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The emergence of evidence‐based medicine has implications for the use and development of information retrieval systems which are not restricted to the area of medicine. ‘Evidence‐based’ practice emphasises the retrieval and application of high quality knowledge in order to solve real‐world problems. However, information seeking to support such evidence‐based approaches to decision making and problem solving makes demands on retrieval systems which they are not well suited at present to satisfy. A number of approaches have been developed in the field of medicine that seek to address these limitations. The extent to which such approaches may be applied to other areas is discussed, as are their limitations.

The development of the Hertfordshire business databank of companies is described with particular attention to the user‐friendly software package for editing and searching. The parallel publication of the databank in print and as a Prestel gateway service is also covered.

The European Commission SELF project enabled an international team of researchers to explore the potential for self‐service systems in libraries, to examine existing systems in detail and to devise a generalised functional specification for self‐service systems. In this article, the Project Director summarises the project's findings and its recommendations.

This article reviews presentations given at the 2001 International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. It discusses the recent RDF/XML expressions proposed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The article concludes by reviewing sessions that took place at the 2002 ALA Midwinter meetings.

This study investigates the effects of a broad-based policy change that altered maternal employment, family income, and other family characteristics on drug-related crime among youth. Specifically, we exploit differences in the implementation of welfare reform in the United States across states and over time in the attempt to identify causal effects of welfare reform on youth arrests for drug-related crimes between 1990 and 2005, the period during which welfare reform unfolded. We use monthly arrest data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports to estimate the effects of welfare reform implementation on drug-related arrests among 15- to 17-year-old teens exposed to welfare reform. The findings, based on numerous different model specifications, suggest that welfare reform had no statistically significant effect on teen drug arrests. Most estimates were positive and suggestive of a small (3%) increase in arrests.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic process of multi-actor engagement by examining how it evolves and spreads in actor networks. The authors challenge the dyadic perspective adopted by previous research.

An abductive theorizing approach uses a longitudinal case study to develop a theoretical framework of the iterative process of multi-actor engagement. The authors draw on the contemporary literature on engagement, service-dominant logic and value propositions.

The research shows that engagement conditions, via actors’ appraisals, lead to engagement properties and result in engagement outcomes as the new conditions for the next iteration. Changes within this multi-actor engagement process lead the network to evolve over time.

The authors highlight the importance of adopting a dynamic multi-actor perspective of engagement and provide foundations for further research. The use of longitudinal methods that focus on the groups of actors in the evolving network is a key consideration.

There is the need to understand and measure the dynamic process of engagement among different groups of actors within networks in the service context.

This is the first empirical study to explore the dynamics of engagement among multiple actors in the network. This leads to the expansion of Storbacka et al.’s (2016) conceptual work by identifying the iterative nature of the multi-actor engagement process, and new components in the process (i.e. actors’ connections, value propositions and engagement outcomes), as well as clarifying existing ones (e.g. engagement properties and actors’ appraisals).

The purpose of this paper is to describe how sol‐gel synthesised silica particles are used to modify the characteristics (especially the thermal and mechanical properties) of either an epoxy resin (ER) or a −COOH‐functionalised ER (FER) substrate. In the systems studied here, spherical silica particles are embedded in ER or FER thermosetting polymeric substrates for producing translucent solid materials. There arise covalent unions between the SiO₂ silanol surface groups of the particles and the functionalised FER ends, thus rendering SiO₂‐FER core‐shell compounds.

The characterisation results confirm the affinity existing between ER and SiO₂ particles as well as the existence of chemical bonds at the interface between the silica and FER phases.

An efficient and durable application against corrosion of metallic materials has been developed through the preparation and application of thin surface films made of finely disseminated SiO₂ colloidal particles, which are trapped inside either FER or unfunctionalised ER epoxy resin polymer networks. The results of this test indicate that the anticorrosive performances of FER, SiO₂‐ER and SiO₂‐FER coating films are higher than that related to the ER coating alone.

These silica/ER hybrid materials can be employed as anticorrosive coatings of metallic substrates in commercial appliances, industrial devices and protection of artistic works, such as metal sculptures.

Preparation of organic‐inorganic hybrid materials of enhanced thermal and mechanical properties against corrosion. Functionalisation of an ER polymer network resulted in the improvement of the anticorrosive properties of the sole ER of departure while showing very good corrosion endurance.