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Discusses some of the issues that need addressing when a consultant applies organization development principles to a large system change such as South Africa. The 11 issues covered emerge because of the differences between traditional organization development and large systems change. Encourages a dialogue over these issues in the literature.

THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.

Part II and last MECHETTI. Vienna FOUNDED in 1795 by Carlo Mechetti as a dealer; since 1807 in partnership with his nephew, Pietro; the publishing firm styled Carlo Mechetti & Neffe in 1809; after Carlo's death in 1811, Pietro became sole owner; he was succeeded in 1850 by his widow, Therese; c. 1855 the firm was taken over by A. Diabelli & co. (cp. Peter Cappi).

Academic researchers love multi‐category answer formats, especially five‐ and seven‐point formats. More than a decade ago Josef Mazanec concluded that these formats may not the best choice, and that simple binary‐answer options are preferable in some empirical survey contexts. The purpose of the present study is to investigate empirically Mazanec's hypothesis in the context of the measurement of evaluative beliefs relating to fast‐food restaurants.

The authors conducted an online experiment that asked respondents to assess evaluative beliefs relating to fast‐food brands using either a forced binary (n=100) or a seven‐point answer format (n=100). The authors also measured preferences for each of the fast‐food restaurants, user friendliness, and recorded the actual completion times for the survey.

The results indicate that the full binary answer format outperforms the popular seven‐point multi‐category format with respect to stability, concurrent validity, and speed of completion.

Given the demonstrated strengths of full binary measures, they should be used more by both practitioners and academics when measuring evaluative beliefs.

This study provides empirical evidence of the strong performance of the forced binary‐answer format for the measurement of evaluative beliefs, and thus challenges current measurement practice among academics and practitioners.

This paper describes emerging metadata practice and standards. It gives an overview of the environments in which metadata is used, before focusing on metadata for information resources. It outlines an approximate typology of approaches and explores different strands of metadata activity. It discusses trends in format development, metadata management, and use of search and retrieve protocols. It concludes by discussing some features of future deployment of metadata in support of network resource discovery.

MANY delegates were plainly astonished when they heard in Dublin that next year the gathering of the European Work Study Federation will take the form of a World Congress on Productivity Science. The reaction was not surprising, for to distend a continent into a globe within the space of seven years is a feat of truly Napoleonic proportions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated measurement scale for an organizational learning system by capturing the learning enablers, learning results and performance outcome in an organization.

A new measurement scale was developed by integrating and modifying two existing scales, identified through a literature survey. The new scale was validated through the responses of 502 managerial employees from 14 thermal power plants of the largest power company in India.

There were scales, which measure learning enablers or learning achieved or learning in general or the relation between some forms of learning with performance. This study could integrate learning enablers at three levels, learning achieved at three levels, and the organizational outcome in the form of performance in a single scale.

The research study took place within the largest organization in one industry to control for potential industry effects across organizations. This may limit its generalizability.

The integrated scale developed in the study will help to specifically look for the presence of learning enablers and learning outcomes at individual, group or organizational level and relate them with each other as well as performance. Hence it can be of importance in the study of learning organizations and furthering the understanding of the complex relations involved.

This is the first study which clearly demarcates learning enablers at three levels, and learning achieved at three levels, and the organizational outcome in the form of performance in a single integrated scale.

Discusses the challenge Internet presents to the reference service in academic libraries. Sees text education as an issue of high priority but also recommends inclusion of the acquisition of electronic journals, local archiving of retrieved data and the provision of bibliographic access through the local library catalogue to resources available in the Internet in a model of new age library services.

This paper reviews BIBLINK, an EC funded project that is attempting to create links between national bibliographic agencies and the publishers of electronic resources. The project focuses on the flow of information, primarily in the form of metadata, between publishers and national libraries. The paper argues that in the digital information environment, the role of national bibliographic agencies will become increasingly dependent upon the generation of electronic links between publishers and other agents in the bibliographic chain. Related work carried out by the Library of Congress with regard to its Electronic CIP Program is described. The core of the paper outlines studies produced by the BIBLINK project as background to the production of a demonstrator that will attempt to establish some of these links. This research includes studies of metadata formats in use and an investigation of the potential for format conversion, including an outline of the BIBLINK Core metadata elements and comments on their potential conversion into UNIMARC. BIBLINK studies on digital identifiers and authentication are also outlined.

Floods are among the most frequent urban disasters in cities of the global south where capacity and resource limitations collude with rapid urbanization to force many poor people to live in flood prone settlements. This paper investigated the impact of flood disasters on social resilience of low-income communities in Mzuzu City, Malawi.

Using a quantitative design, 345 households were interviewed in Zolozolo West and Mzilawaingwe Wards in Mzuzu City. The survey instrument achieved a 100% response rate. A reliability test using Cronbach’s alpha showed internal consistency of survey instrument at 0.711 for Zolozolo West Ward and 0.730 for Mzilawaingwe Ward.

Out of the eleven indicators of social resilience used in this study, six indicators showed no correlation with the outcome expectancy of social resilience. Of the five indicators that showed relationship with social resilience, only improvisation and inventiveness (r_s = 0.356, p = 0.000 at two-tailed, n = 213; r_s = 0.610, p = 0.000 at two-tailed, n = 132) had a strong relationship with the outcome expectancy of social resilience.

The study was only conducted in two settlements; caution should be observed when generalizing the results.

Practitioners should ensure that social resilience strengthening mechanisms are incorporated in flood risk management as they strive to achieve SDG 11 of making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

The study showed how floods can negatively impact the social resilience of low-income communities, which is different from common knowledge that floods can enhance community social resilience.