Search results

Considers the effects of latent building defects and the contractual rights that exist when a defect is found, depending on the age of the building. Examines the various insurance options available – commercial property insurance, public liability insurance, and legal liability policies – as well as the latest developments in latent defect insurance and how this can be arranged. Concludes that building defects will continue to arise and that already available latent defects insurance may become a legislated necessity.

A systems approach is used to study the development of human resources. Throughout the provinces of Canada exist many disparities between educational inputs such as inequalities of expenditure and also between outputs such as widely differing rates of pupil retardation and retention. There is a need to devote to the development of human resources the same energy, expertise and financial support that is invested in physical resources. Society expects education to contribute greatly to this process. There are three phases through which the education system might move in seeking to develop human resources: (1) discovery based on the acknowledgement that within industries and societies lie undisclosed abilities awaiting identification; (2) production, to utilize all known abilities currently underdeveloped; (3) refinement, when original ideas and creative modes of expression must have a discipline imposed upon them.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the new generation of discovery technologies empower libraries to behave like “aggregators” and “publishers”. The paper summarizes Montclair State University's experience with the EDS discovery service and also includes examples from other institutions.

The paper uses the experiences of several institutions to show the value of discovery tools and other technologies like institutional repositories in enhancing the role of academic libraries in higher education. Statistics and surveys culled from a variety of sources are cited in support of this contention.

Many institutions are successfully incorporating discovery and other technologies (i.e. institutional repositories) in repositioning and reinvigorating the academic library.

Academic libraries willing to make the investment in these technologies can capture the interest of their faculty, staff, and students.

The paper provides an innovative perspective on the use of discovery and other complementary technologies that act in a synergistic way to strengthen the bond between libraries and their users.

This paper aims to explore the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs.

The authors followed rapid review guidelines. The authors collected industry and government reports published prior and up to August 2017 in Google and Google Scholar using combination of key words: “job automation” or “work automation” with technology keywords: “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning,” etc. In total, 11 were included in this research.

The use of AI technologies will impact jobs in the near future as some job tasks are automated. AI is likely to substitute both, routine and nonroutine tasks. It is expected that humans and robots would work together in ways never imaginable. Changes in employability skills are expected. Because of the magnitude of these impacts on jobs, consulted reports call for concerted solutions that go beyond organizations’ and industry’s boundaries to include other relevant stakeholders. Moreover, organizations will have to rethink their human resource (HR) function to realign its expertise to the reality of AI.

In this context, the HR function will have to understand the dynamics that generate the impacts of these technologies in a workplace, to anticipate changes and actively contribute to creating an organizational environment that will facilitate the collaboration between human workers and complex digital agents, while ensuring compliance with labor and employment laws and supporting strategic organizational objectives.

This paper contributes to the debate on ongoing concerns by providing a synthesis of relevant professional literature.