Search results

Susan Brodt (PhD, Stanford University) is E. Marie Shantz associate professor of organizational behavior and associate professor of psychology at Queen's University. Her research examines aspects of effective work relationships and how psychological and organizational processes help or hinder their development. She is currently studying the dynamics of interpersonal trust – trust building, violation, and repair – and how factors external to a work relationship (e.g., personal blogs) can facilitate trust development and repair. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly as well as practitioner-oriented journals. Susan has served on Editorial Review Boards of several scholarly journals and has held leadership positions in both the Academy of Management (Program and Division Chair, Conflict Management Division) and the International Association for Conflict Management (Program Chair, Board of Directors). She is also an experienced executive educator and consultant on such topics as negotiation, executive leadership, interpersonal trust, and managing global teams.

Investigates whether public libraries are capable of providing a basic science enquiry service. Examines the range of environmental enquiries handled by five participating libraries as a part of their everyday business. During the study some 110 detailed enquiries where recorded: somewhat less than 20 per cent of these concerned local environmental questions; the rest related to environmental queries at the national or global level. The three most popular topics were: pollution; names/addresses of environmental organizations and people; and recycling. Enquirers were evenly split between school attenders and adults. Most of the enquiries could be answered by making use of the resources already available in the library; no more than 10 per cent had to be referred elsewhere for an answer.

The first European conference on research into the management of information services and libraries (EURIM) was held at Unesco Headquarters, Paris, from 20–22 November 1973. It was conceived and organized by Aslib with the co‐sponsorship of the Association Nationale de la Recherche Technique, the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Dokumentation, NOBIN and NORD‐FORSK. The organization was an exercise in international co‐operation; the outstandingly high attendance—touching the 300 mark—could never have been achieved without the energetic publicity efforts of all the sponsors. Nor was this attendance confined to the sponsoring countries. Delegates were drawn from Algeria (2), Austria (3), Belgium (17), Czechoslovakia (1), Den‐mark (2), Finland (1), France (105), Germany (20), Ireland (1), Italy (6), Luxem‐bourg (3), Netherlands (37), Norway (4), Portugal (1), Roumania (2), Sweden (3), Switzerland (7), Tunisia (1), Turkey (2), United Kingdom (78), USA (2), Yugoslavia (1). The luxurious accommodation and impeccable arrangements at Unesco made an ideal setting for this event and artistic relief of the highest order was provided by the conducted visit, arranged by the Delegation General de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique with the generous co‐operation of the Directeur des Bibliothèques de France, the Directeur du Bureau National de Documentation and the Directeur des Musées de France, to the outstanding exhibition of paintings by Georges Braque at the Musée de l'Orangerie.

Occupational stress and well-being continues to be an intriguing and exciting area for researchers. In our 5th volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, we offer outstanding papers that examine several key issues in occupational stress. The theme for this volume is employee health, coping, and methodologies. The first four chapters take an in-depth look at the role of stress in physiological reactions and health consequences. The last three chapters examine the role of control and cynicism in occupational stress and also call for some new methodologies and the examination of nonlinear relationships in the study of occupational stress and well-being.

Over several decades many ranking techniques have been proposed as aids to journal selection by libraries. We review those closely related to physics and others with novel features. There are three main methods of ranking: citation analysis, use or user judgement, and size or ‘productivity’. Citations offer an ‘unobtrusive’ quantitative measure, but not only is the absolute value of a citation in question, but also there is no consensus on a ‘correct’ way to choose the citing journals, nor of the ranking parameter. Citations can, however, point out anomalies and show the changing status of journals over the years. Use and user judgement also employ several alternative methods. These are in the main of limited applicability outside the specific user group in question. There is greater ‘parochialism’ in ‘use’ ranking than in ‘judged value’ lists, with citation lists the most international. In some cases, the attempted ‘quantification’ of subjective judgement will be misleading. Size and productivity rankings are normally concerned with one or other formulation of the Bradford distribution. Since the distribution is not universally valid, for library use the librarian must satisfy him/herself that the collection conforms to the distribution, or that his users would be well served by one that did. This may require considerable effort, and statistics gained will then render the Bradford distribution redundant.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

This chapter reports research conducted in Melbourne, Australia that is focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools and families. The emphasis is on the relationship between technology, learning, culture and (dis)advantage. It is generally agreed that ICTs are associated with major social, cultural, pedagogical and lifestyle changes, although the nature of those changes is subject to conflicting norms and interpretations. In this chapter we adopt a critical, multi-disciplined, relational perspective in order to examine the influence of ICTs, in schools and homes, on a sample of students and their families.