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The study aims to explore public libraries' ability to respond to worst-case scenarios and whether planning and scenario planning is a useful exercise to prepare library staff and library organisations for quick and agile responses to crises in the future.

Personal viewpoint of crisis management of a library service through the experience of the library service the author manages.

This paper describes Yarra Plenty Regional Library’s (YPRL’s) response to the pandemic and lockdowns in Metro Melbourne. It offers some opinions on library services readiness to respond to crises and describes the foundations of YPRL's successful response.

YPRL is a regional corporation governed by a board of directors and serves three councils. This is one of 10 such corporations in Victoria. The organisation's response and the development as a corporation through this crisis is something that other organisations can learn from.

THE year that is ending has not been a dramatic one from the library point of view, but it has been full of interest and activity. No outstanding library has been built or re‐modelled, but many quite interesting and effective ones have been added to the service; and there is a growing tendency for the library to enlarge its functions and to become a social centre as well as a place for reading and for the lending of books. The new plan leans towards the library on simple lines, with fewer divisions into apartments; indeed, the library in one room, the smallest models of which are the attractive new libraries at Halifax, forms a norm to which in a greater or less degree the new buildings approximate. Lectures, debating classes, listening groups and exhibitions increase. In respect of listening groups it may be said that the number of libraries now trying them is very large, but they cannot be said to be successful everywhere from the point of view of the mere numbers attending them. We hope this experiment will continue. Children's work increases in almost geometrical ratio to every other kind, and the time has come, as a writer remarks in a contemporary, that the children's librarians were organized.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how Australian public libraries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of management, planning and communication. The study also investigated operational approaches to the development and implementation of new and adapted models of service and resource delivery.

Utilising a multiple qualitative case study approach, interviews were conducted with 15 Australian public library staff members at three library services – one inner-city, one regional and one remote. Inductive thematic analysis was employed to generate insights into the operations and management strategies employed during the COVID-19 crisis.

Findings suggest that public library managers performed admirably in the face of significant logistical, budgetary and regulatory challenges. Five key themes emerged to represent the ways in which public library leaders responded effectively to the crisis: resourcefulness, flexibility, presence, sensitivity and communication. Results also demonstrate the importance placed on library users’ welfare.

This research represents the first study to focus on the response of Australian public library managers to the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify the strategies employed by library leaders to respond effectively. In doing so this research provides valuable insights into how public library managers can prepare for future crises.

The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer socialization of preschool age children in a peer‐to‐peer context as they participate in dramatic play in a grocery store setting.

This research employs a case study approach as outlined by Yin. A preschool located within a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern USA was selected for investigation. Located within each of the three classrooms was a grocery store learning center. This learning center provided children the opportunity to engage in dramatic play while enacting grocery shopping scripts. A total of 55 children between the ages of three‐ and six‐years old were observed over a six‐week period. Observations were recorded via field notes and transcribed into an electronic data file. Emergent themes were compared with theoretical propositions, fleshing out an overall interpretation and description of the case context.

Findings indicate that even very young children (ages three to six years) are able to successfully adopt and utilize adult shopping scripts within the grocery store shopping context. The children followed a common sequence of behaviors that mimicked adult shopping patterns. Furthermore, the children demonstrated peer‐to‐peer consumer socialization strategies, directing each other on how to perform appropriate shopping scripts.

This study differs from previous research in that the data reveal that preschool age children do in fact exhibit peer‐to‐peer influence while enacting shopping scripts. Although research has examined children as consumers, no researchers have used dramatic play to study young children in a grocery store setting. The rich content obtained from observing children in dramatic play in a grocery store learning center is unique to the marketing literature and provides a better understanding of the consumer socialization of young children.

Critically examines the ways in which the boundaries of business ethics are being established within business schools, consulting firms and corporations. Contrasts this official discourse on ethics with an alternative, more socially informed, and potentially disruptive approach to the ethics of business.

Focuses on the environmental movement and its approach to provision of information. Comments on guides to environmental organisations and the movement generally. Concludes that the environmental movement cannot be considered in isolation but must be studied alongside the issues and politics out of which it has arisen.

Very much more might be done to improve the quality of our food supplies by the great organisations that exist for the avowed object of furthering the interests of traders in foodstuffs. It is no exaggeration to say that these organisations claim, and rightly claim, to speak in the aggregate on behalf of great commercial interests involving the means of livelihood of thousands of people and the most profitable disposal of millions of money. The information that they possess as to certain trade methods and requirements is necessarily unique. Apart from the commercial knowledge they possess, these organisations have funds at their command which enable them to obtain the best professional opinions on any subjects connected with the trades they represent. Their members are frequently to be found occupying positions of responsibility as the elected representatives of their fellow‐citizens on municipal councils and other public bodies, where the administration of the Food Laws and prosecutions under the Food and Drugs Acts are often under discussion. Such organisations, then, are in a position to afford an unlimited amount of valuable help by assisting to put down fraud in connection with our food supply. The dosing of foods with harmful drugs is, of course, only a part of a very much larger subject. It is, however, typical. Assuming the danger to public health that arises from the treatment of foods with harmful preservatives, the continued use of such substances cannot but be in the long run as harmful to the best interests of the traders as it is actually dangerous to public health. The trade organisations to which reference has been made might very well extend their sphere of usefulness by making it their business to seriously consider this and similar questions in the interests of public health, as well as in their own best interests. It is surely not open to doubt that a great organisation, numbering hundreds, and perhaps thousands of members, has such a membership because individual traders find it to their interest, as do people in all walks of life, to act more or less in common for the general advantage ; and, further, that it would not be to the benefit of individual members that their connection with the organisation should terminate owing to their own wrong‐doing. The executives of such trade organisations hold a sufficiently strong position to enable them to bring strong pressure to bear on those who are acting in a way that is contrary to the interests of the public generally, and of honest traders in particular, by adulterating or misbranding the food products that they gain their living by selling. It should also be plain that such trade organisations could go a long way towards solving many of the very vexed questions that arise whenever food standards and limits, for example, form the subject of discussion. These problems are not easy to deal with. The difficulties in connection with them are many and great; but such problems, however difficult of solution, are still not insoluble, and an important step towards their solution would be taken if co‐operation between those who are acting in the interests of hygienic science and those who are acting in the interests of trade could be brought about. If this could be accomplished the unedifying spectacle of alleged trade interests and the demands of public health being brought, as is so often the case, into sharp conflict, would be less frequent, and there can be no doubt that general benefit would result.

Although their “best‐by” date (14 December 1990) has passed I can't really avoid some mention of The Library Charges (England and Wales) Regulations 1990. As is usual with government documents of this ilk, it follows a long‐standing tradition of unreadability. (Is this a ploy to discourage comment, one sometimes wonders?) Persevere with it, though, and a number of worrying proposals and implications reveal themselves. These include:

Through this column I will be exploring the field of environmental information and its provision in this country. I will do this by tackling the subject from the user's point of view: each month I will pick a different user (or potential user) group, and discuss resources, services and organisations which can be of use to this group. Just to avoid any charge of repetitiveness, I will occasionally diverge from this pattern to discuss other issues.