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Outlines the lead up to the establishment of the Network Development Office to ensure that the Library of Congress participated in national network planning. The work was vested in the Network Advisory Group set up in 1977 and later renamed the Network Advisory Committee. From this evolved a task force to be called the Network Technical Architecture Group (NTAG). The accomplishments of NTAG are described, and relate to computer links, protocol for such links, and national networks for sharing bibliographic and other data. Future considerations are also outlined.

This study aims to investigate the demand for business advisory services by owners of start-ups and young companies by taking a gender perspective. The study also examines whether risk-taking is more characteristic of masculine than feminine behaviour in this context.

A literature review examines business advisory services and risk aversion from a gender perspective. The empirical data are derived from interviews with owners of more than 2,700 start-ups and young companies in Sweden. A number of key variables compare how the company owners (women and men) view business advisory services as a way to overcome risk and to gain access to information in networks. Several statistical tests are used to analyse these data.

Women owners of start-ups and young companies use more and different business advisory services than men owners. There are differences among the men owners and women owners with regard to the amount of start-up capital, company size and industry sector. Given the risks associated with start-up, business advisory services are important to women in helping them reduce their risk in the start-up and early stages of their companies.

Companies in Sweden’s largest city, Stockholm, were not included in the sample. Financial data were not used as variables.

Policymakers should address women owners’ greater demand for business advisory services in their companies’ early stages.

This study’s originality is its gender perspective on the demand for business advisory services by start-ups and young companies and its challenge to previous findings about entrepreneurial behaviour and risk-taking.

The field of entrepreneurship has seen a dramatic increase in studies focusing on networks and relations. Research in this area has thus far focused on how the structure and quality of entrepreneurs' existing interpersonal ties shape information access and thereby influence entrepreneurial outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to extend the focus further by examining how the entrepreneur's socio‐demographic profile affects advisory network configuration in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) context.

In this paper, the authors used Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data, at the individual level (total early‐stage entrepreneurial activities) in 14 countries within the MENA region over the course of three years (2009, 2010 and 2011). The sample of networks is obtained from the entrepreneurs identified among the adults interviewed in the adult population survey of GEM participating countries from the MENA region.

Strong evidence was found that socio‐demographic variables such as gender, age, income and education have an impact on the usage of advice‐seeking networks by entrepreneurs across MENA. For instance, the findings suggest that women entrepreneurs in the MENA region tend to rely more on personal networks compared to male entrepreneurs.

The paper's contribution is novel in providing empirical evidence exposing the interplay between socio‐demographic factors, new venture start‐up phases, to entrepreneurial networks. Prospective scholarly research need to improve our understanding about the effects of network evolution on the entrepreneurial trajectory, as well to develop a greater understanding on how, when and why MENA‐based entrepreneurial networks emerge, develop and change over time.

The process of developing a computer based resource‐sharing program for Massachusetts is described. Activities include the development and linking of bibliographic databases, the establishment of document request and delivery procedures, and the provision of computer literacy/training for librarians. Standards, funding, governance, egislation and public information components of the plan are also reviewed.

In the early 1980s, driven by the economics of trying to sustain library operations in stringent financial times, maintain labor productivity, and respond to user demands for informational resources, public libraries in Massachusetts began to seek more efficient and effective ways to function internally while maintaining services for users. Automated technologies provided a partial solution to these library needs. The design, financial support, organizational structure, and evolution of a program to support the automation of libraries and promote resource sharing among libraries are detailed. A sidebar by Governor Dukakis expresses his views on the roles and importance of libraries.

This article aims to investigate the practice adopted by entrepreneurs regarding their use of consultants through the business life cycle.

A representative sample of Danish entrepreneurs was surveyed with response rates of 73 percent and 92 percent. The Danish GEM population survey was merged with own follow‐up surveys and statistically analyzed.

The survey results reveal that involvement of consultants increases as entrepreneurs move forward in the business life cycle. As entrepreneurs gain access to more resources, and as their problems become more fragmented, specialised, discrete and business oriented, the feasibility and benefit of consultant involvement becomes more viable. It was further found that older entrepreneurs have a higher tendency to involve consultants and that entrepreneurs mostly discuss economic and financial issues with consultants to whom they are mostly weakly connected.

Compared to other people in entrepreneurs' social networks, entrepreneurs mostly discuss financial issues with consultants with whom they are mostly relatively weakly connected.

It is suggested that a publicly‐supported advisory system should continue its effort in the early stages where entrepreneurs have only scarce resources. Further it is suggested that this advisory should be even more concentrated towards other issues than financial issues such as marketing, strategy, coordination, and specific opportunity development.

The research extends previous studies by integrating advisory literature and social network literature. The introduction of the business life cycle is also new. The results are based on a very solid research design.

While advisory boards have been around for a long time, they have become rather commonplace in Silicon Valley (USA) in the past decade. In fact, they are so common for new ventures as to be unremarkable and taken for granted. However, there is really very little empirical evidence about advisory boards, how they work, why they work, or do not work, and the like. The purpose of this research is to explore and to discover how advisory boards operate in practice. A number of tentative conclusions arise from this investigation, which can provide guidance to entrepreneurs in the composition and disposition of advisory boards, and also offer clues to future researchers for topics requiring more focused and in‐depth inquiry.

The authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.

The authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.

Adding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.

The action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

The emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are transforming various industries, including agriculture. Unaware, young male and female farmers leave the agriculture profession as they perform unsustainable practices. Precision agriculture using the Internet of Things (IoT) is a solution to sustainable agriculture. Extension professionals are at the heart of disseminating agricultural advisory agricultural services in India. The discourse on the IoT is entering the space of extension advisory services (EASs) and social sciences. Thus, the present paper seeks to review the application of IoT in Indian agriculture, its challenges and its effect on EASs. The conceptual framework is drawn from disruptive and surveillance capitalist theories.

Online literature review was conducted on electronic e-book Ebsco, Google scholar, PubMed, Jane, j gate, research4life, springer journal and Mendeley databases for full-text repositories, textbook, thesis, web articles, newspaper articles, reports, blogs for the year 1990 to May 2021 using keywords “IoT application in agriculture,” “emerging technologies in agriculture,” “challenges in IoT application,” “extension advisory services sources of information,” “big data and extension advisory, “IoT and extension advisory in India.” Only publications in the English language were included.

IoT aids progressive farmers and small farmers alike. Drones, robotics, precision irrigation, livestock tracking and crop disease surveillance are examples of IoT applications in agriculture. Only large corporations and governments access IoT, and for them, big data storage is an issue. Privacy and security concerns demand upgrades in IoT systems. Solutions to the convergence of IoT with the cloud will leverage agricultural EASs, resulting in fast computing, precise and proactive up-to-date problem solving. Hence, the need for communication between firms and clients has ceased. Thus, the jobs of extension agents are replaced.

The competence of future human extension agents lies in reskilling as a “knowledge broker” of relationships and expertise, as s/he cannot have all multidisciplinary knowledge.

Although IoT applications in agriculture are available from a technological standpoint, there remains an awareness gap regarding the impact of IoT applications in agricultural EASs. This study will aid in a better comprehension of IoT applications from current and prospective EASs.

For a number of reasons, I have decided to begin this issue of VINE with an editorial. In the first place, as many of you will already know, at the end of June I gave up my post as Information Officer for Library Automation in order to become an Assistant Librarian in the Applied Sciences Library of University College, Cardiff. Since the Information Officer for Library Automation is ex officio editor of VINE, this means that I will also be handing over responsibility for this publication to my successor, when he or she is appointed. Unfortunately, there will be a hiatus before my successor can take over, so that for a short while, I will continue to edit VINE. However, because of my commitments in Cardiff, I will be unable to provide news of recent developments in U.K. library automation as I formerly did. Thus, in this issue of VINE and the next, I will concentrate on descriptions of automated library systems which I visited whilst on a study tour of North America in April and May of this year. Once my successor takes over, VINE will revert to being a source of up‐to‐date information about automation in specifically U.K. libraries.