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Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American culture since the early decades of cinema. A range of nontheatrical sponsors and creators in the US made films to serve practical functions in society—to inform, to organize, to persuade, to promote, etc. The US federal government was a major sponsor of many of these films, which provided American and foreign audiences depictions of race that differed considerably from popular commercial images. For example, Men of the Forest, a film made in 1952 by the United States Information Service focuses on the Hunters, a Black family who owns land and a forestry business in rural Georgia. A documentary of sorts, the film highlights Black life, work, and land ownership in the South in ways not seen in popular feature films of the day. Yet, in the film and others like it, histories of institutional racism are woven into cinematic form and content in ways that are distinct from the entertainment industry. The creators of Men of the Forest omit details of segregation in the South to emphasize the Hunter family as examples of American democracy, a choice suited to the film's Cold War purpose: to counter the anti-American message of Soviet propaganda for foreign audiences. On one hand, by producing and distributing the film, the federal government acknowledged Black farmers and landowners in the Jim Crow South. On the other hand, it avoided the structural inequality surrounding the Hunters to frame their reality as an example of American democratic progress for international circulation. Today, government films like Men of the Forest prompt contemporary reflection on the institutional histories they represent and their evolution into the present. The film and many others are available online due to the digitization of collections from the National Archives, Library of Congress, and elsewhere. With this increase in access, contemporary scholars have the ability to investigate how the federal government and its various internal entities mediated racial ideologies with moving image technologies. As an example of such research, this essay examines Men of the Forest by focusing on the past and present contradictions that arise from its depiction of a Black family with land and an agricultural business in rural Georgia. Two recent events shed light on the histories reflected in the film and their contemporary significance. In 2018, Descendants of Men of the Forest, The Legacy Continues—a documentary created by family members of the film's original participants—contextualized the original production as evidence of the Hunter family's legacy in the community of Guyton, Georgia. Underlying this local effort, Men of the Forest serves as an important historical event and record of the family and the community. On a broader scale, in March 2021, Congress passed a large relief package for disadvantaged minority farmers, intended to help alleviate decades of systemic racism in government agricultural programs. Lawsuits from white farmers and conservative organizations followed quickly, challenging the provision of government aid based on race. In this federal context, Men of the Forest exposes an institutional image of individual success that downplays the structural racism facing people of color, especially those with agricultural livelihoods. Even as politics and legislation evolve, this vision of democracy once exported by the federal government has widespread currency and accumulating effects. The connections between Men of the Forest and these recent events reveal the racial politics at play in government films and the ways in which they take shape in the real world beyond the screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the autor analyses the development of the teaching of Archaelogy in Galicia from Republic through the Franco period to democracy and current syllabus, the equipment and materials available (libraries, archaeological collections) professors and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the public library in Arizona - Phoenix Public Library - considering the visit and the discussions that the author had with the library director, Ms. Toni Garvey. In 2004 she was conferred the title "librarian of the year" by the Library Journal Magazine as she is well known for successfully managing the library with its 17 branches and for promoting the new role of the library as open space, stating that "the library is the most democratic institution". As for the size of the collection, Phoenix Public Library counts 181.570 reference items (that are not available for circulation) children literature, rare books and the "Arizona" collection, 25.609 digital items, 11.973 newspapers and magazines, and a small collection of Romanian books. Tony Garvey joined the American delegation that visited Romania in 2010 with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation program, and she was amazed by the openness and willingness of Romanian librarians to learn about the experiences of their American colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the impact of information digitization on the rise of misinformation, and the broader implications that this has for democracy. It is based on the Researching Students Information Choices (RSIC) project, which looks at how students evaluate scientific information on the internet.1 Part of this study looked at container collapse. In previous decades, information was contained in a physical book, newspaper, journal, magazine, or the like. These containers offered important contextual information about the origin and validity of the information. With information digitized, this context is lost. This can facilitate misinformation, as people might make incorrect judgments about information credibility because of the lack of context. It is vital that citizens have the information literacy skills to initially evaluate information correctly. One possibility for misinformation being pervasive is that, once encoded, it becomes resistant to correction. This underscores the importance of teaching students to evaluate the credibility of information prior to the point of encoding. To combat misinformation, librarians can teach students to evaluate containers and the indicators of credibility that they provide. Information containers can be evaluated prior to consuming information within a resource, while fact-checking only can happen after. Because of this, container evaluation can help prevent misinformation from being encoded. Our research demonstrates that this requires thoughtful engagement with the information resources and critical evaluation of the sources that produced them, and that students cannot accurately identify containers when they rely on heuristics like the URL and Google snippet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Swedish heritage politics from the 1920s up to the present by studying official inquiries during this period. Through a critical, historical and empirical discussion, it reveals how the meaning of the word kulturarv (heritage) has been adjusted to correspond to wider changes in Swedish politics. It shows how a relatively neutral understanding of the word kulturarv has been turned into an ambiguity. In this essay I suggest from the material at hand that this trajectory of change results from the development of global capitalism, which turned identity into a commodity. This essay concludes that in a post-heritage future we therefore need a new understanding of identity, an open identity, and that we need to take existential responsibility for our lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Contemporary adult readers' advisory aims to adhere to (what I term) a pure preference satisfaction model in which librarians provide nonjudgmental book recommendations that satisfy their patrons' aesthetic tastes rather than improve upon them. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether readers' advisors really ought to treat all such tastes as essentially benign, even when doing so may conflict with core commitments to diversity and social responsibility. Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes a thought experiment to interrogate our intuitions regarding the practice of recommending recreational materials featuring marginalized protagonists. The author also draws on theoretical insights from feminist aesthetician A.W. Eaton's innovative work on taste in bodies to formulate argumentation addressing the ethical dilemma presented here. Findings: Our reading tastes can, in fact, be oppressive, working to maintain unjust power relations that are often thought to be the product merely of bad beliefs. On the view advanced here, oppressive tastes function as real obstacles to collective self-governance because they systematically distort our judgments of the credibility, empathic accessibility, and fundamental worth of our fellow democratic citizens. Librarians' obligation to protect and promote democracy, therefore, provides practitioners with a crucial justification for recommending diverse books to all readers, even (and perhaps especially) those who actively disprefer them. Originality/value: The paper illustrates how contemporary work in analytic (and specifically feminist) aesthetics can furnish LIS scholars with the intellectual resources to resolve political problems in the library. The author's analysis also lays the groundwork for further consideration of alternative ideals for readers' advisory that will capitalize on the service's educative and emancipatory potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet has considerably changed epistemic practices in science as well as in everyday life. Apparently, this technology allows more and more people to get access to a huge amount of information. Some people even claim that the internet leads to a democratization of knowledge. In the following text, we will analyze this statement. In particular, we will focus on a potential change in epistemic structure. Does the internet change our common epistemic practice to rely on expert opinions? Does it alter or even undermine the division of epistemic labor? The epistemological framework of our investigation is a naturalist-pragmatist approach to knowledge. We take it that the internet generates a new environment to which people seeking information must adapt. How can they, and how should they, expand their repertory of social markers to continue the venture of filtering, and so make use of the possibilities the internet apparently provides? To find answers to these questions we will take a closer look at two case studies. The first example is about the internet platform WikiLeaks that allows so-called whistle-blowers to anonymously distribute their information. The second case study is about the search engine Google and the problem of personalized searches. Both instances confront a knowledge-seeking individual with particular difficulties which are based on the apparent anonymity of the information distributor. Are there ways for the individual to cope with this problem and to make use of her social markers in this context nonetheless? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Although Lynn White, jr. is best known for the critical aspects of his disputed 1967 essay, 'The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,' this article combines archival research and findings from his lesser-known publications in an attempt to reconcile his thought on democracy with the Earth Charter and its assertion that 'we are one human family and one Earth Community with a common destiny' (2000, Preamble). Humanity is first and foremost, White believed, part of a 'spiritual democracy of all God's creatures' in which humans and nonhumans should treat each other with mutual compassion and courtesy. It is argued that the Christian, animal-inclusive 'biodemocracy' envisioned by White is both compatible with, and potentially in conflict with, the tenets of the Earth Charter. This article also considers further implications of these findings for the larger fields of ecotheology and religion and ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the dance performance piece "Adelante!" by Helen Tamiris. According to the author, the dance's aesthetics, dramaturgy, and historiographical characteristics were influenced by artist Francisco de Goya's series of etchings "Disasters of War". It is suggested that Tamiris used Iberian Jewish history to call for U.S. action against fascist anti-semitism. Other topics include democracy, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and nationalism.

The article focuses on fairness in the Native American judicial system. Topics include the U.S. Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA), guarantees of due process and equal protection, and the domestication of federal constitutional guarantees by tribes. Information is provided on the partial rejection of American jurisprudence.

US Senator George Mitchell's principles of democracy and non-violence are synonymous with peace in Northern Ireland. Mitchell's subsequent deployment to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict armed with the same principles failed, and unwisely fell to a footnote in the history of Israeli-Palestinian interventions. When two US diplomatic initiatives to intervene in protracted conflicts mediated by the same individual reach different outcomes, what means of mediation mitigate failure? The 'Mitchell Principles' of democracy and non-violence are pillars of persuasion for protagonists of protracted conflicts. First successfully applied to mediate the Northern Irish decommissioning crisis in 1996, Mitchell's subsequent efforts to apply the principles to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in 2001 failed. By comparing the fates of the Mitchell initiatives this essay examines the importance of negotiating precedents, procedures, protagonists and the role of third party policy initiatives in determining the success or failure of the Mitchell Principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a lesson plan to help students understand the role of freedom songs in modern civil rights movement in the United States. The author describes the time frame of the plan and enumerates its objectives. The benefits that can be provided by the plan to students and teachers of history are also discussed by the author. Some of the freedom songs included in the lesson plan are "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "Over My Head I See Freedom in the Air."

Examines the roles of libraries and their development. Their part in fostering and supporting intellectuals in contemporary societies is discussed with particular emphasis on free access to information and freedom of expression. From the nineteenth century, libraries became recognised as necessary to society. In recent years, libraries have increasingly been seen as an instrument for the development and maintenance of a democratic society which offers the individual access to a wide and varied range or knowledge, ideas and opinions. The ubiquity of the Internet and other media and their promise of universal access to information "regardless of frontiers" have reinforced the democracy paradigm. In fulfilling a function of sustaining the discourse of concerned intellectuals, libraries demonstrate their importance to humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the two unpublished lectures of Leo Strauss which includes "What Can We Learn from Political Theory?," delivered in July 1942 and "The Re-education of Axis Countries Concerning the Jews," delivered in November 7, 1943. The author inferred that Strauss' discussions focused on the relation of political philosophy and political practice in the first lecture. He averred that the second lecture focused on the prospects of liberal democracy in postwar Germany.

The next issue, that of November 2012, will be the last for the “UCLA” team—which now includes Harvard, Ohio State, and Stanford—as (now former) co-editors of APSR. The new University of North Texas (UNT) editors are already receiving all papers submitted after June 30, 2012 (at the rate of almost twenty per week, John Ishiyama tells us) while we are handling the “conditional accepts” and “revise and resubmits” that were in the pipeline and have invited referees for the submissions that arrived through June 30. So far, all seems to be running smoothly at both ends, for which we express our gratitude to Aries (which runs Editorial Manager), to the North Texas editorial team, and especially to the professionals who make the whole enterprise run—Joseph Riser, who has served as a superb senior editor at UCLA—and his successor at UNT, Meagan Williams. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]