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This paper provides a brief overview of some of the digitisation projects currently or recently undertaken at Durham University Library. The projects cover the range of the collection and include: digitising past examination papers, an electronic reserve pilot project, digitising photographs and digitisation of pre‐Ordnance Survey maps and topographical prints. The funding, technical base, standards used, progress and deliverables from the projects are described. A number of broader issues which have arisen are described.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on how responses to gender-based violence (GBV) in higher education (HE) changed as a function of COVID-19. Since the original lockdown directive was issued by the UK Government in March 2020, there was an acute awareness of the impact the stay-at-home order could have on prevalence and patterns of GBV, with technology-facilitated sexual violence and domestic abuse being of particular concern (Universities UK, 2020).

We give the illustrative example of our learning (from 2020 to 2022) around how we have changed our approach to supporting survivors to access information and support, and the conduct of investigations during this period.

For HE Institutions who were quick and keen to embrace online teaching, there was a necessity to recognise that this change in learning environment may bring an increase in online forms of sexual misconduct, and additional challenges associated with supporting survivors who were often remote from university campus. Subsequently, and swiftly, responses to GBV in HE (including formal investigations where requested) needed to change to ensure those who were subjected to sexual misconduct could access support and information, in the knowledge that they would not be disadvantaged by bringing their reports forward during a time of global uncertainty.

An insight is provided on the changes adopted to respond to GBV on campus during the early pandemic, and the impact that these changes have had to the provision of specialist service delivery over two years on.

This paper aims to explore the university as a nexus of socially innovative support and engagement with micro- and small-sized (mSME) creative businesses in rural and semi-rural regions. This paper argues that universities can play a socially innovative role in and around their regions.

The authors used an action research approach to shape university-led interventions for creative mSMEs in a predominantly rural/semi-rural deprived area in the North East of England. A series of additional interviews were conducted with a sample to further explore issues raised during the action research phase.

The research found that the university is seen by these mSMEs as a trusted source of socially innovative support, though the expectation is for long-term and meaningful interventions that facilitate impactful change. University-based knowledge exchange and innovation can be oriented toward these tiny businesses for mutual benefit and as an enabler of societal change in a transitional economy.

As this study focused on a small, geographically similar cohort of creative mSMEs, the further application of these findings may be limited in dissimilar settings. More research is encouraged to further explore and test the conceptual points this paper raises.

This paper contributes to the social innovation field and creative economies policy research by presenting how a university can enable and shape authentic forms of engagement and impact in the mSME creative economy across the rural/semi-urban landscape.

A gap in the linking of information literacy skills and bibliographic software usage was identified in the postgraduate researcher cohort. While the provision was available, many researchers were not integrating the finding of research information and the management of that information using bibliographic software tools. This article describes the linking of these two areas in two courses presented to postgraduate researchers and analyses the feedback from those who attended. Overall, an overwhelmingly positive response was found. Most positively received was the software training, perceived as a “new” skill, while information literacy skills were less well received, due mainly to the perception of those skills as already acquired.

This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment.

This study is part of the large EU‐funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget.

European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.

A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

Durham University Library's first automation venture arose from the decision in 1967 to establish a Short Loan Collection of books and periodicals in heavy demand. The collection, divided between the Main Library and the at present separate Science Section, may eventually grow to something like 10, 000 items. While it was initially to be drawn in large part from existing stock, and administration was to be integrated with the library's other operations, the project presented an opportunity to try new methods.

The purpose of this paper is to document and describe an omni-disciplinary ethnography of a complex arts and cultural regeneration organisation in Durham (TESTT Space). The organization and its art spaces are hybrid combination tools explicitly designed to test and experiment with ideas, social forms, human interactions and arts practice. Its ground or practice is a repurposed meanwhile space in a city centre embedded in a unique cultural landscape of local communities, a University and a World Heritage Site. The research attempted to understand its groundwork, its interactions and its civic mission and aspirations in a time of radical change and rupture.

The authors assumed an ethnographic approach, working with and within this organisation for a year, thinking of the research as embedded, intimate research and committed to social change. It was a work of co-production – working with studio-holders, curators, artists and facilitators using a range of triangulated qualitative research methods. These include structured interviews, auto-ethnography, ethnography of spaces, arts-led research, art as research and research as art.

TESTT Space has allowed both the retention of artists in the city and the propulsion of artists into the world. It has offered different ways of engaging in the complex lives of artists and curators, allowing them to test aesthetics and try out new social models. It has thought up its own network as a thinking practice, has developed its own politics, civics and imagined a set of new futures.

The paper documents interactions and aspirations, describing the lived phenomenological experience of being in this experimental space.

As an essential component of Islamic governance for ensuring religious compliance, Shari’ah annual reports (SARs) play an important role in providing communication between Shari’ah board (SB) members and stakeholders. This paper aims to determine the ethical disclosure in SARs to identify how close the Shari’ah disclosure to the standards set by AAOIFI and also substantive morality of Islam. The research also aims to examine the factors determining disclosure performance.

Two disclosure indices are developed to generate data from the SARs: the AAOIFI standards for Shari’ah governance index for form related approach, an Islamic ethicality augmented index reflecting on substantive morality approach. The sample consists of 41 Islamic banks from 15 different countries for the period of 2007–2014. Sampled 305 SARs were examined through disclosure analysis in line with the two indices developed for this study. The econometric analysis was run to identify the factors determining disclosure performance.

The findings suggest that AAOIFI guidelines have an influence on the level of disclosure, even if Islamic banks have not adopted them. However, the level of disclosure for the ethically augmented index is found to be very limited with reliance on general statements in most of the cases. As part of determining factors, the popularity of Shari’ah scholars is significant for both indices, while the existence of an internal Shari’ah auditing department holds some explanatory power. The adoption of AAOIFI standards at the country level, the regulatory quality and the duration of Sharīʿah-compliance are particularly deterministic factors in terms of complying with AAOIFI standards for SARs.

Although SB is the most crucial division of corporate governance in Islamic banks in terms of securing the “Islamic” identity of these institutions, their most important communication instrument, namely, SAR, has not been explored sufficiently, alongside an insufficient attempt to constitute Islamic corporate governance. Initially, this study attempted to constitute an Islamic corporate governance framework as a theoretical construct, which provides context for the empirical part of the research and this should be considered a novel approach. Second, the empirical part of the research aims to fill the gap observed in the literature such as small sample size and index construction-related matters. This research is conducted with a larger sample size as compared to the available studies in the literature and it has developed two indices for disclosure analysis along with developing an Islamic morality-based index beside an index based on AAOIFI standards.

This paper aims to comparatively examine the impact of the intellectual capital performance on the financial performance of Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries by classifying intellectual capital as human capital, knowledge creation and innovation processes.

Along with the theoretical discussion in essentialising the rationale for intellectual capital formation through Islamic norms, the empirical analysis is formulated through the data generated by disclosure analysis using a panel of five GCC countries examining 408 annual reports from 19 Islamic and 23 conventional banks covering 2010–2019 period. In the analysis of the generated data, both fixed and random effects regression models are used.

The findings of this paper suggest that Islamic banks perform better than conventional banks in creating intellectual capital through knowledge creation, human capital and intellectual contribution. While the intellectual capital disclosure index and its pillars are significant for Islamic banks, these variables are not significant for the conventional banks in the GCC countries.

Considering that disclosed information may not reflect actual experience and performance, factual data could also be used to overcome potential shortcomings of disclosure generated data.

This paper demonstrates that Islamic banks in the GCC have been successful in their intellectual capital performance, whereby they seem to be performing in line with the Islamic ontology. In addition, the disclosure items used in this paper may guide the Islamic and conventional banks in the process of preparing their annual reports. Importantly, they may use these items as benchmarks in further developing their intellectual capital performance for better financial performance.

This paper essentialises knowledge development and innovation for Islamic banks through the Islamic cognitive system rather than as a requirement of the market mechanism. Secondly, a comparative analysis between Islamic and conventional banks is presented by acknowledging the peculiarities of Islamic banks in the methodology and disclosure index.

A process improvement sampling methodology, known as process variation diagnostic tool (PROVADT), was proposed by Cox et al. (2013). The method was designed to support the objectivity of Six Sigma projects performing the measure-analyse phases of the define-measure-analyse-improve-control cycle. An issue in PROVADT is that it is unable to distinguish between measurement and product variation in the presence of a poor Gage repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) result. The purpose of this paper is to improve and address PROVADT’s sampling structure by enabling a true Gage R&R as part of its design.

This paper derives an enhanced PROVADT method by examining the theoretical sampling constraints required to perform a Gage R&R study. The original PROVADT method is then extended to fulfil these requirements. To test this enhanced approach, it was applied first to a simulated manufacturing process and then in two industry case studies.

The results in this paper demonstrates that enhanced PROVADT was able to achieve a full Gage R&R result. This required 20 additional measurements when compared to the original method, but saved up to ten additional products and 20 additional measurements being taken in future experiments if the original method failed to obtain a valid Gage R&R. These benefits were highlighted in simulation and industry case studies.

The work into the PROVADT method aims to improve the objectivity of early Six Sigma analyses of quality issues, which has documented issues.