BiblioVault - Books by May, Rachel

Fundamentals of Planning and Assessment for Libraries

Rachel A. Fleming-May and Regina Mays

American Library Association, 2021

The concepts of planning and assessment are intrinsically linked—and understanding them is essential for raising the library’s profile and strengthening its position among stakeholders and the community. Even if you're an LIS student or are new to the profession, or if planning or assessment are not your primary areas of responsibility, you still have a role to play in the success of organizational efforts. Fleming-May has more than a decade of experience in planning and assessment initiatives and instruction, and Mays was her institution’s first assessment librarian; their primer draws from theory, research, and their first-hand observations to illuminate such topics as

characteristics of bad planning strategy that can help to illustrate a better approach;
reasons why using economic models, like ROI, fall short;
how to mix the three types of planning;
guidelines to ensure that assessment is meaningful and actionable;
tips for creating effective surveys;
emphasizing users’ needs with a critical assessment framework;
data analysis for surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observation;
four questions to ask about audience level before you develop a report;
a sample 3-year assessment plan that can be customized; and
seven steps for developing a culture of ongoing assessment.

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Little Jinx

Abram Tertz

Northwestern University Press, 1992

Little Jinx is a canny mockery of the Soviet world. Its author, Andrei Sinyavsky, a respectable member of the USSR's Institute for World Literature, was exposed in 1965 as the real author of a series of irreverent essays and fantastic tales that had been circulating under the nom de plume Abram Tertz. After five years in a labor camp he immigrated to Paris. Little Jinx is the tale of a man named Sinyavsky, a literary hack and runt who clumsily survives repression and anti-Semitism but also brings misery to those around him. When this "little jinx" inadvertently causes the death of his five brothers, he is consumed by a guilt that seems universal in his society.

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Terror in the Countryside

Campesino Responses to Political Violence in Guatemala, 1954–1985

Rachel A. May

Ohio University Press, 2001

The key to democratization lies within the experience of the popular movements. Those who engaged in the popular struggle in Guatemala have a deep understanding of substantive democratic behavior, and the experience of Guatemala’s civil society should be the cornerstone for building a meaningful formal democracy.

In Terror in the Countryside Rachel May offers an in-depth examination of the relationship between political violence and civil society. Focusing on Guatemala, Professor May develops a theoretical scheme that calls into question the more conventional understandings of both violence and civil society.

By elaborating a cyclical model of violence, and suggesting a typology of rural (campesino) popular organizations, Terror in the Countryside provides both a history and an analysis of late-twentieth-century violence and of the role of campesino organizations during the worst years of conflict in Guatemala.

This history details the way ideologies, organizational structures, and mobilization strategies evolved in response to the climate of terror, emphasizing the courage and sacrifice of those who worked for justice and human rights.

This book argues that the peace accords can be considered only as a first step to eliminate a violence that has become deeply rooted in the political life of the country.

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The Translator in the Text

On Reading Russian Literature in English

Rachel May

Northwestern University Press, 1994

What does it mean to read one nation's literature in another language? The considerable popularity of Russian literature in the English-speaking world rests almost entirely upon translations. In The Translator and the Text, Rachel May analyzes Russian literature in English translation, seeing it less as a substitute for the original works than as a subset of English literature, with its own cultural, stylistic, and narrative traditions.

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