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This exploratory study aims to identify the key drivers of customer satisfaction for strategic consulting engagements in a global context. Specifically, the authors compare the attitudes of US and non‐US senior executives to learn how they evaluate consulting engagements.

The literature surrounding selection of management consultants and client satisfaction with consulting work is reviewed. A thematic content analysis was used to evaluate the responses of 35 US and 22 non‐US senior executives.

The results reveal both similarities and differences when compared to the outcomes of previous research generally, but they also highlight apparent distinctions based on the country location of the executive. Consistent with previous research, consultant characteristics, customer focus, and value emerged as broad themes driving client satisfaction. In addition, project management and enterprise considerations also emerged as significant drivers of satisfaction. Detailed analysis of responses reveals interesting locational differences underlying satisfaction.

The key implication of this study is the identification of new drivers for customer satisfaction in strategic consulting engagements. These new elements are primarily related to enterprise and project management issues. In addition, this research suggests that the relative importance of customer satisfaction drivers may differ between executives based in the USA and those based elsewhere.

The paper provides a broad overview of satisfaction issues in consulting services, particularly with multinational enterprises as the client. It also offers a more in‐depth discussion of the relative importance of key drivers depending on the location of service delivery. By consolidating these elements into a single discussion, the paper provides a unique viewpoint not available in the current literature. Although exploratory, the holistic approach applied here should allow academic researchers to compare and contrast the results of this research to previous findings. Partners and key account managers at consulting firms might also consider the relative emphasis placed on elements of their service offerings.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

The essential obligation of special educators under the law known as individuals with disabilities education act (IDEA) is to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to all students identified as having a disability. A secondary and related obligation is to provide a FAPE in the least restrictive environment (LRE). To assist a student's individualized education program (IEP) or placement team to determine the setting in which a student will receive a FAPE, the IDEA mandates that school districts have available a continuum of placements (CAP) in which the team will choose the least restrictive and appropriate setting in which the student will receive their special education and related services. Our purpose in this chapter is to explain these requirements and why following the chronological order of determining FAPE and then LRE when developing a student's special education program is critical to meeting the IDEA's programming and placement mandates. We also explain why determining FAPE in the LRE cannot be accomplished without using the CAP.

THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

44. The Author and Title Catalogue should comprise entries for all books under authors' names, under titles where necessary, and under series if any, and should include references under any other names or words necessary to its use as an efficient means of reference : the whole arranged in one alphabetical sequence.

THE exact date of the first foundation of the library is not discoverable, but it was within the first two years of the formation of the Medico‐Chirurgical Society (1805–1807), as a Library Committee was appointed as early as March, 1807.

One of the nine thought provoking essays assembled by Peter Vergo in the recently published The New Museology (Reaktan Books, ISBN 0 948 462 035 hardback, ISBN 0 948 462 043 paperback) is “The Quality of Visitors' Experiences in Art Museums” in which Philip Wright discusses the lack of awareness among museum personnel of what exactly their institutions are doing, and indeed should do, in a period when “films, television, video and pop access photography have inevitably altered, if not actually undermined the hierarchy of images that museums aim to display”. Few curators have had professional surveys of their audience undertaken, some have dismissed colleagues' changes as pandering to commercialisation, and invest in sophisticated technology and displays in such a way as to distract from the integrity of the objects in their care.

ELSEWHERE in this number we list libraries which have Esent us copies of their annual reports which we are glad to have. Now and again we are able to elaborate on these, but in the present issue that has not been possible. We would say, however, that these reports are deserving of the attention of librarians generally, and of students at the library schools. They are records of work in progress, and they do suggest the development of library policy. The best of them are of textbook value.

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with advantage be devoted again to the consideration of its value as a modern library appliance. Passing over (a) the decision of that curiously constituted committee formed in 1879 to consider and report on indicators, and (b) the support which it received in 1880 from the Library Association, it may be said that for the next fourteen or fifteen years the indicator system was the popular, almost the universal, system in vogue throughout the country. Of late years professional opinion as to its value has undergone a remarkable change. The reaction which has set in was brought about chiefly by the introduction of Open Access in 1894, with the many reforms that accompanied it, though much, doubtless, was due to the prevalence of a more exact and systematic knowledge of librarianship, and to the natural evolution of ideas. It is not, however, intended in this paper to compare the indicator with the open access system, but with others suitable to the requirements of a closed library.