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As a prerequisite to pursuing business excellence companies build learning organisations and companies that want to transform their organisations to a continuous improvement philosophy need to embrace the notion of organisational learning, whether they like it or not. Aims to analyse quality management initiatives in the context of organisational learning. At the start of this research Excellence Ireland and Advanced Management Technology secured the participation of four manufacturing organisations. These companies wanted to implement the Business Excellence Model. They were encouraged to form a network called “Best in class”. Presents a review of the organisational learning literature; the research agenda; sample design and the methodology. Presents a case history of a company which has implemented quality management initiatives. Discusses the findings and analysis, and draws a conclusion in the context of organisational learning. Focuses on presenting the organisational learning literature and not the quality management literature.

Examines the complex relationship between listening and training practices and service performance by deconstructing an earlier model of service management developed by the London Business School and Warwick Business School in the UK. This research hypothesizes that the nature of the practice‐performance relationship is far too complex to be represented by a total aggregated index of practice. Hence the composite practice index is decomposed into a listening and a training index. The concept of the “listening” organisation is employed as one facet, and training climate measured by employee training activities is a second facet. These two facets are related to service performance. Reports on empirical research, which investigated the link between listening, and training practices and service performance. The data obtained from a survey of 143 service organisations in the Republic of Ireland show a clear pattern. By taking listening practices, including information technology, as a holistic view of a constellation of information‐related practice type factors, demonstrates that there is a close relationship with service performance. Extensive training activities enhance this relationship.

Workplace learning and HRD are considered legitimate topics for study and investigation alongside organisational strategies and practices. Considers key themes in the workplace earning literature in addition to its relationship with HRD. Identifies a paradigm shift from formalised, intermittent and discontinuous learning to increasingly informal, experiential, asynchronous and real‐time situated learning. Highlights three contemporary themes in both the workplace learning and HRD literatures, namely: knowledge, expertise, competence and capability; organisational learning; and employability and career issues.

At a meeting of the Hull Corporation Health Committee, on November 22nd, the Town Clerk referred to the decision in the recent case of milk, alleged to have contained dirt. Originally the justices dismissed the summons on a legal point. The Corporation, prosecuting, asked for a case to be stated in the High Court, and the latter decided in the Corporation's favour, and sent the case back to the Hull magistrates to be heard on its merits. The evidence of the prosecution was that the milk contained 3·9 parts of dirt per 100,000 parts of milk, the far greater part of the sediment present consisting of manure. In previous cases prosecutions were secured where the dirt was slightly less, but this summons was dismissed on the ground that there was no standard laid down by law as to what amount of dirt might be permitted. If this was a reason for dismissal, then milk might be half dirt. That was absurd. The question was “What was the Corporation going to do?” He suggested that they should go on exactly as they were doing, take the cases, and place the responsibility on the justices. Perhaps if they went on a little longer they would get some idea at to what the Bench considered was such a state of contamination as to justify the local authority in taking action.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether middle-level female administrators (particularly women of color) in the California Community College system were being mentored to higher-level positions and whether the retention of leaders in higher-level positions was influenced by mentoring. Specifically, this study examined the mobility and retention of female administrators through a web-based survey that was completed by 156 females currently working in administrative positions at the dean's level or higher in California Community Colleges. Data were also collected through face-to-face interviews with 11 female administrators, 5 of whom were women of color, in senior-level positions from vice president to chancellor. These interviews reflected a range of demographics and were located in Northern, Central, and Southern California. The focus of this chapter is on the responses of the respondents who were women of color.

The study addressed two questions: (1) What effect did mentoring, if any, have on a person's ability to achieve higher-level leadership positions? and (2) What relationship does mentorship have on the retention of women of color in leadership? Findings reported that mentoring was having a positive and often significant influence on women of color administrators and leaders in the California Community College System.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

ALTHOUGH the active European and Asiatic land war has not begun so far as the bulk of the English are concerned and there are no visible signs of war's ending, advantage has been taken by many bodies to outline their after‐war proposals. Stale as we know that simple statement to be, we want to insist again that no one should be deflected for long from this reconstruction problem on the grounds that the decisive phases of war are still before us. Improbable as it seems, peace might “break out” at any time and might be catastrophic if food, clothing, homes and employment were not available on a scale at present scarcely dreamed. All the reports on reconstruction we have seen—of the Labour Party, N.A.L.G.O., the Educationists, as well as the more national ones, the Beveridge, the Uthwatt and those, so far as they exist, of the political parties, have common factors. The imperative of the moment is to relate these and to admit without party bias, the grounds of agreement so that some sort of work may begin. If this is not done—and who is to do it?—the whole of reform may be suffocated in a mass of indigestible verbiage. Libraries are vital, we say and believe, but in the general welter of words the many words of the excellent McColvin Report will not have fair consideration we fear. Our readers know that a strong committee of the Library Association has been giving assiduous study to the much shorter statement which is to embody library aspirations. We hope that it may not be long delayed, although we recognize that undue haste might lead to prolonged repentance.

We learn from various sources that the Cambridge Conference arrangements are well in hand. It is many years since the Library Association gathered in body at either Oxford or Cambridge and the event should therefore be of universal interest. On one point it has a special interest, for the President will be Mr. Jast, the first municipal librarian to hold our highest office for many years past; and no one will do otherwise than rejoice at the somewhat tardy honour thus to be paid him. Cambridge itself is making first‐class history in that it is about to build a new University Library, the elevation of which—and it is a most imposing one—has been published in The Observer and probably elsewhere. Moreover, the university city with its colleges, halls, libraries and quite glamorous history from the literary point of view, offers librarians more than most people the ideal place of meeting.

What is the Purpose of the Library? The question is exercising not only the English librarian but his American colleague, and we notice that one of our contemporaries there has given some space to this fundamental question. The simple reply to the question would seem to be “To provide the community with the books it needs.” Such a reply, however, is likely to be regarded as an over‐simplification. Nevertheless, we may adhere to it because the operative word in our definition is “needs” and not “wants.” To discover the needs of a community, which are as manifold as there are people in it, is in itself a formidable task; to supply the books which are likely to satisfy them is a life‐work worthy of the ablest of men. These considerations should never be lost sight of in the attempts which occur from time to time to define a programme of library work. We are the last to believe that our province should be a limited one and we deprecate any attempt to thwart the enthusiasm of any librarian, young or old, who has something constructive to contribute. Our definition, however, is indisputable. The addition to it that the librarian makes was defined years ago in Brown's Manual, which declared his work to be the exploiting of books. A programme then, if there is to be one, is merely of the best methods of exploitation by good technique, tactful advertisement, and a personal service which radiates willingness. The librarian must always beware of the many attempts that are made to harness the library to particular movements, shibboleths or partisan‐ships: the so‐called programmes which endeavour to define a purpose for the library will often be found to be influenced by one of these three evils. The matter thus stated seems trite enough, but it would seem that there is necessity for its fequent re‐statement.

THE Librarian faces one of the turning times in library history. The flow of progress has not yet begun, the shortages and consequent imperious demands for food, housing and clothing stand in the way of the beginning, except on paper. How long the interregnum will last none can say. The authorities, which are a reflection in some ways of the Parliamentary party in power, are well‐disposed towards libraries; the official handbook of the Labour Party proves that; but the clamour of the needs we have mentioned deafens everybody to library needs—except in certain instances. For example, the rebuilding and enlarging of the staff at Holborn is an encouraging sign. Of more potential significance is the working out of the so‐called National Charter. It has involved many towns in the task of creating an establishment for each public department. Thus, in one library system we hear that each branch or department may claim a librarian and a deputy both on the A.P.T. scale, but all the assistants are either general or clerical. Some assistants we hear have applied to be of clerical grade as the maximum salary is greater than in the general. This we suggest is putting cash before status because it is accepted as an axiom that a clerk has only clerical qualifications and potentialities, while a general assistant may aspire, when there is a vacancy and if he have certificates, to the professional status. The grading in the particular library mentioned has rather a petrifying effect in that no assistant can get into the professional grade unless his librarian or deputy departs. Possibly this sort of thing may alter, but the fact remains for good or ill—it is not all ill by any means—that no library is able to attract men from another except to a definitely higher post.