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At the recent ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco, I attended the LAMA Systems and Services Section program “Microcomputers and LAN's: Are They a Viable Part of Your Future?” The speakers were Robert Walton, Texas State Library; Carol Wilson, Cleveland County Memorial Library (NC); and Corryn Crosby‐Muilenburg, Humboldt State University (CA).

Describes how the former warehouse manager at UK furniture‐installation company Rubicon Developments Ltd was trained to become a top manager and so free the firm's two directors to spend more time obtaining new business and diversifying the company.

Explains the background to the training, the form it took and the results it has achieved.

Details how the directors delivered the 16‐week tailor‐made program, after themselves attending a course on preparing to teach in the lifelong‐learning sector.

Highlights how the ex‐warehouse manager developed new skills in areas such as cost management, report writing, delegation, conflict resolution, commanding respect in the workplace, finance, time management, project management, change management, sales and marketing, management reporting through Microsoft Excel charts, effective monitoring of quality systems and setting realistic targets.

Highlights an important success in the area of lifelong learning.

Reveals that close monitoring of the employee's progress helped him to complete the program within the allotted 16 weeks, even though he had done little studying in the previous 30 years.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The aim of this paper is to focus on how to create a coaching culture in organizations through coach training and external coaches.

The writer draws on her experience in corporations as a board director and as a consultant to organizations in the field of coaching.

Conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of coach training over external coaches and the best ways of implementing a coaching culture.

Advice is given regarding: the principles of a coaching culture; how to launch a coaching program; a ten point plan for implementing a coaching culture; how to choose external coaches; how to choose coaching skills training; challenges of coaching in the workplace; informal coaching in the workplace; and uses for coaching skills in the workplace.

The writer's broad experience of designing and delivering cross cultural coaching programs, and as a board level director, enable her to challenge existing concepts, to offer original solutions and to describe the pitfalls inherent in implementing any coaching program.

Focuses on coaching, the latest “fix” in corporate life, and how the workplace is changing from authoritarian bosses and jobs for life towards self directed learning and portfolio careers. Outlines how the Virgin Empire was built using a coaching culture and provides case histories of the implementation of coaching and coach training in the workplace. Provides some facts and figures about Return On Investment, and why companies introduce coaching. Concludes with a look into the future.

The writer of a review article in the IT area depends on a variety of information sources containing authoritative material, hyped‐up reports, or even partial or pure fiction. Sometimes articles are biased or the author has a particular axe to grind — for instance the person is associated with a company and the article is no more than a dressed up sales piece. Academics are usually reliable — although unlikely to damn themselves with faint praise if the next grant is round the corner. I will try to exercise good judgement when assessing my information sources, supressing my various prejudices if possible. But what is meant by the word new? For the purposes of this article ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) protocol (rules) and ATM switches in broadband networks, and aspects of Cable‐TV and cable modems have received a lot of exposure. They will not be discussed here. However, there is much interest in the contest between fibreoptic systems to the home and the conversion of telephone lines to wideband lines. These topics will be discussed.

Coal, a fuel that once dominated the global energy scene, is staging a come‐back despite being environmentally dirty. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the return of King Coal to find out whether it is likely to be regain its dominance in the global energy in the future.

In analysing the metamorphosis of the coal industry, the paper looks at the historical evolution of the industry and analyses the factors behind the change. The deficiencies of coal's competitors are also analysed. Using a scenario analysis, the future role of coal in the global energy mix is estimated as well.

The paper finds that despite the domination of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix, coal has maintained a steady share and in some countries, it remained the main fuel. With the concerns of high‐oil prices and peak oil, coal is regaining its domination in the power sector around the world. The industry has reformed and restructured itself to remain competitive. Consequently, it has the possibility of staging a come back as a dominant fuel.

The paper is the first of its kind to take a long‐term perspective of the coal industry to analyse its re‐emergence as a dominant fuel. It combines the industry‐wide information to analyse the changes that swept the industry. It contributes by improving the academic understanding of a neglected fuel that still plays an important role.

In this paper, we contribute to the theorizing of patient involvement in organizational improvement by exploring concepts of “learning from patients” as mechanisms of organizational change. Using the concept of metaphor as a theoretical bridge, we analyse interview data (n = 20) from participants in patient engagement activities from two case study organizations in Ontario, Canada. Inspired by classic organizational scholars, we ask “what is the organization that it might learn from patients?”

Patient involvement activities are used as part of quality improvement efforts in healthcare organizations worldwide. One fundamental assumption underpinning this activity is the notion that organizations must “learn from patients” in order to enact positive organizational change. Despite this emphasis on learning, there is a paucity of research that theorizes learning or connects concepts of learning to organizational change within the domain of patient involvement.

Through our analysis, we interpret a range of metaphors of the organization, including organizations as (1) power and politics, (2) systems and (3) narratives. Through these metaphors, we display a range of possibilities for interpreting how organizations might learn from patients and associated implications for organizational change.

This analysis has implications for how the framing of the organization matters for concepts of learning in patient engagement activities and how misalignments might stymie engagement efforts. We argue that the concept and commitment to “learning from patients” would be enriched by further engagement with the sociology of knowledge and critical concepts from theories of organizational learning.

This paper aims to examine Patrick Wilson’s 1977 essay, Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance, which emphasizes practice rooted in theory. Modern reference work ought to look back to this 35-year-old essay to be reminded of the intent of reference practice by considering Wilson’s discussion.

This paper examines Wilson’s decades-old thesis and applies it to reference work and reference resources for today’s information professionals.

The crux of Wilson’s essay remains relevant today when applied to reference work and information-seeking.

This essay leaves readers with practical tips for reference work rooted in theory, and also expands on Wilson’s 1977 essay from a contemporary viewpoint, providing guidance for modern reference librarianship.