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New York State has established the goal of enabling all libraries in the state—some 7,000—to become electronic doorway libraries. An electronic doorway library is a library enhanced and transformed by the use of computer and telecommunications technology to provide electronic services for its users.

The New York Stale Library and the library systems in New York State have a long‐standing commitment to the use of technology to improve services, increase efficiency, and constrain cost increases. In 1986, the Board of Regents of the State Education Department adopted a three‐part program for automation. Pursuant to this program, several important committees have been appointed that have subsequently issued key recommendations. This article addresses the formation and role of the committees and their recommendations covering: general issues, databases, linking, training and consulting, and operational objectives.

In the summer of 1994, Stephen Portch, the new chancellor of the University System of Georgia (USG), issued a call for projects that would benefit all 34 public colleges and universities (see figure 1). For the past several years, a subcommittee of library directors in the University System had been meeting regularly with representatives of the vice chancellor for information and instructional technology (IIT) to discuss possible electronic library proposals and sharing the results of these meeting with all library directors in the system through the Regents Academic Committee on Libraries (RACL). Thus, when the chancellor requested proposals, there was already a consensus on the services and features that were most desirable for the University System libraries.

In 1996, the Strategic Leadership Forum inaugurated the Peter F. Drucker Strategic Leadership Award, presenting the first award to Mr. Drucker himself in honor of his life‐time contribution to strategic management and strategic thinking in business and education. At that time, we announced that an annual award would be given to business leaders who have created strategic competitive advantage in their organizations or have reached a level of unprecedented achievement using Peter Drucker's principles. It was with intense pride that the 1997 award was presented to Frederick W. Smith, chief executive officer of the Federal Express Corporation, at SLF's International Conference in Washington, D.C.

The purpose of this research is to identify the crucial barriers to the implementation of mass customization (MC) in Indian SMEs and to investigate the interactions among them so that important managerial implications could be formulated to facilitate the implementation of MC in SMEs.

The contextual relationships and hierarchies of the barriers are established through the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach, and MICMAC analysis has been used to classify the barriers into different groups. Further, structural equation modelling based on partial least squares (PLS-SEM) has been applied to statistically validate the ISM model using the data collected through a questionnaire-based survey of Indian organizations.

A portfolio of barriers, containing 16 items, has been identified from the literature review and a series of semi-structured interviews of practitioners. The study develops a structural model by establishing relationships and imposing directions among the barriers and classifies the barriers according to their driving and dependence power to serve as a roadmap for SMEs willing to implement MC into practice.

The study highlights the critical barriers which have a significant impact on other barriers and need to be handled at priority. Also, the present research renders insights to SMEs to better prioritize their efforts and resources to overcome these barriers.

This research happens to be first in the MC literature that investigates the key barriers responsible for hindering the implementation of MC in SMEs and develops a statistically validated contextual model showing hierarchies and relationships of the barriers.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.

While qualitative work has a long tradition in the strategy field and has recently regained popularity, we have not paused to take stock of how such work offers contributions. We address this oversight with a review of qualitative studies of strategy published in five top-tier journals over an extended period of 15 years (2003–2017). In an attempt to organize the field, we develop an empirically grounded organizing framework. We identify 12 designs that are evident in the literature, or “designs-in-use” as we call them. Acknowledging important similarities and differences between the various approaches to qualitative strategy research (QSR), we group these designs into three “families” based on their philosophical orientation. We use these designs and families to identify trends in QSR. We then engage those trends to orient the future development of qualitative methods in the strategy field.

Across the globe, the increasing exploration of women entrepreneurship as an emerging phenomenon has resulted in growing lines of examination that extend across the motivations, challenges, contributions, and strategies for navigating the entrepreneurial space. Despite such advancements in the field, the effects of gender and motherhood on entrepreneurship remain highly under-theorized and under-contextualized, with little appreciation of the spatial and situational realities that they confront. Such is the case for the Caribbean where women and mothers are increasingly entering into entrepreneurship, but where their realities are yet to be understood. In this chapter, we therefore make a case for the use of contextual theorizations that focus on the structural, historical, and cultural aspects of entrepreneurship, and the implications of these for the thinking and action of women entrepreneurs and mumpreneurs in the region. Implications for entrepreneurial research, policy, and practices in the Caribbean are also discussed.