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Education gained through leisure activities plays a central role in our search for self-fulfillment, be the leisure activity a project or a serious pursuit. After discussing the serious leisure perspective, education, both formal and informal, is explored for its special contribution to fostering fulfillment, defined as the realization of personal tastes, talents, and potential. Several key concepts marking the road to fulfillment are discussed: life course, process, leisure education, adult education, self-directed learning, and experience. The ways that acquired education as background knowledge is applied constitute a crucial step in finding self-fulfillment in an activity. The role of Internet and digital technology is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examinations of the self and leisure are uncommon, not to mention those bearing on leisure and the semiotic self. The goal of this article is to help correct this deficiency. To this end, the serious leisure perspective is presented, followed by a discussion of how it is related to the semiotic self as formulated by Norbert Wiley. The principal vehicle by which this is accomplished is by way of the meaning of leisure. Moreover participants in serious leisure find there a powerfully attractive leisure career, an experience that is unavailable in the other two forms: casual and project-based leisure. This career frames the development of the semiotic self through leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The serious leisure perspective is introduced and its relationship to library and information science (LIS) set Out. The relationship is twofold: the perspective offers a distinctive approach both to research and to practice in this discipline. That is, the perspective bridges a critical gap that has separated the fields of US and leisure studies, manifested in both as scant concern with the central interest of the other. This gap is bridged by providing the first with a conceptual framework for understanding leisure and leisure activities, which can help guide researchers and practitioners working on the retrieval and dissemination of information bearing on such activities. The serious leisure perspective is the theoretic structure that synthesizes three main forms of leisure. Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that captivates the participant with its challenges and complexity. Casual leisure is an immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable core activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure refers to a short term, reasonably complicated, one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time. Serious leisure is the most complex of these three, offering thereby the richest lode for LIS researchers and practitioners to mine. The perspective is a vehicle for systematically exploring people's use and dissemination of information during free time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aid to Scholarly Publication Programme (ASPP) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) has played a major role in the production of sociological research monographs in Canada. Here the Programme is analysed and assessed for the magnitude and significance of participation in it by Canadian sociologists. Also highlighted are subsidized books of special importance; they constitute evidence of the critical role the Programme plays in developing Canadian sociology and advancing knowledge of key aspects of Canadian society. This leads to consideration of the future of monograph publishing in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Other sciences among them history, archaeology mineralogy, ornithology astronomy and entomology, have profited greatly from their vigorous amateur wings, which have existed along side of and sometimes preexisted the now dominant profession. The greatest single contribution of amateur science societies to their associated professions is the collection and dissemination of descriptive data. Intensive research on two of these amateur sciences and examination of the descriptive-historical literature of all six suggest that we ought to think seriously about promoting an amateur sociology. After a description of avocational science in general, a proposal for an amateur sociology is presented using the avocational developments in the other sciences as a model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Robert A. Stebbins' reaction to several comments on his paper which appeared in a previous issue of The American Sociologist, which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Stebbins states that he wishes only to offer a single clarification of a poorly communicated passage that caught Althauser's attention. It concerns the four conditions that encourage the emergence and persistence of an avocational interest in science. According to Stebbins, when he wrote the passage, he had Kuhn's concept of normal science in mind. Amateurism takes root in those sciences or areas of sciences that lack a dominant paradigm as the exclusive grade to scholarly research. These fields are in a preparadigm stage of development in which several schools of thought compete. Why then, is there no amateur sociology? Among the answers to this question, according to Stebbins, are that sociologists lack a tradition of amateurism, a vision that amateurs could help professionals with some of their research interests, and a willingness to organize nonprofessional assistance on any basis other than temporary. The same conclusions could likely be reached for other sciences.