Self-discovery is an important process to the personal and social development of children and adults. Today's educators need to acknowledge and encourage the process of self-discovery in children in order for them to enjoy an enriched life of meaning and fulfillment. The implications of my story, that of a co-parent in a loving and nurturing blended family, are robust to educators and families. I challenge educators working with co-parented children to see the benefits of co-parenting and how not all blended families result in troubled, imbalanced, or resentful children and parents, as much of the current literature suggests. I urge educators to promote the process of self-discovery in children of blended families using an interdisciplinary approach. I embolden parents to listen to the stories their children have to tell and incorporate their experiences into the meaning making experience of raising a family and to remember that they are their children's primary educators. Written within a Scholarly Personal Narrative methodology, my thesis proposes that, through the process of self-discovery, children, parents, educators and advocates can work together to create meaningful experiences within their own lives. I will write a realistic, but kind and compassionate story with a variety of characters that are relatable to anyone who is in or knows someone who is in a blended family. Blended families are becoming increasingly common which highlights how the culture in this particular micro-society is changing as a result of individual and family needs. This thesis will shed light on this natural occurrence in a clear and accessible way that speaks to children and parents in blended families, educators working with these individuals as well as bystanders, friends, family and advocates of families of all types.

What child does not want to do everything possible to please his or her parents? Many times children, regardless of age, find themselves struggling to decide what is right for them and what their parents feel is right for them. Parents are not always to blame for a child's unsatisfied feeling. Children often have a hard time articulating what they are feeling on the inside. I now find myself in the same conundrum with college students who have difficulty articulating what they want in life. With writing as my medium, this thesis will use the power of both Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) and Epistolary Scholarly Personal Narrative (eSPN) to explore my personal battle with articulating what I want for myself and the world around me. With creation of a personal definition of success as my end goal, I will explore and exemplify how SPN and eSPN writing can be used in one's life to reflect upon and articulate internal desires for how we want to live our lives. With my background in engineering and mathematics, I have found writing to be a release from the straightforward answers that I have been trained to search for. All types of people, engineers or not, can use the power of SPN and eSPN to dig deeper and find what exactly they want to do with their time. Finally, using narrative writing to help others write their stories will give both the reader and their respective audiences a medium through which to connect, i.e. SPN and/or eSPN writing.

This is a scholarly edition of Susan Ferriers (1782-1854) second novel, <i>The Inheritance</i> (1824). I want to reclaim its value as a novel that reveals much about nineteenth-century Scottish notions of class, gender, and nation. Ferrier was among many writers influenced by the development of the Scottish Renaissance. Anand Chitnis claims that this Scottish flowering began in earnest by 1750 and ended by 1830, during which time Scotland emerged from centuries of war and oppression to establish itself as a major force in Europes intellectual and scientific community (4). Improvements in transportation opened up opportunities for migration and travel, connecting Scotland with the rest of Britain. This changing climate influenced significantly Ferrier and her Scottish contemporaries, who adopted recurrent themes, symbols, and settings in their works to establish a sense of coherence within their own society. Ferriers works feature elements that are fundamental to Scottish womens writing as a whole. These elements, such as a powerful sense of locality,distinctive characters, and use of the Scottish vernacular, are especially evident in <i>The Inheritance</i>. In utilizing the 1853 edition as copytext, I adhere to Jerome McGanns notion that each text enters the world under determinate socio-historical conditions, which can be variously defined and imagined (9). The production of a text, therefore, can be influenced by changes in perspective of the author, as well as the opinions of publishers,reviewers, family, and friends. In 1850, in response to a letter from Bentley inviting Ferrier to make changes to the stereotypes of the 1841 edition in his possession, Ferrier asked that Bentley remove the existing illustrations and vignettes and make some substantive and accidental changes to the text. These appear to have been attended to, although Bentley did keep one of the illustrations as frontispiece. At this time, Ferrier also allowed her name to be released as author of the text. This present edition is collated against the 1824 edition held at the National Library of Scotland. As one of my aims is to illustrate the nature of literary production during this period, idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation are left unchanged. A few misprints are corrected as indicated in the footnotes. I have included separately accidental and substantive changes between the 1841 and 1853 texts. Aside from a comprehensive introduction, I also include a brief chronology of Ferriers life and works,an appendix that includes a selection of illustrations from various editions, and a list of editions of <i>The Inheritance</i>.

This is a scholarly edition of Susan Ferriers (1782-1854) second novel, <i>The Inheritance</i> (1824). I want to reclaim its value as a novel that reveals much about nineteenth-century Scottish notions of class, gender, and nation. Ferrier was among many writers influenced by the development of the Scottish Renaissance. Anand Chitnis claims that this Scottish flowering began in earnest by 1750 and ended by 1830, during which time Scotland emerged from centuries of war and oppression to establish itself as a major force in Europes intellectual and scientific community (4). Improvements in transportation opened up opportunities for migration and travel, connecting Scotland with the rest of Britain. This changing climate influenced significantly Ferrier and her Scottish contemporaries, who adopted recurrent themes, symbols, and settings in their works to establish a sense of coherence within their own society. Ferriers works feature elements that are fundamental to Scottish womens writing as a whole. These elements, such as a powerful sense of locality,distinctive characters, and use of the Scottish vernacular, are especially evident in <i>The Inheritance</i>. In utilizing the 1853 edition as copytext, I adhere to Jerome McGanns notion that each text enters the world under determinate socio-historical conditions, which can be variously defined and imagined (9). The production of a text, therefore, can be influenced by changes in perspective of the author, as well as the opinions of publishers,reviewers, family, and friends. In 1850, in response to a letter from Bentley inviting Ferrier to make changes to the stereotypes of the 1841 edition in his possession, Ferrier asked that Bentley remove the existing illustrations and vignettes and make some substantive and accidental changes to the text. These appear to have been attended to, although Bentley did keep one of the illustrations as frontispiece. At this time, Ferrier also allowed her name to be released as author of the text. This present edition is collated against the 1824 edition held at the National Library of Scotland. As one of my aims is to illustrate the nature of literary production during this period, idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation are left unchanged. A few misprints are corrected as indicated in the footnotes. I have included separately accidental and substantive changes between the 1841 and 1853 texts. Aside from a comprehensive introduction, I also include a brief chronology of Ferriers life and works,an appendix that includes a selection of illustrations from various editions, and a list of editions of <i>The Inheritance</i>.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 77 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58).

This paper discusses user needs for a system that indexes tables and figures culled from scientific journal articles. These findings are taken from a comprehensive investigation into scientistsâ satisfaction with and use of a tables and figures retrieval prototype. Much previous research has examined the usability and features of digital libraries and other online retrieval systems that retrieve either full-text of journal articles, traditional article-level abstracts, or both. In contrast, this paper examines the needs of users directly searching for and accessing discrete journal article components â figures, tables, graphs, maps, and photographs â that have been individually indexed.

The likely alternatives for Scientifc journal publishing under the various proposed systems of open access are presented. The prediction is made that the dominance of conventional journals will end between 2007 and 2009.

Federal science agencies publish a large volume of peer-reviewed papers each year but much of it is restricted to subscribers of commercial publications. Since copyrights are much less restrictive with federally-authored works, these agencies should exploit this "comparative advantage" by creating publicly accessible repositories of these electronic reprints.

This is a second signal-detection analysis of the accuracy of a robot in detecting open access (OA) articles (by checking by hand how many of the articles the robot tagged OA were really OA, and vice versa). We found that the robot significantly overcodes for OA. In our Biology sample, 40% of identified OA was in fact OA. In our Sociology sample, only 18% of identified OA was in fact OA. Missed OA was lower: 12% in Biology and 14% in Sociology. The sources of the error are impossible to determine from the present data, since the algorithm did not capture URL's for documents identified as OA. In conclusion, the robot is not yet performing at a desirable level, and future work may be needed to determine the causes, and improve the algorithm.

If we cannot get the system to work, the scientists will run it themselves