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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of changes to the Arkansas budget process brought about when the people of Arkansas voted to move from a biennial to an annual budget period in 2008. The paper describes the legislative changes necessary for annual budget review and explores the impact of annual budget review on revenue forecasting, supplemental appropriations, special sessions, legislative staff workload, executive branch oversight and state spending. This research assesses legislative perceptions of annual budget review across several factors including knowledge of the state budget, ability to check the powers of the governor and overall efficacy of annual budget review.

This exploratory research uses interview data from the Legislative Fiscal Director and data from an online survey of Arkansas state legislators. The interview and survey data were supplemented by an analysis of documents produced by legislative staff regarding supplemental appropriations, special sessions and state general revenue.

The Legislative Fiscal Director interview indicates that the change in budget period had little impact on revenue forecasting, special sessions and state government spending, with the exception that supplemental appropriations for Big 6 agencies increased in a statistically significant way following the advent of the fiscal session. The legislative survey finds that the change in budget period is viewed positively by Arkansas legislators. Most legislators indicated that they prefer annual budget review to biennial budget review.

Because of the exploratory approach, the research results may lack generalizability.

This paper surveys legislators on the efficacy of annual budget review which has seldom been done in previous research.

Much of the budgeting literature has focused on the questions of “how” budgets are prepared and “how” budget decisions are made. Minimal attention has been directed to “how” budgets are executed. This paper focuses on this issue with special emphasis on state government budget execution processes. The paper provides an overview of the similarities and differences of state and federal budget execution follows by an assessment of how state balanced budget requirements place special responsibilities on state budget offices to monitor “within” budget execution year expenditures and revenues. Actions which may be taken to insure that state budgets are balanced are discussed. These actions are enumerated and analyzed in terms of legislative and executive branch authority and responsibility shifts.

Towards the middle of The Name of the Rose Adso of Melk realizes that “not infrequently books speak of books.… In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries‐old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” With these thoughts in mind Adso asks his mentor William of Baskerville “what is the use of hiding books, if from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones?” William replies that “over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use.…” To which Adso, dumbfounded, asks “and is a library, then, an instrument not for distributing truth but for delaying its appearance?”

This study examined Taiwan's fiscal policy responses for sustainable post-COVID-19 recovery. The costs and benefits, aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of fiscal policy responses were identified and valued. Although it may be too early to conclude whether the benefits outweigh the costs, the performance and outcome of fiscal measures were evaluated.

The study relied on secondary data, including governmental official data, legislative reviews, audit reports and public opinion polls to understand objective and subjective benefits and costs in economic, social and environmental dimensions. However, while the costs were measured in monetary terms, some of the benefits (i.e. satisfaction) could not be monetized; therefore, this study focused on identifying and valuing benefits from fiscal measures but set aside the issues of monetizing and discounting.

With respect to the costs, a special budget of NT$840 billion was approved, of which 66.83% was allocated for economic development, 33.12% for social welfare and 0.05% for environmental protection. In terms of the benefits, the economic growth rate was forecasted to be 5.88% in 2021 and 3.69% in 2022, while the average economic growth rate was 2.77% during the period from 2012 to 2019. Social equity was emphasized as various and customized bailout packages were provided to impacted individuals and industries. Moreover, most citizens were confident in the government's efforts to combat the pandemic and stimulate recovery in Taiwan.

This paper comprehensively details Taiwan's experience of fiscal policy responses for sustainable post-COVID-19 recovery. The cost-benefit approach was conceptually adopted. Bearing the value of “build back better” and “rebuild better,” the benefits of fiscal measures are promising, although there are indebted costs of the special budget.

Budgeting in Germany is characterized by procedural continuities which have developed more and more into dignified parts of the German financial constitution. This is true for the way budgets are prepared at the executive level, controlled in parliament and audited. Procedural accuracies do, however, mean little for budgetary outcomes. Typical for these is that hard choices tend to be avoided by the frequent use of off-budget funds, and that, so far, mere lip-service has been paid to the problem of reducing the deficit. Budgetary compromises necessary to reconcile cut-back rhetoric and ever-growing expenditure demands have become more complicated because in most cases the support reform of entitlements. By adding huge new

Federal budget problems have been significant national issues throughout the 1980s. One can hardly read a newspaper or listen to the broadcast media without reference to budget‐related topics. Public opinion supports this concern. Seventy‐six percent of those responding to a Gallup Poll taken prior to the 1988 presidential election indicated they consider reduction of the budget deficit the new administration's top priority. An additional 21 percent believed it should be a medium priority. A second poll taken in late January 1989 found that 59 percent of the respondents favored a constitutional amendment that would require Washington to balance the budget. In 1985, the figure was only 49 percent.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

Library Association Record, published as this paper was going to press, contains an article by R. H. Hill and S. P. L. Filon entitled The Incorporation of Special Libraries in the National Interlending System, in which a number of proposals is put forward; if these recommendations are generally approved they will make still more necessary some consideration of the assumptions and difficulties I discuss.

The purpose of this paper, originally published in 1956, is to examine the assumptions about people's needs for and rights to information which lie behind the establishment of privately and publicly owned libraries, to consider how far these assumptions are valid, and finally to discuss the proper part to be played by privately owned libraries in the national library service.

Identifies and reflects on the assumptions in quotations from charters and terms of reference of a variety of libraries and from official statements about library provision.

Publicly supported libraries should satisfy the demands of the general reader for everything that is in print, including foreign material, and in doing so should give greater consideration to the geographical and temporal convenience of the reader in the case of both reference and loan material; that all demands on the interlibrary loan system should be met where possible from the stock of publicly supported libraries: that special libraries should give priority to the demands of their special clients but that they should consider increasing services to outsiders on a fee basis.

Suggests that it would be possible, when assessing the different categories of library, to have slightly varying criteria in mind and each librarian would be able to gauge the quality of his services by reference to explicit particular ends.