New Books!
Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments
Dr. Iris Xie
In her new book, Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments, Dr. Xie shares her expertise in information retrieval and reveals the impact of digital environments on people’s information retrieval strategies.
“Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments includes the integration of existing frameworks on user-oriented information retrieval systems across multiple disciplines; the comprehensive review of empirical studies of interactive information retrieval systems for different types of users, tasks, and subtasks; and the discussion of how to evaluate interactive information retrieval systems. Researchers, designers, teachers, scholars, and professionals will gain the foundation for new research on this subject matter, and guidance to evaluate new information retrieval systems for the general public as well as for specific user groups.”
(from IGI Publishing,
http://www.igi-global.com/books/details.asp?id=7642)
Ebony Jr!: The Rise, Fall, and Return of a Black Children's Magazine
Dr. Laretta Henderson
"In 1945, John H. Johnson published the first issue of Ebony magazine, a monthly periodical aimed at African American readers. In 1973, the Johnson Publishing Company expanded its readership to include children by producing Ebony Jr!. Targeting Black children in the five to eleven age-range, the magazine featured stories, comics, puzzles, and cartoons. Its contents combined elements of Black culture, Black history, and elementary school curriculum. The publication remained in print until 1985 and was resurrected online in 2007.
In Ebony Jr! The Rise, Fall and Return of a Black Children's Magazine, Laretta Henderson charts this unique publication's genesis, history, and impact. She analyzes the structure and literary context of Ebony Jr!, revealing how the political climate informed the composition of the magazine. Henderson also profiles the magazine's publisher, John H. Johnson, and examines how his corporate structure facilitated and informed Ebony Jr!'s content, success, and its initial demise.
This culturally significant milestone in African American culture is given its due deference in this interdisciplinary examination of the environment in which Ebony Jr! was produced, assessing what the magazine's existence meant to a generation of young readers".
(from The Scarecrow Press, Inc., http://www.scarecrowpress.com/ Catalog/Flyer2.shtml?SKU=0810861348)
Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan’s essay, “Deafening Silence: Music and the Emerging Climate of Access and Use,” continues to draw praise as the first chapter in Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, edited by Michael D. Ayers (New York, 2006). “Buchanan's contribution is a particularly strong essay that manages to present an overview of the history of Internet copyright issues within an ethical context and raise salient issues for further consideration in eight stellar pages,” commented reviewer Lori Landay, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Berklee College of Music. Dr. Marc Tyrrell from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton University, commented in his review, “The first chapter, ‘Deafening Silence: Music and the Emerging Climate of Access and Use,’ is, to my mind, one of the gems of this collection. In it, Elizabeth Buchanan lays out the sordid story of legal maneuverings to enclose the electronic commons and to destroy the fair use clause in the copyright laws. Her conclusion, that ‘we have started negating the promotion of knowledge’ (17), while startling in some ways does logically flow from her analysis and has profound implications for artists and scholars alike.”
Lecturer Dick Kawooya also received accolades for recent work. His article, “Information and Professional Ethics in Sub-Sahara Africa,” published in Information Development (June, 2004), was among the 50 most frequently read articles from the journal in January 2008.
