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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of network-based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services.

In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network-based social capital. The approach originates from the field of sociology and entails a personal network survey. The authors define four social capital variables according to tie strength and social distance between the respondent and his/her network member.

Social network ties are not homogeneous. The econometric results suggest that social capital with weaker ties in combination with socially distant ties can potentially improve households’ access to rural services.

The empirical survey focusses on a single province in Northern Vietnam. Thus, the main limitation of the micro-study is its regional focus. A more representative sample of the whole country would be desirable to backup the policy recommendation.

The results indicate that access to services in rural Vietnam it still too personalized and subjective. Thus, a thorough review of the access procedures and making them more objective would be better choice. This would also root out a potential alley for corruption and nepotism.

The management of autonomous, heterogeneous network resources and services provides new challenges which libraries are now addressing. This paper outlines an approach based on the construction of broker services which mediate access to resources. It outlines a framework – the MODELS Information Architecture – for thinking about the components of broker services and their logical arrangement. It describes several development projects and services which show how brokers are developing. It uses examples drawn from the serials environment to describe some of the issues. Technologists understand that they must build more stable and unobtrusive media. They must establish more coherent contexts into which the technology may disappear.

Undergraduates are highly susceptible to the development of mental health difficulties. Afro-Caribbean students are particularly vulnerable to the pressures of university yet are less likely than other ethnic groups to receive early intervention. This paper aims to understand the barriers and facilitators that Afro-Caribbean undergraduates perceive towards accessing mental health services in the UK.

Critical Incident Technique was used as the qualitative method because it explores the critical factors that contribute to or detract from a specific experience. Seventeen Afro-Caribbean undergraduates participated in five focus groups. This involved engaging in a novel psychosocial activity that incorporated vignettes to encourage the identification of barriers and facilitators to service access. The data were analysed thematically to generate categories of critical incidents and wish-list items.

Analysis revealed rich data from a sub-group rarely researched within UK literature. Fifteen barriers, eleven facilitators and five wish-list items were identified. The importance of mental health literacy, social networks, cultural sensitivity and concerns surrounding services underpinned many categories.

Findings provide a new perspective on barriers reported in previous literature. Novel facilitators were highlighted where, although psychological and sociocultural factors were deemed valuable, structural changes were most desired. Recommended changes illustrate innovative interventions that could make services accessible for young adult Afro-Caribbean populations. Future research should explore the barriers and facilitators identified by Afro-Caribbean undergraduates across various universities who have successfully accessed and engaged with services. This could provide a holistic perspective on viable facilitators enabling access despite the presence of barriers.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of factors that contribute to refugees’ exclusion from health-care services. More specifically, using institutional theory, this paper identifies regulative pillar-, normative pillar- and cultural/cognitive pillar-related challenges that result in refugees having limited or no access to health-care services.

The paper draws on both secondary research and empirical insights from two qualitative fieldwork studies totaling 37 semi-structured meso-level interviews, observations and focus groups in three Turkish cities (Izmir, Ankara and Edirne), as well as a total of 42 micro-level, semi-structured interviews with refugees and migrants in one large city (Izmir) in Turkey.

This study reveals that systematically stratified legal statuses result in different levels of access to public health-care services for migrants, asylum seekers or refugees based on their fragmented protection statuses. The findings suggest access to health-care is differentiated not only between local citizens and refugees but also among the refugees and migrants based on their legal status as shaped by their country of origin.

While the role of macro challenges such as laws and government regulations in shaping policies about refugees have been examined in other fields, the impact of such factors on refugee services and well-being has been largely ignored in service literature in general, as well as transformative service research literature in particular. This study is one of the first attempts by explicitly including macro-level factors to contribute to the discussion on the refugees’ access to public health-care services in a host country by relying on the institutional theory by providing a holistic understanding of cognitive, normative and regulative factors in understanding service exclusion problem.

The paper examined the mediating effect of social capital in the relationship between social intermediation and financial services in Ugandan micro finance industry. The purpose of this paper is to establish the role of social capital in the relationship between social intermediation and financial services access.

The paper adopted the MedGraph program, Sobel tests and Kenny and Baron approach to test for mediation effects.

It is clear that the true drivers of access to financial services in the micro finance industry are social intermediation and social capital. However, social capital exhibits partial form of mediation in the relationship between social intermediation and access to financial services.

A single research methodological approach was employed in the study. Owing to limitations associated therein, future research through interviews could be undertaken to triangulate.

Since social capital is found to be a causal chain in the relation between social intermediation and financial serves access in this study, managers in the micro finance industry should endeavor to reinforce agents of social capital (i.e. trust and social networks) since the lending relationships between the micro‐finance operators and marginalized communities are driven by social collateral.

This is the first study that focuses on testing the mediating effect of social capital in the relationship between social intermediation and financial services access in the Ugandan microfinance industry.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

There is growing concern that some groups without access to high‐speed broadband networks, e.g. those residing in rural and remote areas, will be unable to benefit from online education, health and government services, etc. Such concerns have led to arguments that universal service obligations (USOs) should be upgraded to include access to broadband. This paper reviews the arguments and concludes that, at this stage of broadband development and diffusion, there is no convincing case for USO‐type mandates. Since the case for broadband USOs should be intermittently revisited, the paper proceeds, nevertheless, to explore what would be involved in a systematic review of this issue.

Children and young people with learning disabilities and mental health problems from black and minority ethnic communities face barriers in accessing services. This paper describes a mapping of services used by young people with learning disabilities and mental health problems from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. Overall the participants accessed primary health care services through their GPs, had contact with Social Services for support and benefits and the voluntary sector for culturally appropriate services. Most participants did not access statutory child or adult mental health services, or professionals such as psychologists or behaviour nurse specialists. Families reported key barriers such as lack of awareness of services, language difficulties in communication and lack of culturally sensitive services.

This paper seeks to investigate how the concept of a trust level is used in the access control policy of a web services provider in conjunction with the attributes of users.

A literature review is presented to provide background to the progressive role that trust plays in access control architectures. The web services access control architecture is defined.

The architecture of an access control service of a web service provider consists of three components, namely an authorisation interface, an authorisation manager, and a trust manager. Access control and trust policies are selectively published according to the trust levels of web services requestors. A prototype highlights the incorporation of a trust level in the access control policy as a viable solution to the problem of web services access control, where decisions of an autonomous nature need to be made, based on information and evidence.

The WSACT architecture addresses the selective publication of policies. The implementation of sophisticated policy‐processing points at each web service endpoint, to automatically negotiate about policies, is an important element needed to complement the architecture.

The WSACT access control architecture illustrates how access control decisions can be made autonomously by including a trust level of web services requestors in an access control policy.

The WSACT architecture incorporates the trust levels of web services requestors and the attributes of users into one model. This allows web services providers to grant advanced access to the users of trusted web services requestors, in contrast with the limited access that is given to users who make requests through web services requestors with whom a minimal level of trust has been established.

The current approach to universal service involving the provision of specific services (such as fixed voice, public payphones, ability to make emergency calls, etc.) needs re‐thinking in a convergent, NGN environment. This paper seeks to be part of that re‐thinking.

Questions addressed include: Should we move to a focus on universal access to communications infrastructure, allowing consumers to dictate preferred services? Since access to the full range of NGN services, including VoIP, requires broadband connection, should the scope of USOs be “upgraded” to include broadband?

A shift towards universal network access seems sensible provided that a number of conditions exist. One is that traditional services defined under universal service obligations (USOs), remain available. In particular, a shift to VoIP raises questions about whether present features of universal service (quality, ability to make emergency calls, etc) can be sustained. Another condition is widespread access to broadband. Another condition is that consumers are empowered to exercise the increased choice of services that will be available in an NGN environment. Such consumer empowerment requires that market power, information asymmetry, barriers to “switching”, as well as “systematic bias” in consumer decisions be effectively addressed.

Stimulates the policy reconsideration that is needed in regard to universal service in an NGN environment.