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The purpose of this paper is to describe how providing a wide variety of visual images facilitated discussions amongst older informal carers in focus groups.

In all, 72 older (aged 70+ years) informal carers took part in nine focus groups discussing their experiences as older carers. Participants were provided with a wide selection of different, freely available printed images which included abstract and humorous images and countryside scenes.

These older carers appeared to enjoy using these pictures to facilitate introducing themselves and to describe their diverse caring experiences. Sharing often challenging experiences using the images and visual metaphors appeared to support the group to discuss difficult, sensitive issues in often light-hearted ways.

This approach appeared to enhance data collection with these older participants in an enjoyable way by helping them focus on the topic at hand whilst facilitating them to give succinct descriptions of their experiences. However, further research is needed in order to be confident of the transferability of these findings to other older participant groups discussing different topics. Only informal carers were included and there were no direct comparisons with groups without images.

Using commonly available visual images in focus groups with older carers appeared to be an effective means of encouraging participant discussions and engagement.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to describe how using visual images facilitated focus group discussions with older informal carers. It therefore adds to the literature.

From the mid‐nineteenth to the early twentieth century universities and colleges were founded throughout Australia and New Zealand in the context of the expanding British Empire. This article provides an analytical framework to understand the engagement between changing ideas of higher education at the centre of Empire and within the settler societies in the Antipodes. Imperial influences remained significant, but so was locality in association with the role of the emerging state, while the idea of the public purpose of higher education helped to widen social access forming and sustaining the basis of middle class professions.

Developing employment services can feel like trying to push water uphill. Staff must often battle against local mental health services that have only a short history of interest in this issue, a welfare benefit system that speaks of promoting opportunity but seems to block every step forward, and discriminatory employment practices that appear to be rife despite the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This means that anyone with the vision and determination to create an employment project deserves high praise.It takes unusual courage to listen to blunt and direct feedback about one's local employment service. This article describes the findings of a consultation conference, many of which will be of interest to anyone working in the field.

The primary objective of the present study is to explore the relationship between workplace spirituality and work stress among offshore and onshore employees of the Indian oil and gas industry. The present study also tends to study the difference in the stress level of offshore and onshore employees of the Oil and Gas Industry.

The size of the sample for the present study was 202 respondents. It includes 128 onshore employees and 74 offshore employees of oil and gas companies. Respondents were mainly managers and supervisors working in various departments of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Cairn India, Reliance India Ltd (RIL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Indian Oil and Gas Ltd (IOCL). Since the different level of stress is experienced by employees at different stages of the organizational structure, thus study selected population comprising of managers and supervisors since they are believed to face similar work stressors. A variety of statistical tools like mean, t-test, correlation and multi-regression is used for the analysis of collected data.

Results show that all six dimensions of workplace spirituality are significantly negatively correlated with stress for onshore employees. However, the sense of community and gratitude are found insignificantly associated with stress for offshore employees. Stressful offshore conditions and excessive specialization might not allow offshore employees to cherish the community at the workplace and also the virtue of gratefulness. The offshore employees might have a certain level of gratitude and community system, but it is not sufficient for the employees to perceive a lower level of work relates to stress. The result gives the impression that the normal working conditions (onshore workplace) provide adequate opportunity to workplace spirituality to transcend its impact on work stress.

This is one of the pioneer studies that examined the role of workplace spirituality and stress in stress management of offshore and onshore employees of Indian Oil and gas companies.

As in every state, rapid technological developments have affected the way California libraries deliver their services, and, in turn, have generated new relationships for them with private and public partners. The libraries of California were hit hard by a prolonged and severe recession, yet they could not afford to wait for better economic times before joining the technological revolution.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the growth and development of periodical literature on Web 2.0 technologies and their other fields.

Bibliographic data of the articles published in the 13 leading peer‐reviewed journals are obtained from the Emerald database (www.emeraldinsight.com) directly using such keywords as “Web 2.0”, “blogs”, “wikis”, “RSS”, “social networking sites”, “podcasts”, “Mashup”, and multimedia sharing tools, i.e. YouTube and Flickr. The bibliographical surrogates such as author, title, subtitle, source, issue, volume, pages, etc. were recorded in MS‐Excel (2010) sheet for the analysis and interpretation of data. A bibliography of selected articles is provided.

The study found 206 research articles on the subject published in 13 leading library and information science journals of Emerald for period 2007‐2011. Further, the study found that 2009 was the most productive year with 69 articles. The study observed Online Information Review published 49 articles, and hence can be considered the core journal on the topic. Mike Thelwall from the UK was found to be the most prolific author, having authored or co‐authored five articles.

The study was based on 206 research articles published during the years 2007‐2011. The study was restricted to this period because the Web 2.0 concept was originated during 2004‐2005 and the undertaken period has sufficient published literature on the topic.

The paper provides reliable and authentic information on the subject. This is the first study on this topic.