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The spread of systems is traced from 1966, when two were operational, to the present time when there are at least 59. The options now available to a librarian contemplating the adoption of an automated loans system are discussed under the following headings: off‐line, on‐line, or hybrid?; source of computing power; data collection devices; book identification; borrower identification; involvement of bibliographic data; source of software. Local considerations and constraints which might affect each decision are pointed out.

This chapter focuses on researchers as knowledge workers in higher education in England as an illustration of what Katznelson (2003, p. 189) identifies as the ‘professional scholar’ undertaking intellectual work as a public intellectual. I begin by examining the challenges to intellectual work and its location in a university, particular from the media and the popularity of what Bourdieu calls Le Fast Talkers ¹ – those who talk a lot but have nothing much to say. After drawing out the tensions within knowledge production, I then locate the analysis of what it means to do research in a period of education policymaking in England between 1997 and 2010, when New Labour called on researchers to produce evidence to support radical reforms. In particular, I argue that school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) knowledge workers in Schools of Education in higher education in England are an interesting case for investigating the public intellectual positioning as ‘detached attachment’ (Melzner, 2003, p. 4), particularly through their attachment to New Labour governments and the subsequent detachment following a change of government in May 2010.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information.

The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory.

Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity.

Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms.

The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals.

This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

The purpose of this paper is to first articulate and then illustrate a descriptive theoretical model of documentation (i.e. document creation) suitable for analysis of the experiential, first-person perspective.

Three models of documentation in the literature are presented and synthesized into a new model. This model is then used to understand the findings from a phenomenology-of-practice study of the work of seven visual artists as they each created a self-portrait, understood here as a form of documentation.

A number of themes are found to express the first-person experience of art-making in these examples, including communicating, memories, reference materials, taking breaks and stepping back. The themes are discussed with an eye toward articulating what is shared and unique in these experiences. Finally, the themes are mapped successfully to the theoretical model.

The study involved artists creating self-portraits, and further research will be required to determine if the thematic findings are unique to self-portraiture or apply as well to art-making, to documentation generally, etc. Still, the theoretical model developed here seems useful for analyzing documentation experiences.

As many activities and tasks in contemporary life can be conceptualized as documentation, this model provides a valuable analytical tool for better understanding those experiences. This can ground education and management decisions for those involved.

This paper makes conceptual and empirical contributions to document theory and the study of the information behavior of artists, particularly furthering discussions of information and document experience.

Reviews the development of the concept of reward management within the context of other apparently innovative approaches to pay and the role of government policy from the 1960s to the 1990s. These are largely seen to have been ineffective and reward management to be another new wine in an old bottle.

Board monitoring should affect a firm's access to debt financing because it improves firm performance and the board is ultimately responsible for the firm's debt. In this study, we show empirically that access to debt financing indeed benefits in two ways from board monitoring: directly from the monitoring and indirectly from improvement in performance. The methodological challenge is in separating the two effects from each other and from those of other drivers of debt financing.

Purpose – The aim of this article is to examine the effects of ownership concentration and board characteristics on the performance of firms domiciled in Jordan.

Design/methodology/approach – The article employs two-stage least square (2SLS) regressions on a sample of 103 firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange for financial years 2002–2005.

Findings – The empirical results suggest that ownership concentration, multiple directorships and board size are each positive and significant in determining firm performance. Although this result contradicts the findings of some developed country studies, they are consistent with recent emerging market studies.

Implications – The findings of this article echo some of prior researchers’ contention that reforms in corporate governance principles in emerging markets should go beyond adopting the best practice in developed markets and take into account the country- and firm-specific characteristics.

Originality/value – This article exploits a unique dataset of ownership and board characteristics in an emerging market, as well as provides additional evidence on the relation between corporate governance and firm performance. Results of this research provide useful information for policymakers and legislators to understand the environment for corporate control in developing countries.