alternative newspapers between 1967 and 1973, this article analyses poetic representations of Milwaukee's social, institutional and urban dimensions. Additionally, it examines variability and continuity in the focus of these poems, as well as the factors that might shape these patterns. The results show multiple technical and rhetoric mechanisms used by poets when representing that historical period poetically and reveal that even in periods of intense social upheaval, 'love' and 'death' appear to be the primary themes in which poets focus on. This article also devotes particular attention to the relationship between poetry and the urban space, and the implications of platforms of distribution and consumption in poetic representations of cities' historical periods and change building on literature on the connections between local environment and cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advancements and lower production costs since the mid-1990s have dramatically improved opportunities for instructors to tailor self-made instructional videos for their students. However, video production technology has outpaced the development of educational theory, causing instructional videos to consistently fall short of their pedagogical potential. Responding to these shortcomings, scholars from various backgrounds have started publishing guidelines to help practitioners as they develop instructional videos for their respective fields. Using a rapid literature review, this article contributes to this ongoing effort by synthesizing theory-based, best-practice guidelines for a specific subcategory of educational videos called supplemental instructional videos (SIVs). SIVs are different from other types of instructional videos in that they are used to support and magnify other learning methods, mediums, and materials rather than substitute for them. Bringing the best-practice guidelines synthesized in this paper immediately into application, they were used to inform the production of SIVs for an undergraduate course that was held in the Building Construction Department of a major public university in the United States during the Spring 2020 semester. The methods used in the production of the SIV guidelines were systematically documented during the course for future researchers and practitioners to learn and build from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the general consensus that field experience during library school is important for applying theory to practical situations, there is a lack of understanding about what students want from, and the barriers they face to acquire, graduate employment. A survey was sent to ALA accredited Master of Library Science programs in the United States, asking students about their library employment status and to rank factors that influenced their decision to accept their positions. Patterns emerged when results were grouped by various life factors. The results of this study show what students are looking for from employment, which could help employers recruit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the availability of LGBTQ Spanish language nonfiction books among selected university libraries along the United States–Mexico border to measure access to materials for readers and researchers and identify what resources selectors might use to inform purchases. This study utilizes 37 titles and seven libraries for a comparison of holdings. It seeks to expand the body of knowledge available regarding LGBTQ literature while establishing a baseline regarding the availability of LGBTQ Spanish-language materials in academic libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourist homes, private residences that rented rooms to traveling guests, were once a popular form of tourist accommodation in the United States. Reaching their peak in the early 20th century, tourist homes largely became obsolete as hotels and motels were able to provide relatively inexpensive and standardized forms of hospitality. As a result of their meteoric rise and fall, and the private nature of the lodging, tourist homes have been neglected in studies of historical tourism and hospitality. However, tourist homes occupied an important position in providing welcome and other forms of hospitality to travelers, particularly Black Americans, in the first half of the 20th century, and this role deserves to be recovered and recognized. An exploration of tourist homes listed in the Green Book, a Black American-centric travel guide published during the Jim Crow Era, reveals that tourist homes not only lodged travelers overnight, but also significantly contributed to forms of mobile resistance against white supremacy. Specifically, through a conceptualization of hospitality as resistance, tourist homes enabled opportunities for Black Americans to gain economic and social capital through processes of welcoming and establishing 'Black counterpublic spaces'. Particularly through constructions of home-like environments, tourist homes presented spaces that served as moorings within larger mobility networks, countering white supremacist attempts to immobilize and disadvantage Black Americans. Given these contributions to resistance and Black mobility, tourist homes deserve to be included in studies of tourism, hospitality, and Black geographies as important sites of welcoming, resistance, and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To better understand the funding issues confronting public libraries today, this article examines the development of library services for the public in the United States before the emergence of the tax-supported public library in the first half of the 19th century. It follows an earlier article on the development of such services in England. Adopting a historical research methodological approach, it was found that the early types of libraries included the town book collection, the social library and the commercial circulating library, and these are described and discussed. Where possible, funding or financial issues are highlighted. The importance of philanthropic and voluntary support emerged as important factors in the establishment and maintenance of the social library in its various forms. However, it was found that neither type of support was able to sustain the existence of the social library, and this was particularly evident during difficult economic times. With the emergence of the tax-supported public library, the social library slowly declined in importance and, with a few exceptions, eventually disappeared, often being absorbed into the emerging public library system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand the current state of the field of special collections library administration in the United States. Using a dataset gathered through publicly available information about special collections directors from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Independent Research Libraries Association (IRLA), and the Oberlin Group institutional members, the authors explore the educational backgrounds of directors, the types of positions they held prior to taking on their current roles, and the effect of gender on leadership advancement. This article also discusses the similarities and differences between institution types as well as promotions within institutions and across types of institutions.

This article discusses the distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic English in the United States between 1770 and 1849. For the study, handwritten documents belonging to individuals from different social classes were inspected to identify misspellings that deviated from conventional spelling patterns (if compared to dictionaries and spellers of the time) regarding or the previous vowel. The investigation shows that during the period elision was never the most frequent occurrence. In fact, the results indicate that it was the quality of the previous vowel that underwent significant oscillations. Regarding the distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic English in the United States, the evidence suggests that r-lessness happened mostly in states that are predominantly non-rhotic today. In terms of social variation, there was a tendency for the middle classes to produce more non-rhotic misspellings than other classes. Lastly, the data indicates a strong possibility of a rapid expansion of non-rhotic English after 1850. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the Spring 2020 semester, academic institutions in the United States shifted rapidly to virtual instruction amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift forced the libraries associated with these institutions to create innovative ways to reach faculty, staff, and students in an online mode. At the University of Memphis, librarians enhanced many existing online services and developed new ones. This study tracks the utilization of these services by online instructors during the span of one year since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The methods were mixed, involving a survey soliciting information from online instructors using both qualitative and quantitative methods and follow-up interviews conducted privately and virtually with teaching faculty and staff. This article presents the findings of this research and details the plans for further action at the University of Memphis to enhance and promote library services to online faculty. The plan involves increasing the level of online marketing, involvement with faculty training, and the enhancement of existing services, specifically embedded librarianship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that book banning in public school libraries is a violation of students' First Amendment rights, and a device employed to reinforce principles of white supremacy within the U.S. public education system. It mentions that challenged books are mostly authored by individuals from LGBTQ, discussing themes such as sexual orientation. It suggests that the First Amendment's principles can be preserved and systemic injustices that massively affect People of color communities.

Few women major in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at the undergraduate level. Given the drive to attract and retain students in general, and women in STEM in particular, educational institutions need to know what resources and services might help support these students in their work. This study seeks to provide a better understanding of how undergraduate women in STEM use the academic library. The study involved focus groups and interviews with women at a research-intensive university in the United States. Grounded theory principles provided a basis for analysis of the collected conversations. The findings from this study indicate that undergraduate women in STEM depend on the academic library as a quiet place to study where there are few distractions and technology is easily available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid shift to online instruction at academic institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic increased demand for streaming media resources offered by academic libraries. This shift prompted many academic libraries to employ new methods to provide access to streaming content. The authors sought to survey academic libraries with the purpose of assessing activities libraries participate in regarding streaming video acquisitions. This article examines the results of a survey the authors created and distributed to academic libraries in the United States. By sharing these results, the authors aim to provide useful information for others who manage streaming video collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder, leading to both physical and social morbidity. Worldwide 1% of the population is struggling with the disease, with 100,000 new cases annually only in the United States. Despite its importance, the goal of finding effective treatments for schizophrenia remains a challenging task, and previous work conducted expensive large-scale phenotypic screens. This work investigates the benefits of Machine Learning for graphs to optimize drug phenotypic screens and predict compounds that mitigate abnormal brain reduction induced by excessive glial phagocytic activity in schizophrenia subjects. Given a compound and its concentration as input, we propose a method that predicts a score associated with three possible compound effects, i.e., reduce, increase, or not influence phagocytosis. We leverage a high-throughput screening to prove experimentally that our method achieves good generalization capabilities. The screening involves 2218 compounds at five different concentrations. Then, we analyze the usability of our approach in a practical setting, i.e., prioritizing the selection of compounds in the SWEETLEAD library. We provide a list of 64 compounds from the library that have the most potential clinical utility for glial phagocytosis mitigation. Lastly, we propose a novel approach to computationally validate their utility as possible therapies for schizophrenia. Author summary: Phagocytosis is a fundamental biological process to protect biological organisms from exogenous infectious particles as well as to preserve equilibrium and efficiency of the host by removing its unwanted cells. A dysregulation of the phagocytic activity can lead to severe consequences for the host. In this study, we focus on a recent theory that relates an excessive phagocytic activity in brain cells, and a consequent abnormal reduction in brain volume, to the development of schizophrenia. Our working hypothesis is that pharmaceutical compounds that can reduce excessive of phagocytic activity might prove effective as a schizophrenia treatment. Rather than attempting to develop ex-novo such a chemical compound, we rely on a more cost-effective and efficient approach that seeks candidate therapies in a set of approved chemical compounds. To achieve this, we train a machine learning model capable of predicting, with good accuracy, the ability of a molecular compound to increase or decrease phagocytosis in the target brain cells. Our approach leverages learning models capable of directly processing the molecular graph of the compound, leading to the identification of 64 candidate drugs of potential clinical utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this study, science trade books from the libraries of 10 elementary schools across the United States were evaluated using the modified Hunsader rubric for their overall quality pertaining to science content, literacy, and critical literacy criteria. Findings indicate that 62% of the books met the overall science content criterion, 99% met the overall literacy criterion, and 41% met the overall critical literacy criterion. The majority of science trade books in each school were life science books, and the majority of books across all schools were 18-23 years old, with many being much older. Implications and recommendations are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we offer a comparative analysis of women service workers in early cinema in Britain and the United States from the 1910s to the 1930s. Although this period has been the subject of much important scholarship in film history over the past several decades, women's experiences as box office attendants, cashiers, cigarette girls, purveyors of ice cream and sweets, and especially as usherettes, constitute an under-researched field. Tracing the narratives surrounding women's work in a wide variety of capacities in early cinema auditoriums can illuminate much about how women were perceived as employees and sexualized as objects of the gaze of male patrons, while, at the same time, acting as spectators and mediators with a privileged perspective on both the screen and the audience. In pursuing this line of inquiry, we draw not only on existing scholarship, but also on our own original research on industry journals, girls' and women's popular magazines, star and fan culture, and changing conditions for women's labor and leisure in the interwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of an online survey of access services departments at academic libraries on the responses implemented during the initial stage of COVID-19 in March–May 2020. The 33-question survey was completed by 121 respondents. The article identifies policies and procedures adopted by access services departments during the pandemic, including staffing, return of library materials, fines, due dates, quarantine periods, interlibrary loan, reserves, and retrieval of materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]