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Information Technology Governance in Public Organizations
By Gianluigi Viscusi, Lazar Rusu. 2017
This book examines trends and challenges in research on IT governance in public organizations, reporting innovative research and new insights…
in the theories, models and practices within the area. As we noticed, IT governance plays an important role in generating value from organization's IT investments. However there are different challenges for researchers in studying IT governance in public organizations due to the differences between political, administrative, and practices in these organizations. The first section of the book looks at Management issues, including an introduction to IT governance in public organizations; a systematic review of IT alignment research in public organizations; the role of middle managers in aligning strategy and IT in public service organizations; and an analysis of alignment and governance with regard to IT-related policy decisions. The second section examines Modelling, including a consideration of the challenges faced by public administration; a discussion of a framework for IT governance implementation suitable to improve alignment and communication between stakeholders of IT services; the design and implementation of IT architecture; and the adoption of enterprise architecture in public organizations. Finally, section three presents Case Studies, including IT governance in the context of e-government strategy implementation in the Caribbean; the relationship of IT organizational structure and IT governance performance in the IT department of a public research and education organization in a developing country; the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and IT governance through a study of the Swedish Tax Authorities; and the role of institutional logics in IT project activities and interactions in a large Swedish hospital.By Heart: Elizabeth Smart
By Rosemary Sullivan. 1991
"The price of life is pain, since the price of comfort is damnation." Sensuously beautiful, intensely passionate, generous to a…
fault — and one of the century's most brilliant writers of poetic prose — Elizabeth Smart carved her own destiny through sheer determination, strength and perserverance. In By Heart, the first biography of Smart, Rosemary Sullivan recounts the author's childhood in Ottawa as the second daughter of an affluent and well-connected family. Inspired by romantic notions of rebellion, Smart rejected what she perceived to be a colonistic literary community and entered a long period of self-imposed exile, desperate to escape family and country, and willing to sacrifice both wealth and propriety in favour of freedom. During her frequent trips to Europe, New York, California and Mexico, Smart came to know many of the important writers of the day, including W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Lawrence Durrell. While browsing in a London bookstore, she discovered the poetry of George Barker and instantly fell in love with the married poet. They met. Thus began one of the most intense, extraordinary and scandalous love affairs of our time. Their passionate and troubled relationship inspired Smart's By Grand Central Station, I Sat Down and Wept, which critic Brigid Bronphy has called one of the world's half dozen masterpieces of poetic prose. Partly because of the difficulties in single-handedly raising the four children she had with George Barker, and partly because of her own lack of confidence, it would be thirty-two years before Smart published a second novel. By Heart explores the career of a woman writer in the 1940s: the struggle to speak when silence is seductive, the battle against a profound sense of inadequacy, the release and elation that comes out of the pain of writing. The life of Elizabeth Smart is a story of extremes, of life as the supreme fiction. As Smart asks in her final journals, "Can I be contented with my lot? Well, I danced."Sacred Plant Initiations
By Carole Guyett. 2015
A practical guide to connecting with plants through ceremony - Explains how to commune with plants and their spirits…
through the traditional shamanic method of "plant dieting" to receive their teachings and guidance - Details 8 ceremonial plant initiations centered on common, easily recognized plants and trees such as primrose, dandelion, oak, and dog rose - Provides instructions to develop your own sacred plant initiations and make ceremonial plant elixirs - Includes four audio journeys to facilitate plant initiations In this guide to sacred plant initiations, medical herbalist and shamanic practitioner Carole Guyett explains how to commune with plants and their spirits through the traditional shamanic method of "plant dieting. " A plant diet involves ingesting a particular plant over a period of time so you regularly receive the plant's vibratory energy as well as its medicinal actions. Adding a ceremonial element to plant dieting offers a sacred initiation by the plant world, allowing you to connect deeply with all aspects of a plant, receive its sacred teachings, and forge a relationship for guidance and healing, benefitting both yourself and others. Each of the eight ceremonial plant initiations detailed in the book was personally developed by the author through extensive work with her ceremonial groups. They each center on an easily recognized plant or tree such as primrose, dandelion, oak, and dog rose. These common plants have powerful teachings and healing guidance to share with those who communicate with and honor them. The initiations, for both individuals and groups, work with the Wheel of the Year, honoring each plant's sacred timing and connecting with one of the eight Celtic and Pre-Celtic Fire Festivals--the solstices, equinoxes, and the holy days of Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain, and Imbolc. Offering practical instructions so you can develop your own sacred plant initiations, the author also include access to 4 audio journeys to facilitate the initiations in the book. She also explains how to make plant elixirs for use in plant diets and for healing. She shows how connecting with plants allows us to deepen our relationship with Nature, access higher levels of consciousness and spiritual realms, and facilitate the full flowering of human potential.The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera
By Adam Begley. 2017
A dazzling, stylish biography of a fabled Parisian photographer, adventurer, and pioneer.A recent French biography begins, Who doesn't know Nadar?…
In France, that's a rhetorical question. Of all of the legendary figures who thrived in mid-19th-century Paris—a cohort that includes Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Gustave Courbet, and Alexandre Dumas—Nadar was perhaps the most innovative, the most restless, the most modern.The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others—a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. Born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, he adopted the pseudonym Nadar as a young bohemian, when he was a budding writer and cartoonist. Later he affixed the name Nadar to the façade of his opulent photographic studio in giant script, the illuminated letters ten feet tall, the whole sign fifty feet long, a garish red beacon on the boulevard. Nadar became known to all of Europe and even across the Atlantic when he launched "The Giant," a gas balloon the size of a twelve-story building, the largest of its time. With his daring exploits aboard his humongous balloon (including a catastrophic crash that made headlines around the world), he gave his friend Jules Verne the model for one of his most dynamic heroes. The Great Nadar is a brilliant, lavishly illustrated biography of a larger-than-life figure, a visionary whose outsized talent and canny self-promotion put him way ahead of his time.Who Was Andy Warhol? (Who was?)
By Nancy Harrison, Kirsten Anderson, Gregory Copeland. 2014
Best known for his screen prints of soup cans and movie stars, this shy young boy from Pittsburgh shot to…
fame with his radical ideas of what "art" could be. Working in the aptly named "Factory," Warhol's paintings, movies, and eccentric lifestyle blurred the lines between pop culture and art, ushering in the Pop Art movement and, with it, a national obsession. Who Was Andy Warhol? tells the story of an enigmatic man who grew into a cultural icon.Mindfulness in Nature
By David Harp, Nina Smiley. 2017
Mindfulness in Nature helps readers separate themselves from their busy lives, and allows them to engage in a deeper, more…
fulfilling relationship with the natural world around them through meditative practice.Now more than ever, with the constant distractions that abound in modern life—from smart phones to social media—it is imperative we seek the solace and comfort of nature for our well-being. The Japanese have a term for it: Shinrin-yoku or "Forest Bathing". Mindfulness experts Dr. Nina Smiley and David Harp have created a new guide called Mindfulness in Nature which provides a meaningful way to nurture ourselves through a sense of spaciousness, calm, and connection with the out-of-doors.Penned from the breathtaking natural setting of Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York, Mindfulness in Nature affords readers access to wisdom from dozens of notable authors, philosophers and poets – including Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman – on the important themes of nature, spirituality, simple beauty and joyful living. More than just a walk in the woods, Mindfulness in Nature is a carefully crafted and deliberate approach to achieve better health and well-being and is ideal for all ages.The Improbable Shepherd
By Sylvia Jorrin, Joshua Kilmer-Purcell. 2013
"The lessons of Sylvia's farm are not just applicable for those who dream of living the rural life. They're universally…
instructive, and joyfully addictive." --Joshua Kilmer-Purcell, The Fabulous Beekman BoysIn this sequel to her popular first collection, Sylvia Jorrín returns with more vignettes -- along with personal photos, artwork, and recipes--from her life on thefarm to again inspire readers old and new. The Improbable Shepherd is a continuation of Sylvia's Farm, covering the past five years of her experiences on a rural sheep farm. This book brings readers closer to the world around them, and to recognize the simple, often hidden beauties it holds. Told in short vignettes and anecdotes, it is a journal of the continuing growth, persistence, and hope that each new day can bring.Nearly a decade after the publication of her first book, life on Sylvia Jorrin's farm continues to present our improbable shepherdess with new opportunities to appreciate the peace and unexpected joys that farm life brings despite too many tasks and too little time.The Improbable Shepherd immerses the reader fully in Sylvia's farm, echoing her own experiences living with the land and includes photos, and illustrations and Sylvia's personal recipes. Appealing to those who loved Sylvia's first book and want to return, as well as for all the newcomers who have yet to discover Sylvia's powerful prose and earnest message, The Improbable Shepherd will inspire you to follow your dreams, whatever they may be.Sylvia's Farm
By Sylvia Jorrin, Joshua Kilmer-Purcell. 2013
"For those unfamiliar with Sylvia, discovering her stories is like stumbling into a fully loaded wild blackberry patch--impossible to rush…
through, sweetly fulfilling, with an immediate longing to return to them again and again."--Joshua Kilmer-Purcell, The Fabulous Beekman BoysThis collection of stories chronicling Sylvia Jorrín's life on the farm provides comfort and inspiration to all those searching for meaning in life's many blessings.The world of Sylvia's Farm is a rich landscape of natural beauty and simple pleasures. Sylvia Jorrín never expected to become the first woman in the New York City Watershed to solely own and operate a large livestock farm. But first the farm, and then farm life, captured her heart as it has captured the hearts of all those who have read her book. Through unexpected surprises and unanticipated hardships, Sylvia Jorrín has grown into the epitome of the one thing she never expected to be: a farmer.With a devoted following of readers inspired by her underlying appreciation of the world around her, Sylvia's Farm is the sort of ageless story that any reader can pick up and enjoy. Sylvia's Farm is, to quote Kirkus Reviews, "The delight-filled education of an out-of-the-clue shepherdess...." consisting of "....fine-grained, honest rural sketches, on a par with Noel Perrin and Don Mitchell."Sylvia's Farm is a contemporary account of rural farm life and all of the sometimes beautiful, always meaningful lessons that it continues to teach. Told in short vignettes that span over more than a decade, it is a journal of growth, persistence, and the unexpected joys that a new day can bring.Culture in the Marketplace: Gender, Art, and Value in the American Southwest
By Molly Mullin. 2001
In the early twentieth century, a group of elite East coast women turned to the American Southwest in search of…
an alternative to European-derived concepts of culture. In Culture in the Marketplace Molly H. Mullin provides a detailed narrative of the growing influence that this network of women had on the Native American art market--as well as the influence these activities had on them--in order to investigate the social construction of value and the history of American concepts of culture. Drawing on fiction, memoirs, journalistic accounts, and extensive interviews with artists, collectors, and dealers, Mullin shows how anthropological notions of culture were used to valorize Indian art and create a Southwest Indian art market. By turning their attention to Indian affairs and art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she argues, these women escaped the gender restrictions of their eastern communities and found ways of bridging public and private spheres of influence. Tourism, in turn, became a means of furthering this cultural colonization. Mullin traces the development of aesthetic worth as it was influenced not only by politics and profit but also by gender, class, and regional identities, revealing how notions of "culture" and "authenticity" are fundamentally social ones. She also shows how many of the institutions that the early patrons helped to establish continue to play an important role in the contemporary market for American Indian art. This book will appeal to audiences in cultural anthropology, art history, American studies, women's studies, and cultural history.The House Baba Built: An Artist's Childhood in China
By Ed Young, Libby Koponen. 2011
Grayson
By Lynne Cox. 2006
Grayson is Lynne Cox's first book since Swimming to Antarctica ("Riveting"--Sports Illustrated; "Pitch-perfect"--Outside). In it she tells the story of…
a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.It wasn't a shark. It became clear that it was a baby gray whale--following alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die from collapsed lungs.The baby whale--eighteen feet long!--was migrating on a three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mother's back for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mother's milk for food--baby whales drink up to fifty gallons of milk a day. If Lynne didn't find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death.Something so enormous--the mother whale was fifty feet long--suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her?This is the story--part mystery, part magical tale--of what happened . . .From the Hardcover edition.1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina
By Chris Rose. 2007
Chris Rose is a columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans,an essayist for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,and a…
frequent commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in recognition of his Katrina columns and was awarded a share in the Times-Picayune staff's Pulitzer for Public Service. Rose lives in New Orleans with his three children.California's Frontier Naturalists
By Richard G. Beidleman. 2006
This book chronicles the fascinating story of the enthusiastic, stalwart, and talented naturalists who were drawn to California's spectacular natural…
bounty over the decades from 1786, when the La Pérouse Expedition arrived at Monterey, to the Death Valley expedition in 1890-91, the proclaimed "end" of the American frontier.Apples of Your Eye
By Allan Fowler. 1994
Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado
By Nancy Mathis. 2007
The Perfect Storm on the prairie, Storm Warning is a compulsively readable account of one of the most terrible tornadoes…
in history -- and the extraordinary people who kept it from becoming the deadliest. May 3, 1999, is a day that Oklahomans will never forget. By the time the sun set over a ravaged plain, some 71 tornadoes had claimed 11,000 homes and businesses and caused a billion dollars in damages. One of them was a mile-wide monster of incredible power, the fiercest F5 twister to hit a metropolitan area, and whose 300 mph winds were the fastest ever recorded on the planet. Veteran journalist Nancy Mathis draws on numerous interviews to weave the story of those few terrifying hours that irrevocably changed the lives of many Oklahomans. Storm Warning features Kara Wiese, who fought to save her son from the fatal winds, and Charlie Cusack, who followed the tornado's progress on television until it came knocking on his front door. Amazingly, only thirty-eight people perished at the hands of the Oklahoma F5. Many lives were saved by the efforts of professionals such as Ted Fujita, the creator of the Fujita Scale (dubbed "Mr. Tornado" for his relentless pursuit to unravel a twister's mysteries); the oft-criticized but dogged government meteorologists; and Gary England, a resourceful TV weatherman whose tireless efforts prepared hundreds of people in the tornado's path. Storm Warning alternates between personal stories and the history of the struggle to understand this bewildering force of Mother Nature, creating a nail-biting, captivating look at surviving the fury from the skies.Seashells: A True Book
By Ann O. Squire. 2002
Ideal for today's young investigative reader, each A True Book includes lively sidebars, a glossary and index, plus a comprehensive…
"To Find Out More" section listing books, organizations, and Internet sites. A staple of library collections since the 1950s, the new A True Book series is the definitive nonfiction series for elementary school readers.The Force of Spirit
By Scott Russell Sanders. 2000
Scott Russel Sanders reveals how the pressure of the sacred breaks through the surface of ordinary life -- a life…
devoted to grown-up children and aging parents, the craft of writing and the natural world. Whether writing to his daughter or to his son as each prepares to get married, or describing an encounter with a red-tailed hawk in whose form he glimpses his father, or praising the disciplines of writing and carpentry and teaching. Sanders registers, in finely tuned prose, the "Force of the Spirit".The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder
By David Quammen. 2000
The author hailed by Edward O. Wilson as "a brilliant young star of nature writing" explores the relationship between humans…
and the natural world in a collection of essays culled from his popular "Outside" magazine column.Leonardo's Horse
By Jean Fritz. 2001
Fritz (And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?) again calls upon her informal yet informative style to spotlight a scintillating sliver…
of history, recounted in two related tales. Her narrative opens as the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, earns a commission from the duke of Milan to create a sculpture to honor the duke's father a bronze horse three times larger than life. Though this creative genius spent years on the project, he died without realizing his dream and, writes Fritz, "It was said that even on his deathbed, Leonardo wept for his horse." The author then fast-forwards to 1977: an American named Charles Dent vows to create the sculpture and make it a gift from the American people to the residents of Italy. How his goal was accomplished (alas, posthumously) makes for an intriguing tale that Fritz deftly relays. Talbott's (Forging Freedom) diverse multimedia artwork includes reproductions of da Vinci's notebooks, panoramas revealing the Renaissance in lavish detail and majestic renderings of the final equine sculpture. Talbott makes creative use of the book's format a rectangle topped by a semi-circle: the rounded space by turns becomes a window through which da Vinci views a cloud shaped like a flying horse; the domed building that was Dent's studio and gallery; and a globe depicting the route the bronze horse travels on its way from the U.S. to Italy. An inventive introduction to the Renaissance and one of its masters.Citizen Science: Public Participation in Environmental Research
By Richard Louv, Janis Dickinson, Rick Bonney. 2012
Citizen science enlists members of the public to make and record useful observations, such as counting birds in their backyards,…
watching for the first budding leaf in spring, or measuring local snowfall. The large numbers of volunteers who participate in projects such as Project FeederWatch or Project BudBurst collect valuable research data, which, when pooled together, create an enormous body of scientific data on a vast geographic scale. In return, such projects aim to increase participants' connections to science, place, and nature, while supporting science literacy and environmental stewardship. In Citizen Science, experts from a variety of disciplines-including scientists and education specialists working at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where many large citizen science programs use birds as proxies for biodiversity-share their experiences of creating and implementing successful citizen science projects, primarily those that use massive data sets gathered by citizen scientists to better understand the impact of environmental change.This first and foundational book for this developing field of inquiry addresses basic aspects of how to conduct citizen science projects, including goal-setting, program design, and evaluation, as well as the nuances of creating a robust digital infrastructure and recruiting a large participant base through communications and marketing. An overview of the types of research approaches and techniques demonstrates how to make use of large data sets arising from citizen science projects. A final section focuses on citizen science's impacts and its broad connections to understanding the human dimensions and educational aspects of participation. Citizen Science teaches teams of program developers and researchers how to cross the bridge from success at public engagement to using citizen science data to understand patterns and trends or to test hypotheses about how ecological processes respond to change at large geographic scales. Intended as a resource for a broad audience of experts and practitioners in natural sciences, information science, and social sciences, this book can be used to better understand how to improve existing programs, develop new ones, and make better use of the data resources that have accumulated from citizen science efforts. Its focus on harnessing the impact of "crowdsourcing" for scientific and educational endeavors is applicable to a wide range of fields, especially those that touch on the importance of massive collaboration aimed at understanding and conserving what we can of the natural world.