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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.

We report on an ethnographic study of four established music scenes in which Latino music is produced, performed, experienced, and celebrated in Houston, Texas: conjunto, mariachi, salsa, and Latin jazz. This paper builds upon previous work that has examined emergent music scenes in Houston by incorporating three distinctly interactionist concepts – the scene, idioculture, and place – to illustrate established scenes. Our examination demonstrates that authenticity is a distinctly sociological concept, one that provides valuable insight into understanding the meanings that music has for the everyday actor.

Music is an important feature of human group life. A wide range of journals, books, and other academic avenues pertaining to the study of music now exist to address its increasing scholarly significance. Although the primary theme in the literature seems to be the description and analysis of the role of music in daily life, the time has come for more theoretical examinations of the way music contributes meaning to individuals and the groups to which they belong (DeNora, 2003). Our goal as editors of this special issue is to apply the symbolic interactionist optic to the sociological study of music. We hope to build upon the earlier interactionist work of scholars such as Kotarba and Vannini (2006) through the concepts of identity, technology, and music communities. In the present section, we explore the relationship of music and identity.

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.