Since the proliferation of American public libraries began in the late nineteenth century, library work has been associated with women. As in other female dominated fields the salaries and benefits are less than those fields that associated with traditionally male skills and personality traits. When women initially entered the field in high numbers their economic options for professional and intellectual expression were limited and thus the role of the librarian was adopted as a female identity that fit conveniently into prevailing societal norms of a woman as service-oriented nurturers. The discussion about women in librarianship has often failed to address the root causes of divisions in gender that are wrongly assumed to be inherent. Librarians must address the roots of why femininity is debased in the workplace and also seek to illuminate the vast contributions women have made in the field.
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in virtual worlds and psychology.
Americans are spending increasing amounts of time hanging around virtual worlds in the forms of cartoon-like avatars that change appearances according to users’ wills, fly through floating cities in the clouds and teleport instantly to glowing crystal canyons and starlit desert landscapes. Simply fun and games divorced from reality, right? Not necessarily so, say two social psychologists from Northwestern University who conducted the first experimental field studies in the virtual world. They found that avatars in these elaborate fantasylands responded to social cues to help one another — and revealed racial biases – in the same ways that people do in the real world. “Is It a Game? Evidence for Social Influence in the Virtual World” was published online in the journal Social Influence; the study’s co-investigators are Northwestern’s Paul W. Eastwick, a doctoral student in psychology, and Wendi L. Gardner, associate professor of psychology and member of Northwestern’s Center for Technology and Social Behavior.
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Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008
in books and psychology.
A group of Toronto researchers have compiled a body of evidence showing that bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills. Their years of research—summed up in an article by Keith Oatley in the June 28 issue of New Scientist—has shown that readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read nonfiction texts. And follow-up research showed that reading fiction may help fine-tune these skills: People assigned to read a New Yorker short story did better on social reasoning tests than those who read an essay from the same magazine.
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