Purdue University Press Books

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  Clear and Concise: Technical Writing for Biological Engineers

  Abigail S. Engelberth

  Clear and Concise: Technical Writing for Biological Engineers is a practical guide designed to help students and early career engineers communicate their work with clarity and confidence. Drawing on years of teaching experience, Abigail S. Engelberth breaks down the essentials of technical writing into approachable steps, showing readers how to organize ideas, present data effectively, and write reports that meet professional standards.

  Rather than overwhelming readers with theory, the book focuses on real-world application. It includes examples, checklists, and strategies for common engineering documents including formal and memo-style lab reports. Special attention is given to visuals, formatting, and the role of collaboration and peer review in producing strong technical documents.

  Clear and Concise offers a student-centered approach, concentrating on what students struggle with most and the feedback they find most useful. Whether writing your first lab report or preparing for industry, this guide will help readers articulate their ideas clearly, avoid common pitfalls, and build a skill set that will serve them throughout their careers.

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  Composing the Party Line: Music and Politics in Early Cold War Poland and East Germany

  David G. Tompkins

  This book examines the exercise of power in the Stalinist music world as well as the ways in which composers and ordinary people responded to it. It presents a comparative inquiry into the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic and Poland from the aftermath of World War II through Stalin’s death in 1953, concluding with the slow process of de-Stalinization in the mid- to late-1950s. The author explores how the Communist parties in both countries expressed their attitudes to music of all kinds, and how composers, performers, and audiences cooperated with, resisted, and negotiated these suggestions and demands.

  Based on a deep analysis of the archival and contemporary published sources on state, party, and professional organizations concerned with musical life, Tompkins argues that music, as a significant part of cultural production in these countries, played a key role in instituting and maintaining the regimes of East Central Europe. As part of the Stalinist project to create and control a new socialist identity at the personal as well as collective level, the ruling parties in East Germany and Poland sought to saturate public space through the production of music. Politically effective ideas and symbols were introduced that furthered their attempts to, in the parlance of the day, “engineer the human soul.”

  Music also helped the Communist parties establish legitimacy. Extensive state support for musical life encouraged musical elites and audiences to accept the dominant position and political missions of these regimes. Party leaders invested considerable resources in the attempt to create an authorized musical language that would secure and maintain hegemony over the cultural and wider social worlds. The responses of composers and audiences ran the gamut from enthusiasm to suspicion, but indifference was not an option.

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  Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars' Initiative (Second Edition)

  Charles Ingrao and Thomas A. Emmert

  It has been two decades since Yugoslavia fell apart. The brutal conflicts that followed its dissolution are over, but the legacy of the tragedy continues to unsettle the region. Reconciliation is a long and difficult process that necessitates a willingness to work together openly and objectively in confronting the past. Over the past decade the Scholars’ Initiative assembled an international consortium of historians, social scientists, and jurists to examine the salient controversies that still divide the peoples of former Yugoslavia. The broadly conceived synthesis will assist scholars, public officials, and the people they represent both in acknowledging inconvenient facts and in discrediting widely held myths that inform popular attitudes and the electoral success of nationalist politicians who profit from them.

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  Constructing the Criollo Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Rusticatio Mexicana

  Antony Higgins

  This book constitutes an attempt to theorize the process of the emergence, in eighteenth-century New Spain, of a position of intellectual subjectivity differentiated from that established by the regime of Spanish imperial authority. The principal concern has been to trace how certain groups of Criollo intellectuals try to construct such discourses, paradoxically, out of the framework of available European systems of knowledge and representation. In this fashion, it was sought to discern the outline of an ideological program for Criollo political and cultural hegemony in the eighteenth-century.

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  Consumer Lessons From a Pandemic

  Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, and Erin Robinson

  What did we learn about consumer behavior when the world was turned upside down due to COVID-19? Consumer Lessons From a Pandemic examines how a global crisis exposed and reshaped the values, priorities, and decision-making patterns of everyday people. From disrupted routines to supply-chain shocks, this volume explores the consumer behaviors that emerged in response to extreme uncertainty and how those behaviors continue to evolve. Topics include pandemic-induced grocery spending shifts, the importance of consumer trust, lessons from the infant-formula shortage, and the rise of remote work both as a preference and a negotiation point.

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  Data Information Literacy: Librarians, Data, and the Education of a New Generation of Researchers

  Jake Carlson and Lisa R. Johnston

  Given the increasing attention to managing, publishing, and preserving research datasets as scholarly assets, what competencies in working with research data will graduate students in STEM disciplines need to be successful in their fields? And what role can librarians play in helping students attain these competencies? In addressing these questions, this book articulates a new area of opportunity for librarians and other information professionals, developing educational programs that introduce graduate students to the knowledge and skills needed to work with research data. The term “data information literacy” has been adopted with the deliberate intent of tying two emerging roles for librarians together. By viewing information literacy and data services as complementary rather than separate activities, the contributors seek to leverage the progress made and the lessons learned in each service area.

  The intent of the publication is to help librarians cultivate strategies and approaches for developing data information literacy programs of their own using the work done in the multiyear, IMLS-supported Data Information Literacy (DIL) project as real-world case studies. The initial chapters introduce the concepts and ideas behind data information literacy, such as the twelve data competencies. The middle chapters describe five case studies in data information literacy conducted at different institutions (Cornell, Purdue, Minnesota, Oregon), each focused on a different disciplinary area in science and engineering. They detail the approaches taken, how the programs were implemented, and the assessment metrics used to evaluate their impact. The later chapters include the “DIL Toolkit,” a distillation of the lessons learned, which is presented as a handbook for librarians interested in developing their own DIL programs. The book concludes with recommendations for future directions and growth of data information literacy. More information about the DIL project can be found on the project’s website: datainfolit.org.

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  Decisions That Shape Supply Chains

  Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Michael L. Smith, and Erin Robinson

  What drives consumer decisions, and how do those decisions ripple through our food and agricultural systems? In Decisions That Shape Supply Chains, readers are invited to look beyond conventional models of behavior and explore the complex, sometimes counterintuitive factors influencing real-world consumer choices. Drawing on behavioral science and applied research, this volume examines how decisions made in grocery aisles, drive-through lines, and online shopping carts ultimately inform what gets planted, processed, packaged, and promoted across the food-supply chain. From attitudes toward GMO foods to parenting as a form of consumerism and emotional decision-making under stress to the environmental tradeoffs consumers weigh (or ignore), the topics covered in this book challenge assumptions and reframe the conversation about who holds influence in the marketplace. For agribusiness professionals, researchers, and policymakers, these insights offer better ways to connect with the people at the end of every supply chain: the consumers themselves.

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  Discovering the World of Honey Bees and Beekeeping

  Natalie J. Carroll, Greg Hunt, and Krispn Given

  You don’t have to be a scientist or a lifelong beekeeper to fall in love with the world of honey bees. Discovering the World of Honey Bees and Beekeeping is designed to take anyone, regardless of their experience, on a rewarding adventure by first exploring the fascinating biology and behavior of these insects. This book is designed to help readers see the environment from a bee’s perspective, revealing the vital role pollinators play in our food systems and local ecosystems. Whether you are a student, a backyard gardener, or a nature lover, this guide provides a clear, step-by-step roadmap for success. You will learn the language of the hive, harvest your first crop of honey, and contribute to the health of our planet. This is not a technical manual; it is an invitation to join a community of keepers dedicated to protecting one of nature’s most fascinating secrets.

  The first section, “Learning About Beekeeping,” introduces bees and beekeeping, and is intended to prepare learners to set up their own hive. “Working With Honey Bees,” the next section, guides learners setting up their first hive and demonstrates how to keep records. Section three, “Advanced Beekeeping,” provides information on how to increase the size of the apiary, seasonal management, and troubleshooting problems. The final section presented in Discovering the World of Honey Bees and Beekeeping, the “Facilitator’s Guide,” provides answers to the youth activities as well as information about Next Generation Science Standards.

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  Edward Charles Elliott, Educator

  Frank K. Burrin

  A study of the 50-year career of Edward Charles Elliott is a study of the development of American education. Elliott had experience as a high school and college teacher, school system superintendent, state college system chancellor, and president of a Big Ten university, all during a period of change in American attitudes toward public schooling and rapid growth in education institutions.

  As president of Purdue University from 1922 to 1945, Elliott steered the school through years of expansion in size, prestige, and service. Student enrollment, staff, course offerings, buildings, and campus acreage more than doubled; the total value of the physical plant increased more than five-fold; and the schools of pharmacy, home economics, and graduate study were opened under Elliott’s leadership.

  This book shows not only how Elliott helped make Purdue University what it is today, but documents educational trends from 1900 to 1950 and includes a lengthy bibliography of Elliott’s writings to assist the student of higher education.

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  Engaging Learners Everywhere: The Interactive Synchronous HyFlex Method

  Nathan Mentzer, Abdul Moeed Asad, Adrie A. Koehler, Lakshmy Mohandas, and Elnara Mammadova

  Initially conceived as a workaround related to the crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown of 2020, Interactive Synchronous HyFlex reimagines an active-learning, team-based classroom, making it possible for any student to participate fully, whether they are seated in the back row or joining from elsewhere in the world. Developed and refined by the authors through five years of classroom experimentation and National Science Foundation–funded research, this forward-facing approach—which refers to online synchronous hybrid delivery and combines the terms “hybrid” and “flexible”—brings together learners in a single classroom who have the daily option of meeting face-to-face or synchronously online. Through simple ideas, thought-provoking questions, and practical examples, Engaging Learners Everywhere reveals how existing technology, such as video conferencing and digital collaboration tools, can help bring students together in more robust and inclusive learning communities. This teaching model minimizes the disruptions and challenges instructors frequently encounter due to inclement weather, illnesses, and travel conflicts. Additionally, features such as live captioning, screen sharing, and classroom recordings benefit all students, not just those with disability accommodations. Ultimately, Interactive Synchronous HyFlex provides a more elastic pedagogical approach that allows students to remain engaged and connected to their instructors and to each other.

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  Eva and Otto: Resistance, Refugees, and Love in the Time of Hitler

  Tom Pfister, Kathy Pfister, and Peter Pfister

  Eva and Otto is a true story about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through the early lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985). It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto born Catholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resisted and fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Paris before the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbable escapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtained refuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue other endangered political refugees, including Otto, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. As revealed in recently declassified records, Eva and Otto later engaged in different secret assignments with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in support of the Allied war effort. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, Eva and Otto gave each other hope and strength as they acted upon what they understood to be an ethical duty to help others threatened by fascism. The book provides a sobering insight into the personal risks and costs of a commitment to that duty. Their unusually beautiful writing—directed to each other in diaries and correspondence during two long periods of wartime separation—also reveals an unlikely and inspiring love story.

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  First Opinions, Second Reactions: A Collection of Innovative Online Reviews of Literature for Children and Young Adults

  Janet Alsup and Christy Wessel-Powell

  First Opinions, Second Reactions: A Collection of Innovative Online Reviews of Literature for Children and Young Adults features selected pieces from the journal First Opinions, Second Reactions, which reviews children’s and young adult books. The journal, and this book, consist of reviews of books written by scholars of children’s and YA literature, followed up with responses from those who share the books with their intended audiences—children and teens. The editors have selected twelve issues classified under four thematic categories (social and political issues; diversity and inclusion; identification and empathy; and genre study) to represent the depth and breadth of publication since the journal’s founding. Also included are ideas for classroom activities that engage with these works.

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  Force for Change: The Class of 1950

  John University Norberg

  The Class of 1950 was like none other—none other before and none since. In the fall of 1946, class members came from the cornfields of the Midwest; from the battlefields of France, Italy, and Germany; and from the jungles of the Pacific islands.They came in great numbers to university campuses throughout the United States.

  Some of them were grown men—twenty- and thirty-year-olds going to college on the GI Bill that guaranteed money to educate World War II veterans.

  Some of them were boys—eighteen-year-olds straight out of high school, competing in the classroom and on the playing fields with war-hardened men who were in a hurry to get on with life. These eighteen-year-olds were unaware that within weeks of their graduation, a war in Korea would beckon them.

  Young women came to campus, although in much smaller numbers than the men. Most majored in home economics. Some were looking for their “Mrs.” degree. Many worked after graduation, but only until their children were born. By the 1960s, they would return to the workplace, beginning a social movement that is still evolving today.

  Only a handful of African Americans came to campuses of major universities. In 1946, they found segregation and racial stereotyping, even after they had fought a war for the freedom of others. In the following years while the world was changing rapidly, civil rights moved slowly.

  This mixture of students blended on the U.S. campuses in the late 1940s and exploded into the world in 1950.

  These graduates transformed technologies developed during World War II into peacetime uses. They ushered into society everything from computers to home air-conditioning to interstate highways to the space age. They created the postwar economic boom, suburbia, and the Baby Boom. They became a force for change.

  A Force for Change: The Class of 1950 looks at the group of students who made up this sweeping national movement: the Purdue University Class of 1950.

  Members of the class tell their stories in their own words. They tell of childhood years during the Great Depression, young adult years during war, idyllic years spent at college, and years of wide-open opportunities for a generation of people who believed nothing could stop them.

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  From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust

  Susanne Barth

  From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust is the first in-depth study of the second largest Auschwitz subcamp, Blechhammer (Blachownia Śląska), and its lesser known yet significant prehistory as a so-called Schmelt camp, a forced labor camp for Jews operating outside the concentration camp system. Drawing on previously untapped archival documents and a wide array of survivor testimonies, the book provides novel findings on Blechhammer’s role in the Holocaust in Eastern Upper Silesia, a formerly Polish territory annexed to Nazi Germany in the fall of 1939, where 120,000 Jews lived.

  Established in the spring of 1942 to construct a synthetic fuel plant, the camp’s abhorrent living conditions led to the death of thousands of young Jews conscripted from the ghettos or taken off deportation convoys from Western Europe. Blechhammer was not only used for selecting parts of the Jewish ghetto population for Auschwitz, but also for killing pregnant women and babies. As an Auschwitz satellite, Blechhammer became the scene of brutal executions and massacres of prisoners refusing to go on the Death March. This microhistory unearths the far-reaching complicity of often overlooked perpetrators, such as the industrialists, factory guards, policemen, and “ordinary” civilians in these atrocities, but more importantly, it focuses on the victims, reconstructing the prisoners’ daily life and suffering, as well as their survival strategies.

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  From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood

  Vincent Brook and Michael Renov

  The outsized influence of Jews in American entertainment from the early days of Hollywood to the present has proved an endlessly fascinating and controversial topic, for Jews and non-Jews alike. From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood takes an exciting and innovative approach to this rich and complex material. Exploring the subject from a scholarly perspective as well as up close and personal, the book combines historical and theoretical analysis by leading academics in the field with inside information from prominent entertainment professionals. Essays range from Vincent Brook’s survey of the stubbornly persistent canard of Jewish industry “control” to Lawrence Baron and Joel Rosenberg’s panel presentations on the recent brouhaha over Ben Urwand’s book alleging collaboration between Hollywood and Hitler. Case studies by Howard Rodman and Joshua Louis Moss examine a key Coen brothers film, A Serious Man (Rodman), and Jill Soloway’s groundbreaking television series, Transparent (Moss). Jeffrey Shandler and Shaina Hamermann train their respective lenses on popular satirical comedians of yesteryear (Allan Sherman) and those currently all the rage (Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, and Sarah Silverman). David Isaacs relates his years of agony and hilarity in the television comedy writers’ room, and interviews include in-depth discussions by Ross Melnick with Laemmle Theatres owner Greg Laemmle (relative of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle) and by Michael Renov with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. In all, From Shtetl to Stardom offers a uniquely multifaceted, multimediated, and up-to-the-minute account of the remarkable role Jews have played over the centuries and ongoing in American popular culture.

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  Fundamental Hydraulics Principles for Agricultural Systems Management and Technology

  Robert M. Stwalley III and Roger Tormoehlen

  Hydraulic systems have spread throughout modern technology, particularly in mobile equipment. The exercises presented in Fundamental Hydraulic Principles for Agricultural Systems Management and Technology are designed for the second-generation Parker Hydraulic Trainer to provide a basic understanding of hydraulic components and systems for technology and engineering students. Readers will learn how hydraulic pumps function, how linear actuators and their control circuits work, and how hydraulic motors operate and are controlled. Readers are also provided with the opportunity to attempt more advanced exercises. Aligned with beginning technology-based experiential hydraulics courses, this book emphasizes familiarity with common hydraulic components and circuit diagrams, while guiding learners through a fundamental, hands-on exposure to modern hydraulic systems.

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  Geology Education for Grades 3–12

  Natalie J. Carroll and Theodore Leuenberger

  Geology Education for Grades 3–12 guides and encourages youth to learn about the geological processes occurring all around them. Level 1 introduces basic terms and concepts, and is intended for youth in grades 3–5. Activities focus on understanding important topics such as the rock cycle, rock textures, and crystal formation. Designed for students in grades 6–8, Level 2 offers readers more concrete examples of advanced geological concepts, including fossilization, mineral formation, and rock classification. The exercises in Level 3, which is geared toward grades 9–12, includes additional information on the Earth’s varied landscapes, a variety of geological events, and the need for environmental regulation. It also prepares readers who may be interested in studying these topics at postsecondary institutions. The final section presented in Geology Education for Grades 3–12, the facilitator’s guide, provides answers to the youth activities as well as tips about working with the next generation of geologists in the field.

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  Hard Water: Politics and Water Supply in Milwaukee, 1870-1995

  Kate Foss-Mollan

  Hard Water: Politics And Water Supply In Milwaukee, 1870-1995 by educator and urban studies specialist Kate Foss-Mollan is the documented and historical account of the water supply of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Foss-Mollan blends urban history, technology, biology, research, and political science into a remarkably intriguing and informative saga. From conflicts over supplying poor neighborhoods to partisan debates regarding the necessity of a filtration plant, Hard Water spans over a century with an eye-opening account of the wrangling, machinations, and more all about a seemingly simple drink of water. Very highly recommended for American urban studies reading lists.

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  Horse Evaluation: A Multibreed Text for Competitive Youth Equine Judges

  Colleen M. Brady

  Horse judging is one of the most popular activities in 4-H, FFA, and other youth-development organizations. Judging teaches youth how to both critically analyze animals based on a specific set of criteria and justify their decisions through oral reasoning. This book includes information on examining a wide variety of breeds—from quarter horses and Arabians to Saddlebreds, Drafts, and Miniatures—and covers a range of disciplines. Both halter and performance classes are explored, and the rules and regulations used to govern contests at the national level are provided. Example sets of reasons are supplied for most classes, as are lists of potential terms for inclusion in oral reasons. Horse Evaluation: A Multibreed Text for Competitive Youth Equine Judges offers valuable resources, including images, line drawings, and videos, for adults coaching youth-judging teams and their students.

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  Imagining Afghanistan: Global Fiction and Film of the 9/11 Wars

  Alla Ivanchikova

  Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelled Afghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening “Afghanistan” has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition. “Afghanistan” serves as a lens through which contemporary cultural producers contend with the moral ambiguities of twenty-first-century humanitarianism, interpret the legacy of the Cold War, debate the role of the U.S. in the rise of transnational terror, and grapple with the long-term impact of war on both human and nonhuman ecologies.

  Post-9/11 global Afghanistan literary production remains largely NATO-centric insofar as it is marked by an uncritical investment in humanitarianism as an approach to Third World suffering and in anti-communism as an unquestioned premise. The book’s first half exposes how persisting anti-socialist biases—including anti-statist bias—not only shaped recent literary and visual texts on Afghanistan, resulting in a distorted portrayal of its tragic history, but also informed these texts’ reception by critics. In the book’s second half, the author examines cultural texts that challenge this limited horizon and forge alternative ways of representing traumatic histories. Captured by the author through the concepts of deep time, nonhuman witness, and war as a multispecies ecology, these new aesthetics bring readers a sophisticated portrait of Afghanistan as a rich multispecies habitat affected in dramatic ways by decades of war but not annihilated.

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  Indiana at a Glance: County Trends, 2025 Edition

  Roberto Gallardo

  Indiana at a Glance: County Trends, 2025 Edition provides an overview of macro socioeconomic and demographic trends based on county-level data in ten-year periods in Indiana, the upper Midwest region, and the nation. Analyzing data primarily from 2013 through 2023, this book presents information that contextualizes the design and implementation of specific policies enacted by elected officials and community leaders, and reveals the impact these initiatives have on the public.

  Inspired, in part, by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural America at a Glance reports, as well as the author’s more than twenty years of work in the field, this study makes use of gap analysis to glean valuable insights into how specific socioeconomic patterns relate to larger regional or national trends. It also offers a fuller picture of community economic development planning, allowing community stakeholders to better discern unique opportunities and challenges from macro socioeconomic and demographic noise.

  Accessible to scholars and nonacademics alike, Indiana at a Glance is meant to assist community leaders and residents who wish to have a firmer grasp of the socioeconomic and demographic landscape of their communities as they attempt to plan, design, implement, and evaluate their policies and initiatives or simply better understand their communities. The content and analysis supplied in this book will be updated every five years to ensure the most current data is available in order to align with the temporal “horizon” under which community economic development practitioners and policymakers frequently operate.

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  Integrating Information into the Engineering Design Process

  Michael Fosmire and David Radcliffe

  Engineering design is a fundamental problem-solving model used by the discipline. Effective problem-solving requires the ability to find and incorporate quality information sources. To teach courses in this area effectively, educators need to understand the information needs of engineers and engineering students and their information gathering habits. This book provides essential guidance for engineering faculty and librarians wishing to better integrate information competencies into their curricular offerings. The treatment of the subject matter is pragmatic, accessible, and engaging. Rather than focusing on specific resources or interfaces, the book adopts a process-driven approach that outlasts changing information technologies.

  After several chapters introducing the conceptual underpinnings of the book, a sequence of shorter contributions go into more detail about specific steps in the design process and the information needs for those steps. While they are based on the latest research and theory, the emphasis of the chapters is on usable knowledge. Designed to be accessible, they also include illustrative examples drawn from specific engineering sub-disciplines to show how the core concepts can be applied in those situations.

  Part 1: Making the Case for Integrated Information in Engineering Design: Information Literary and Lifelong Learning (Michael Fosmire); Multiple Perspectives on Engineering Design (David Radcliffe); Ways that Engineers Use Design Information (Michael Fosmire); Ethical Information Use and Engineering (Megan Sapp Nelson); Information-Rich Engineering Design: A Model (David Radcliffe). Part 2: Pedagogical Advice on How to Implement in Courses: Build a Firm Foundation: Managing Project Information Effectively and Efficiently (Jon Jeffryes); Find the Real Need: Understanding the Task (Megan Sapp Nelson); Scout the Lay of the Land: Exploring the Broader Context of a Project (Amy Van Epps and Monica Cardella); Draw on Existing Knowledge: Taking Advantage of What is Already Known (Jim Clarke); Make Dependable Decisions: Using Trustworthy Information Wisely (Jeremy Garritano); Make It Real: Finding the Most Suitable Materials and Components (Jay Bhatt); Make It Safe and Legal: Meeting Standards, Codes, and Regulations (Bonnie Osif); Get Your Message Across: The Art of Sharing Information (Patrice Buzzanell and Carla Zoltowski); Reflect and Learn: Extracting New Design and Process Knowledge (David Radcliffe); Preparing Students to be Informed Designers: Assessing and Scaffolding Information Literacy (Senay Purzer and Ruth Wertz).

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  Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning

  Susan M. Bridges and Rintaro Imafuku

  Problem-based learning (PBL) has been deployed as a student-centered instructional approach and curriculum design in a wide range of academic fields across the world. The majority of educational research to date has focused on knowledge-based outcomes addressing why PBL is useful. Researchers of PBL are developing a growing interest in qualitative research with a process-driven orientation to examining learning interactions. It is essential to broaden this research base so as to support PBL designs and approaches to leading students into higher-order thinking and a deeper approach to learning.

  Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning explores how students learn in an inquiry-led approach such as PBL. Included are studies that focus on learning in situ and go beyond measuring the outcomes of PBL. The goal is to further expand the PBL research base of qualitative investigations examining the social dimension and lived experience of teaching and learning within the PBL process. A second aim of this volume is to shed light on the methodological aspects of researching PBL, adding new perspectives to the current trends in qualitative studies on PBL. Chapters cover ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Specifically, this book will further contribute to the current educational research both theoretically and empirically in the following key areas: students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts; the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials; the (inter)cultural aspects of learning in PBL; facilitation processes and group dynamics in synchronous and asynchronous face-to-face and blended PBL; and the developing nature of PBL learner identity.

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  Laozi’s "Daodejing": A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary

  Steve Hallett

  Laozi’s “Daodejing”: A New Translation With Environmentalist Commentary offers a new translation and fresh interpretation of the eighty-one-verse Daodejing, one of the central texts of Eastern philosophy. Likely written during the late Zhou Dynasty between 600–400 BCE, this foundational work is generally attributed to an individual named Laozi, although it is unlikely that any such person actually existed. Here, author Steve Hallett employs contemporary poetic form when translating the document’s approximately 5,000 Chinese characters and provides short analytical essays that illuminate the verses with a specific focus on the teachings they offer about social and environmental sustainability. His examination of this 2,500-year-old text suggests that perhaps not all our modern crises are as modern as they seem: Much of what ails us today may involve the same foolishness that has ailed us for millennia. Ultimately, this timely study posits that lessons from the past can help us avoid making hasty decisions related to the environment and show us how to chart a calmer, more patient, and more persistent path toward a just and sustainable future.

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  Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries

  John W. White and Heather Gilbert

  Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library’s role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education.

  Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls for a reimagining of the roles of libraries and librarians. In many cases, these reimagined roles call for expanded responsibilities, often in the areas of collaborative instruction and digital asset management, and in turn these expanded responsibilities can strain already stretched resources.

  Laying the Foundation provides practical solutions to the challenges of successfully incorporating digital humanities programs into existing library services. Collectively, its authors argue that librarians are critical resources for teaching digital humanities to undergraduate students and that libraries are essential for publishing, preserving, and making accessible digital scholarship.