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Gives an overview of marine scientific information and library services at local, national, regional and international levels. Discusses the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Information System (ASFIS) and other international co‐operative programmes designed to improve information flow and exchange, and describes the activities and services of six regional networks. Identifies gaps and deficiencies in currently available services, and considers prospects for the future.

Readers of the current professional literature could be forgiven if they assumed that most library and information operations and services were computerized, and that only mechanized systems were able to cope with present‐day requirements. Perhaps it is right that the literature should concentrate on this rapidly changing and developing subject, but most of the library and information services of scientific research institutions known to the author—which include centres of excellence with worldwide reputations—are non‐mechanized. There are no reliable guidelines as to when it is economic, practical or opportune to switch to mechanized systems, and there are many variable factors to consider. However ‘non‐mechanized’ does not equate with ‘old‐fashioned’, and the present economic climate, with its limits on expenditure and ceilings on staff numbers, makes it likely that manual methods will be employed for many years to come. The following is a description of a non‐mechanized service, catering for the needs of a relatively small local user population, and also providing and offering a variety of services to outside users.

Describes the development and activities of BIASLIC, the Britain and Ireland Association of Aquatic Science Libraries, including the formation of EURASLIC, the European Association of Aquatic Sciences Libraries and Information Centres, and the provision of UK input into the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (AFSA). BIASLIC maintains links with several international agencies as well as providing its members with a support network and a collective voice. At a recent conference, concern was voiced about changes in the structure and funding of aquatic science research and the adverse effect this is having on library staffing. BIASLIC’s new Web site aims to become a focal point for disseminating information about its activities and about developments in the UK and Irish information sector.

Comments on the selection of books and journals in the collection, borrowing attitudes and facilities. Notes that a helpful librarian may spell the difference between project success and failure regardless of facilities. Concludes that it would be helpful if senior library users spoke up more vehemently at budget appropriation meetings.

The purpose of this chapter is to promote the importance, utility and necessity of applying a sociocultural lens to the analysis of the normalized appropriation of surveillance technologies and wearables across sports settings.

The chapter synthesizes existing literature that has embraced a sociocultural lens to examine the implications of the increasingly normalized adoption of surveillance technologies in sport settings. In doing so we hope to provoke discussion regarding the contemporary effects of technologies in order that they may be better understood by not only sports scholars but those who operate within sport. To achieve this aim, we provide an exemplar of how Michel Foucault's concepts have been a useful heuristic for this endeavour.

Within the highly commercialized and spectacularized domain of corporate sport, the performing athletic body has become a commodity of vital importance. Correspondingly, sports practitioners across the globe have rallied to devise innovative ways to train, protect and improve athletes. As this chapter details, one of the main ways in which this project has occurred is through the increased appropriation of wearable (and increasingly invasive) surveillance technologies. A major finding from existing literature is that surveillance technologies can contribute to the unproblematized production of compliant athletic commodities in sports settings. Moreover, that this can have significant limiting outcomes for athletes' development and well-being and coaches' practices.

The chapter argues for three future ‘touchstone’ areas of study: Surveillance technologies and athlete retirement, unintended consequences of more technology and resisting the regulatory intentions of behavioural nudges.

This chapter provides one of the first summaries of the socioculturally informed research that has examined the implications of the increasingly normalized presence of surveillance technologies across sports settings. In doing so, it also acts as one of the first resources designed to help those who coach and develop athletes to reflect upon the significant dangers and limiting outcomes that can be associated with the unconsidered deployment of surveillance technology.

GUEST editor of this South African issue of THE LIBRARY WORLD is Hendrik M. Robinson, Director of Library Services, Transvaal Provincial Administration, Pretoria.

In the past decade, more than 700 million people are affected by some kind of disability or handicap. In this context, the research interest in assistive robotics is growing up. For people with mobility impairments, daily life operations, as dressing or feeding, require the assistance of dedicated people; thus, the use of devices providing independent mobility can have a large impact on improving their life quality. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a robotic system aimed at assisting people with this kind of severe motion disabilities by providing a certain level of autonomy.

The system is based on a hierarchical architecture where, at the top level, the user generates simple and high-level commands by resorting to a graphical user interface operated via a P300-based brain computer interface. These commands are ultimately converted into joint and Cartesian space tasks for the robotic system that are then handled by the robot motion control algorithm resorting to a set-based task priority inverse kinematic strategy. The overall architecture is realized by integrating control and perception software modules developed in the robots and systems environment with the BCI2000 framework, used to operate the brain–computer interfaces (BCI) device.

The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is validated through experiments where a user generates commands, via an Emotiv Epoc+ BCI, to perform assistive tasks that are executed by a Kinova MOVO robot, i.e. an omnidirectional mobile robotic platform equipped with two lightweight seven degrees of freedoms manipulators.

The P300 paradigm has been successfully integrated with a control architecture that allows us to command a complex robotic system to perform daily life operations. The user defines high-level commands via the BCI, letting all the low-level tasks, for example, safety-related tasks, to be handled by the system in a completely autonomous manner.

BY the time these words appear the majority of those who attend Library Association Conferences will have made tentative arrangements for their visit to Margate in June. Already, we understand, adhesions are coming in as many in number as for any September conference, and, if this is so, the fact will reassure those who have doubts of the wisdom of the change from September to June. We give on other pages some outline of the programme and in Letters on Our Affairs are presented with a Study of the subjects of the papers. Here we can concentrate upon one or two important points.

The chapter will examine the emergence and influence of the restorative justice movement as a bridge between communities, civil society and the state in Ireland. The chapter will focus on the Republic of Ireland, but will also examine restorative conferencing in Northern Ireland. This will be divided into a number of sections, each reflecting the emergence of a movement dedicated to the promotion of restorative justice as a vehicle for a holistic form of community-based justice in Ireland. This chapter covers the history, scope, and philosophical-political background of the restorative justice movement, providing specific examples of the interchange between this restorative justice movement and civil society in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States. The wider potential of the restorative justice movement will be highlighted.

This potential is demonstrated in the restorative movement’s challenge to understandings of failed punitive approaches, and through its socially redemptive alternative which emphasises collective responsibility for crime amongst all of the community. The chapter will also examine the international background to restorative justice, and its theoretical understandings, with a focus on key theorists such as Strang and Braithwaite, amongst others. It will examine salient issues that underpin social justice and social control in Ireland, including the potential impacts of restorative justice policy and practice for the wider community and the state.

Environmental campaigns in Ireland can be divided into pre- and post-affluence phases of multinational-led economic development in Ireland between 1958 and 2002. I construct an ‘issue history’ (Szasz, 1994) that locates the GSE case within the context of a series of community challenges to toxic industries during that period. These cases are relevant to an understanding of environmental movement activity in the decades before GSE's own campaign, before the onset of economic growth, or in the post-boom years when issues such as landfilling and incineration were the subjects of disputes across Ireland. I examine some earlier cases that have parallels with GSE's case in terms of their primary focus on toxicity and health risks, but I also look at the emergence of landfill and municipal incineration disputes since the mid-1990s that can be traced to the explosion of waste as a by-product of Irish society's fixation with consumerism.