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Aggressive weeding in academic libraries is becoming more commonplace as colleges seek to create student-centered environments and space is at a premium. For one community college in the Southwest United States, several factors required the library to proactively weed its collection within three years. At the same time, the library sought to maintain the circulation of its physical books.

Updating the library’s collection development policy to include robust selection and weeding criteria allowed the library to embark on a revitalization project to remove thousands of outdated or unused items, resulting in a net loss of nearly 32,000 books.

The loss of more than half of the general collection had an unforeseen consequence – a 70% increase in circulation statistics during the three-year deselection project. The case study's results highlight the need for continual maintenance of academic library collections.

The case study is original and not published elsewhere.

Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

This study examines the educational aspirations of immigrant students, who are descendants of eight different immigrant communities in Germany. First, the article shows that compared to native German students, the educational aspirations of students with migration origin vary substantially. Challenging previous narratives of immigrant optimism and information deficit, the article suggests that the students of Turkish origin develop a conscious appraisal of obtaining an academic high-school qualification (AHSQ), even if they realize they will not be able to receive one by the end of the high-school. The study also shows that the duration of their stay in Germany plays a significant role in attenuating the high educational aspirations of most immigrant communities. However, Turkish students constitute an exception to this finding as they maintain high idealistic aspirations from first- to third-generation. The return migrant students from the former Soviet Union are the only group who report high educational aspirations, when asked about both their idealistic and realistic aspirations. Finally, the findings indicate that the position of the particular immigrant groups within the German social status hierarchy is a strong determinant of the educational aspirations of immigrant students and their parents.

Research suggests effective immersive simulations that rely on augmented reality enhance teachers’ self-efficacy and skills (Badiee & Kauffman, 2015). However, there is a gap in the literature as studies have largely ignored their uses in educational leadership programs (Bradley & Kendall, 2015). This study investigated the relationship between application of critical skills within an immersive simulation environment and 26 school or district leaders’ perceptions of self-efficacy in leading a professional learning community (PLC). Two overarching themes materialized from participants: improved general confidence in leading a PLC, and a sense of refined or expanded skills in the context of new approaches to leading PLC. Further studies are needed on the use of immersive simulation as a pedagogical tool and to examine impact for educational leadership practitioners.

Research suggests effective immersive simulations that rely on augmented reality enhance teachers’ self-efficacy and skills (Badiee & Kauffman, 2015). However, there is a gap in the literature as studies have largely ignored their uses in educational leadership programs (Bradley & Kendall, 2015). This study investigated the relationship between application of critical skills within an immersive simulation environment and 26 school or district leaders’ perceptions of self-efficacy in leading a professional learning community (PLC). Two overarching themes materialized from participants: improved general confidence in leading a PLC, and a sense of refined or expanded skills in the context of new approaches to leading PLC. Further studies are needed on the use of immersive simulation as a pedagogical tool and to examine impact for educational leadership practitioners.

Discrimination is a widespread problem in organizations and has been linked to a variety of negative personal and organizational outcomes (e.g., Hughes & Dodge, 1997; Jones et al., 2016). Confronting is one way to assuage these harmful outcomes. However, several factors can influence whether these confrontation behaviors take place. First, for individuals to confront, they must recognize the discrimination, interpret it as an emergency, take responsibility, identify a response, and decide to intervene (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2008). In addition, factors like identity, type of prejudice, confrontation tone, and relationship to the perpetrator can influence decisions to confront, as well as the outcomes associated with these confrontation behaviors. Overall, this chapter reviews the literature on the antecedents, outcomes, and moderators associated with confrontation. Moreover, this chapter provides recommendations for organizations and future researchers based on the reported findings.

While scholarship has identified the bias that maternal women (Arena et al., 2023; Grandey et al., 2020) and racial minority employees (King et al., in press) endure, few have taken aim at understanding how these identity characteristics might combine to concomitantly shape work experiences. Drawing from stigma theory (Goffman, 1963), the primary purpose of our chapter is to examine how the stereotypes of maternity might interact with race-based stereotypes to shape the experiences of working women. In doing so, we will be able to identify which stereotypes of maternity (i.e., incompetence or disloyalty; Grandey et al., 2020) might be exacerbated or weakened when varying race-based stereotypes are considered. After reviewing the potential for intersecting stereotypes, we then argue that mothers might experience different work and health outcomes – both pre- and postpartum – based on their race. We close by providing insight for future scholars and identify additional identity characteristics that may shape mothers' workplace experiences.

The COVID-19 pandemic deteriorated the economic situation and raised the issue of the quality of banks’ assets and, in particular, the growth of non-performing loans (NPLs). The study approaches a topical subject that is of interest to banks and society at large, as credit availability is likely to be reduced. Over the last 10 years, the Baltic countries’ banking sector has significantly improved its risk management policies and practices, increased capital ratios on its balance sheets, and created risk reserves. The current chapter examines the factors affecting NPLs in the Baltic States based on advanced econometric modelling applied to data extracted from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Eurostat. The study results show that credit risk management in the Baltic States has significantly improved compared to the period before the global financial crisis (GFC), the capitalisation of credit institutions is one of the highest in the European Union (EU), and banks are liquid and profitable. Lending recovered from the downturn in the first phase of the pandemic, and credit institutions have taken advantage of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) long-term funding programme ITRMO III to improve the liquidity outlook. Although the credit quality of commercial banks has not deteriorated, as the exposures of credit institutions in the most affected sectors are insignificant and governments have provided fiscal support to businesses and households, some challenges remain. The increase in credit risk is expected due to rising production prices as well as the rebuilding of disrupted supply chains. The findings allow conclusions to be drawn on the necessary actions to mitigate the credit risk of the banking sector.

Since 1985, Advances in Special Education has aspired to advance theories and best practices essential to understanding, treating, and instructing students with disabilities. At times, advancement involves vision and innovation. At other times, new technologies, cutting edge medical procedures, or innovate pedagogical practices capture the attention of special education professionals globally and substantial changes can result in the way students with special needs are instructed. This volume in Special Education International Perspectives invites a call for common ground and global commonalities in all schools. The main theme of this chapter is that teachers matter. The chapter reviews two decade of scientific evidence that supports this theme. The scientific evidence comes from neuroscience and social cognition findings related to the importance of the teacher–student interaction. Environmental influences are not only the physical world but the all-important social world. The chapter begins with an overview of the “social” brain relative to teaching. A practical guide for teacher use of evidence-based educational practices concludes the chapter.