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In the 1980s, as the United States encountered international economic and technological challenges, the very ability of the American educational system to produce a competitive labor force, able to learn and solve problems, was questioned. During this past decade, renewed concern about educational quality in the United States motivated over one hundred reports analyzing the shortcomings in our system of education and endorsing reform. All of the principal curriculum areas have been reviewed in this process; moreover, science education has been deemed particularly deficient. Major reports sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recommend both content revision of science courses and methodological changes in the way science is presented throughout the elementary and secondary grades.

ALTHOUGH the first Public Libraries (Scotland) Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1853, it was not until 1899 that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow was empowered to establish and maintain public libraries throughout the city. Between 1876 and 1897 four attempts were made to secure public approval for the adoption of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Acts, but when all these efforts proved unsuccessful, the Corporation decided in June, 1888 to include in a Local Bill for submission to Parliament, certain clauses conferring upon themselves the power to become a library authority. Promoted in 1899, the Bill became known as the Glasgow Corporation (Tramways, Libraries, etc.) Act 1899, and the library clauses passed through Parliament without opposition and received Royal Assent on 1st August, 1899. The powers conferred by this Local Act empowered the Corporation:

Purpose – Anthropomorphism abounds in contemporary consumer culture. This chapter evaluates the recent anthropomorphic uptick and shows how it can be utilized for pedagogic purposes – namely, a brand animal novel called The Penguin's Progress.

Methods/approach – The chapter adopts a case study approach (though “exemplar” is perhaps a better word). It employs an alternative mode of knowledge representation, fictionalized nonfiction.

Findings – The exemplar reveals that student engagement is enhanced when unorthodox modes of representation are embraced by educators, though such pedagogic tactics are not without their shortcomings.

Research implications – If student reaction to The Penguin's Progress is any indication, then this chapter has enormous implications for the way consumer researchers communicate their ideas. A root and branch rethink is required.

Practical implications – The Penguin's Progress provides an alternative pedagogic option, an off-beat route to knowledge acquisition. Whether it's widely adopted, remains to be seen.

Originality – The chapter reveals that marketing and consumer research does not have to be written in a dry-as-dust manner.

To discuss the concept of phantom reality.

When one begins to look at the phenomenon of phantoms, one comes across different sections, which are referred to in expressions such as phantom limb pain, phantom circuits or phantom pregnancy. When are these phantoms? What are they all about? In which contexts are these expressions used? Do they have similarities or aspects in common? How can we deal with them and which reality do they belong to?

Even if we consider these questions as undecidable ones in the sense of Heinz von Foerster, more differentiated answers can be given on the basis of Nelson Goodman's and Catherine Z. Elgin's concept of variations.

The paper offers ideas for dialogue and orientation in the area of conflict of phantom and reality.

FIRST THINGS FIRST AUTUMN may be a time for a new review of our work which is additional to our supreme task of providing and exploiting books. There is no single thing that we have done for the past fifty years that may not be made the better for examination, so long as that examination is cautious. Our publicity for example; is it direct, dignified, appealing; or, is it flabby, sometimes actually silly and sometimes a vain competing with that of great stores or newspapers with their relatively enormous resources? If the truth is accepted that the best expenditure we can make is on books and that the light that radiates from our shelves is from them we shall do well. Open shelves, well‐filled with modern editions of the new and old, are our best exhibition and the only permanently valuable one; our best publicity agents are our satisfied readers. The public will always pass on to others news of things it has proved to be good. If we came without previous knowledge to examine library literature today we might easily infer that books are now a negligible part of the thought of librarians. So much indeed that even librarians themselves have been heard to plead for some knowledge of the greater books of the world amongst themselves. Other writers in these pages and writers elsewhere have done this occasionally. The explanation lies in the fact that the “frills” we add to the real fabric of libraries are just attracting additions made to draw further attention to the existing excellent book‐services we now give. It is probable that the concern for information services, gramophone records and so many other now familiar extras is shown most by librarians whose bookstock is already excellent and is being kept so. Such an explanation we should like to believe.

I ENTERED the literary world late in the immediate post‐war years when changes of literary taste and loyalty were already in the air. The first broadcast I gave was, I remember, an attack upon Virginia Woolf. Her books had nurtured me as an adolescent, and I was in reaction against her influence.

Focuses on recent environmental decline and market failure to account adequately for environmental values. Looks beyond economics and market failure, and highlights the role of politics and government failure. To remedy poor political performance in respect of the environment, advances the primacy of constitutional reform, entailing the prescription of minimum environmental safeguards. Recommends greater use of referenda as well as the electoral system of proportional representation. In respect of the international and global dimensions of environmental problems, stresses the need for a supranational constitution or charter to restrain single sovereign nations from blocking the united welfare of countries.

We rejoice to see that the Council of the Library Association has at last made a step in the direction of drawing the attention of local authorities to the parlous condition of libraries. A well‐worded circular has been sent to the Town Clerk of local councils asking them to signify that they will support a Bill for relieving libraries from the limited rate which has for sixty years stultified their work. We cannot estimate yet what the response is likely to be, but we hope that it will be very considerable and favourable. Even communities which hitherto have shown little enthusiasm for the proposal are now faced with the simple fact that as a mere business proposition they must furnish some relief to their libraries if they want them to continue at all; and the desirability of their continuance has been emphatically signified by the public, whose use of the libraries at present exceeds all precedent in many towns. A town council which voted against the libraries in the circumstances would be merely ridiculous.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Scheingold's The Politics of Rights and The Political Novel while having different objects of study at the center of their analyses, both concern themselves with the difficulties in producing meaningful social change on a late modern political terrain. His critiques of rights-claiming are echoed in debates over the practical and philosophical difficulties incorporating animals into contemporary legal regimes. This chapter considers insights from Scheingold's two texts arguing that his insights into the legal imaginary in the latter text anticipates the critique of animal rights while his emphasis on the fictional imaginary in the former text can also be found in contemporary texts that suggest animals can help us rethink political agency.