Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis.The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

    Facilitators guide and direct the process, therefore resulting in more effective and efficient projects. Considering all the meetings that project managers and leaders hold, it's easy to see why facilitation is fast becoming recognized as an essential core skill! Not only do project managers need to know how to run highly effective meetings, they also need strategies for creating buy-in, overcoming resistance and building true consensus. After more than 12 years as a best seller, Facilitation at a Glance! is now a 3rd edition packed with even more resources, exciting tools, and a new concise look!

    Created with the input of hundreds of early literacy teachers, it compiles more than 7000 caption books, natural language texts, series books, and children's literature for kindergarten through grade three.

    Pearl and her co-authors attempt to ease the process with this helpful guide to the most elusive genre. Covering 1,000 novels, many of them award winners, the book organizes titles according to their major appeal characteristics (e.g., language, setting, story, and character) as delineated by Saricks and Brown in their standard text, Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library, 2d ed., (ALA, 1997). For each book there is a plot summary, indications on the book's suitability for book discussion groups, and recommendations of similar titles. Awards are cited as well, and all titles mentioned are indexed by title, author, and subject. Describing some of the best literature published in the United States and abroad in recent years, this book is an essential guide for readers' advisors, and a helpful collection development tool.

    Placing inquiry at the center of effective change, The Adaptive School gives readers the tools they need to bring about genuine school improvement and to learn to use and incorporate them into practice. This book also includes an extremely useful problem locator that helps define problems and identify strategies to deal with them.