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Librarians have been urged to emphasize social justice and human rights issues in their library mission, but they may find themselves challenged to provide additional services, such as access to legal information for those who cannot afford an attorney. Social justice services in libraries are seldom adequately funded and providing services in this area is labor intensive. In addition, there is an emotional intensity in library services for social justice that is often not considered in the initial enthusiasm of providing services in this area. Yet there seems to be no limit to the need. An interesting and useful perspective on how a public agency such as a library responds in circumstances of limited resources and unlimited demand can be found in the book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, by Michael Lipsky. In this perspective, lower level civil servants who interact directly with members of the general public exercise a level of discretion in the amount of services provided and how those services are administered. This chapter explores how this can generate tensions between more traditional library bureaucracy and social justice services, such as providing public access to justice resources in law libraries. However, the “street-level” response is evolving into a sustainability perspective as librarians embrace a more social justice–oriented outlook in library service planning.

Value Stream Management is a new strategic and operational approach to the data capture, analysis, planning and implementation of effective change within the core cross‐functional or cross‐company processes required to achieve a truly lean enterprise. This paper describes the method in detail including a summary of the previous Value Stream Mapping approach and its weaknesses. The new approach involves a strategic review of a business or supply chain's activities, the delimitation of key processes and the mapping of these processes. A description of how to analyze and synthesize these data is followed by a section on an approach to planning strategic and operational change together with a framework in which to do this. The benefits and limitations of the new approach are summarized.

An important stage in the process of retrieval of objects from a hypertext database is the creation of a set of inter‐nodal links that are intended to represent the relationships existing between objects; this operation is often undertaken manually, just as index terms are often manually assigned to documents in a conventional retrieval system. Studies of conventional systems have suggested that a degree of consistency in the terms assigned to documents by indexers is positively associated with retrieval effectiveness. It is thus of interest to investigate the consistency of assignment of links in separate hypertext versions of the same full‐text document, since a measure of agreement may be related to the subsequent utility of the resulting hypertext databases. The calculation of values indicating the degree of similarity between objects is a technique that has been widely used in the fields of textual and chemical information retrieval; in this paper, we describe the application of arithmetic coefficients and topological indices to the measurement of the degree of similarity between the sets of inter‐nodal links in hypertext databases. We publish the results of a study in which several different sets of links are inserted, by different people, between the paragraphs of each of a number of full‐text documents. Our results show little similarity between the sets of links identified by different people; this finding is comparable with those of studies of inter‐indexer consistency, where it has been found that there is generally only a low level of agreement between the sets of index terms assigned to a document by different indexers.

Local shopping is a topic that has been neglected for many years by both retail researchers and policy makers. However, in recent years it has come on to the agenda again, mainly because a number of government policy areas – including social exclusion, regeneration and sector competitiveness – have recognised the vital community role played by small shops, and the problems of maintaining their vitality and viability. Within that context, introduces the special issue of IJRDM which presents a number of papers on the general theme of retailing for communities that were given at the CIRM Conference held in Manchester on 13 September 2002. They fall into three main groups: local shopping areas; business strategy and operations; and, learning, training and support for small retailers. The papers illustrate the diversity of research that needs to be undertaken in this area, and there are close parallels with work being undertaken in other management and social science disciplines.

Using a critical librarianship framework, this chapter argues that library administrators ought to advocate for comprehensive family leave policies and support employees more fully as they return from maternity leave. Improved policies support and enhance working conditions for all employees. Drawing on a diverse body of literature to illustrate that the significant life transition of becoming a mother is a unique opportunity for the library profession to improve the professional experience of its employees. Finally, practical action steps for supervisors are provided so they can structure a support plan for mothers transitioning back to work.

Rural students encounter challenges such as the achievement gap; racial inequality; little or no college counseling; higher rates of poverty; limited accessibility to college preparatory courses; and recruitment and retention of quality teachers. Moreover, Black males tend to experience the same issues; however, there is a dearth of literature around this population in rural areas. The authors describe the implications of the unique intersection of Black males in rural settings and discuss the unique challenges and opportunities presented. Specifically, academic achievement, college and career readiness, and access to employment and higher education for Black males are highlighted in this chapter. The authors provide recommendations on research and practice for educators to best serve Black males in rural settings.