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WITH this issue we are commencing the twenty‐seventh year of our career as an independent Library Journal and trust that we shall carry on the tradition of our illustrious founder and continue to criticise or praise without fear or favour. During the past twelve months our editorial staff has successfully produced special numbers dealing with Bookbinding, Book Selection, Children's Departments, Classification, and Colonial Libraries. Judging by the correspondence we have received, our efforts have been greatly appreciated by the majority of our readers. Naturally we have not pleased everybody and we have even been dubbed the “little contemporary” in some quarters. However, we can point to an unbroken record of twenty‐six years' endeavour to serve the library profession and we ourselves are justly proud of the contemptible “little contemporary” that did not cease to appear even during the darkest hours of the dread war period.

Media considerations are pedagogical rather than technological in nature. In online courses, we use technology to enable learner interaction. In this chapter, we focus on a process through which we identify media that will help bring our course to life. Technology tools come and go, quickly. While some specific tools are suggested, it is the process by which to identify and select media that is enduring. We begin with a discussion of media-enabled course activities that are used to guide the selection process. The 10 activities are organized by type of interaction they represent and the media characteristics they require. Media have affordances or functions that can be matched with identified course activities to meet learner interaction needs. These needs help to narrow the scope of our selection decisions. After exploring a variety of functions and tools, we exemplify the media selection process. We extend the work started in previous chapters by identifying media needs in light of design and interaction decisions under the playground and symphony metaphors. In so doing, we demonstrate how the phases of the redesign process inform our technology choices.

Most current modeling approaches identify very small gains from trade reform. In this chapter, we examine recent developments in the literature to assess whether standard modeling approaches are mis-specifying, understating, or overstating the gains from trade reform. Key areas where the impacts of trade barrier reduction appear to be understated include the measurement of barriers; the aggregation of these barriers; process productivity gains, particularly those resulting from reallocation of resources between firms; product quality improvements and expansion of product variety; factor supply; and investment of gains from trade.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the negative aspects of blockchain technology and to shed the light on most productive years, countries, authors, sources and frequent keywords.

A Web of Science bibliographic data set containing 209 journal articles was evaluated using descriptive and network analytics. A two-step process is adopted in this study; descriptive analysis is initially carried out using RStudio to determine the most productive years, nations, sources and authors, and using co-occurrence of keyword analysis in VOSviewer, the most influential keywords are determined.

The findings reveal that 2022 is the most prolific year in terms of number of publications. It is discovered that China tops the list for having published the most articles. Similarly, the most productive authors are Kumar A and Abhishek K.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this bibliometric analysis is unique in that it takes a thorough approach to examine the negative aspects of blockchain technology and identify research trends and offer insights that might guide future research and practical solutions.

Informed by the literature on regional security and fragile states, ‘new regionalisms’, and natural resources and violent conflict, this essay investigates the challenges of state-building in West Africa. These range from the influence of diasporas and subregional strongmen to flows of small arms and light weapons (SALWs) and lootable natural resources. The analytical framework that links patron–client networks and lootable natural resources is applied to the cases of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. In recent years, strategies by African leaders to co-opt subregional strongmen as part of patronage networks have failed. The essay finds that an ossified state presence and the erosion of a leader's influence enables subregional strongmen to gain control over valuable natural resources, such as diamonds. The essay then assesses the impact of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) on state-building, concluding that although international regimes like the KPCS can increase state capacity and thereby counter the deleterious effects of state failure, they are not sufficient state-building tools. Hence, the KPCS must be supplemented through a combination of more explicit state-building initiatives under the auspices of bilateral government donors, aid agencies, diasporas and transnational and local NGOs.

The purpose of this study is to thoroughly review studies that have used blockchain technology in financial services. This study will help provide a holistic framework that would highlight the current state and challenges of the blockchain in the financial services sector.

The objective of this study is to systematically examine and organize the current body of research literature that either quantitatively or qualitatively explored the use of blockchain technology in financial services. The study uses PRISMA-guided systematic review along with bibliometric analysis to achieve the purpose.

This study contributes to the existing literature by exploring and analyzing systematic studies available on blockchain with special reference to financial services sector. With blockchain based on five principles, namely, computational logic, peer-to-peer transmission, irreversibility of records, distributed database and transparency with pseudonym has immense potential to unleash and transform the financial service industry. With increasing blockchain-based operations of decentralized banking, insurance, trade finance, financial markets and cryptocurrency market, the subject is rapidly growing and seeking considerable contribution from scholars from around the world.

This study uses systematic literature review approach, which has its own demerits. Like other studies based on Systematic Literature Review, this study also suffers from a certain bias such as sample selection bias, publication bias, data interpretation and the combination of quantitative and qualitative studies in the population. Further, the adoption and resultant benefits of blockchain have not been empirically tested.

This study can help policymakers and institutions in determining their future course of action, as it highlights the state of research in the area of blockchain technology and financial services.

Very few studies have done a comprehensive review of literature on blockchain in financial services.

Consumers' attitude toward luxury brands remains a crucial area for many researchers and marketers. But, attitude toward domestically-produced luxury fashion brands in developing countries have not been sufficiently examined. Drawing on the social identity theory (SIT), this study proposes that consumer ethnocentrism (CE) and cultural sensitivity (CS) will significantly influence attitudes toward luxury fashion brands produced in Trinidad and Tobago. Furthermore, the study suggests that consumer demographical characteristics of age, gender and income will moderate the influence.

Data were collected from 160 fashion consumers and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The findings confirm the positive impact of CE on consumers' attitude toward domestically produced luxury products, while CS has a significant but negative effect. Also, the results show that these effects are consistent across different levels of income, but vary by age and gender.

These findings provide a deeper understanding of consumers' perceptions and inherent biases toward luxury brands. It further explains how brands with ostentatious value, in particular fashion brands, produced in Trinidad and Tobago, can compete against larger international brands.

The study is one of the few that examines the effects of personal values on attitudes toward luxurious fashion brands produced in a developing country. It uniquely extends the SIT model by examining the influence of CE, CS and demographical characteristics on preferential attitudes toward locally produced luxury fashion brands.

Pre-existing music has been used to underscore the moving image since the days of ‘silent’ film, and this practice is still commonplace today in Hollywood and beyond. Such music may be ‘classical’ or ‘popular’ and can feature within the narrative of a movie diegetically, non-diegetically, or both. With regard to art music in film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is often the composer of choice, given the popularity and familiarity of many of his compositions. However, his music is employed cinematically in a range of different situations and for a variety of purposes.

In this chapter, I focus on ways in which compositions by Mozart are used to manifest the music and death nexus present in the narrative of three films that were released in different decades. ‘Là ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni (1787) features in the first film I analyse, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945), with the aria being linked to the symbolic death of the moral compass of the protagonist. I then consider the inclusion of music from one of Mozart's symphonies in the storyline of the film Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), the narrative of which includes the themes of deception and murder. The final film I examine is I am David (Paul Feig, 2003), in which one of the characters sacrifices his life to save that of his friend. Each example encapsulates death as embodied affect, with Mozart's music specifically impacting upon the emotions of the protagonists.

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.