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The section offers news briefs on the field of library science of July 2013. Rick Anderson, interim dean and university librarian at the University of Utah's Marriott Library, was chosen as the 2013 recipient of the HARRASSOWITZ Award for Leadership in Library Acquisitions. The Techniques for Electronic Resources (TERMS) project has been converted into a wiki. The 2013 UKSH Conference and Exhibition was held in Bournemouth, England.

Objective. A large-scale quantitative study was conducted by stratified representative samples from Chicago (prototype of the United States; N = 293), Beijing (prototype of urbanized China; N = 302), and Hong Kong (prototype of East-meets-West culture; N = 284) to explore factors that might lead to their stigmatizing attitudes towards hiring individuals with (mental illness, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and HIV/AIDS) and without (bone cancer) behavioral-driven health conditions. Methods. Consented employers completed the Employer Survey pertaining to their attitudes towards specific health conditions, previous hiring experiences, resources, assets of applicants, and hiring concerns. Results. The findings suggested that employers in Hong Kong and Beijing were more willing to hire individuals with alcohol abuse, whereas employers in Chicago were more willing to hire those with HIV/AIDS or bone cancer. Logistic regression suggested that the type of health conditions, assets of applicants, and perceived level of dangerousness of applicants were significant predictors that contributed to employers' hiring preference. Conclusion. Employers express different hiring preference towards individuals with or without behavioral-driven health conditions. Their hiring preference towards specific type of health conditions is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a comparative approach, this article reports content analyses of news articles about a devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan province, China, from six Chinese newspapers, indicating that the Chinese media, in reporting the government’s emergency responses, had many similarities with the American media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Further comparisons, however, suggest that the claim of a ‘watchdog’ media culture during disasters, as measured by the frequency of media accounts of the government’s responsibilities, is still relatively premature in China. Moreover, party-controlled and market-oriented media in China had different focuses in their coverage of natural disasters. The market-oriented media played an important role in making the Sichuan earthquake more transparent and the authorities more responsible. Provincial media in China may be less regulated by the central government and are in a good position to cover sensitive stories outside their own province. But they will not have a long-term impact without an overall government policy of open information and media deregulation. By contrast, fewer variations in story focus were observed in the American media, and the overall difference is relatively limited. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]