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A key objective for many higher education (HE) institutions is the development and enhancement of partnerships with sub‐regional organisations. Much of this activity takes the form of collaborative provision of intermediate level HE programmes delivered in partnership with local further education (FE) colleges. The research reported in this article, carried out in a HE institution with a substantial level of partnership programmes, was designed to enhance the quality of collaborative provision by assessing the information needs of curriculum leaders and managers of joint provision, and proposing strategies for the enhancement of information systems. The research design included a survey of the needs of HE course managers, mapping existing information sources and strategies, identifying gaps in provision, proposing strategies that would improve communication and information at all levels, and identifying implications for the HE sector in general regarding transferability of outcomes. Concludes that culture difference between HE and FE can be a strength of collaborative provision, and that information and communication technology has potential in supporting such provision through improved management of inter‐institutional information flows, and employing standardised and quality assured assessment practices.

Suggests that, in order to move beyond the rhetoric of quality debates at the levels of educational policy and implementation, it is necessary to ascertain what conceptual frameworks are in use by those who use the term. This task is significant, since the new further education funding council now requires formal quality assurance systems to be in place in each college. Describes quality models in use, and in the ensuing analysis concentrates on exploring the focus and range of quality systems. Argues that, since the issue of quality assurance bears on wider debates about institutional autonomy and academic freedom, it is important to be clear about both terminology and theoretical assumptions, since these notions constitute major ideological battlegrounds. A vital distinction to be made is between quality as a system and quality as interpreted and understood by practitioners′ multiple perspectives.

Purpose – To examine video gamers’ attitudes about and perspectives on the controversial topic of video game “addiction.”

Approach – Ethnographic interviews and participant observation with a group of 52 regular video gamers, most also reporting considerable experience with substance use and/or dependence.

Findings – Gamers tended to endorse one of two explanations for video game addiction, either arguing that games operate on the same reward centers in the brain as drugs or that gamers who do become addicted are weak, unintelligent, or actively pursue an addictive state. Several rejected the category of addiction as applied to video gaming due to the lack of withdrawal symptomatology or the confusion of pleasure-seeking with pathology. None offered sociostructural explanations for the phenomenon, despite the relative oversampling of poor and minority participants with low degrees of education.

Research implications – Future research should attend to ideologies of causality and agency among populations affected by behavioral “addictions.”

Practical implications – The perspectives of video gamers themselves are critical to research and advocacy that departs from a position of slightly greater sensitivity, both to the formal dimensions of those games held to be most habit-forming and to the ideological dimensions of video gamers’ thinking about what constitutes “addiction.”

IN THE March 1973 issue of NEW LIBRARY WORLD Dr H T Hookway commented that the new head of the British Library must be first and foremost an administrator and a manager, a man for whom the intricacies of book selection or ‘class and cat’ would hardly be of much use. Few would doubt the validity of this first statement, but surely a grounding in any of the traditional library disciplines could do no harm whatsoever and might indeed be a positive advantage.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the well‐being of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschriftare written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals and book reviews are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

John E. Elliott has been a professor of economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles since 1956 when he graduated from Harvard University with a doctorate in economics. In that position at USC, John has distinguished himself not only as a scholar and prolific writer but also as an outstanding teacher. He has received every teaching honour which USC has within its power to bestow. Moreover, John has distinguished himself for his contribution to the wellbeing of the faculty and to the advancement of its efforts to preserve and extend the concept of academic freedom. John E. Elliott was born in the year 1931 and the essays which comprise this Festschrift are written in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. The numerous awards he has received for the high quality of his teaching, for his creativity and innovation in the dissemination of knowledge, his record of books published, articles contributed to scholarly journals, and book reviews, are to be found in his curriculum vitae printed at the end of this work.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the evidence for, the why and how recent austerity policy atmosphere associated with the UK government affected environmental protection decisions within planning in Scotland.

A qualitative analysis based on perspectives gathered via questionnaire survey targeted at stakeholders involved in planning in Scotland was undertaken. The questionnaire responses were analysed thematically, supplemented by using statistical tests of significance and variance to show how responses differed across participants.

The evidence showed that austerity policy atmosphere resulted in a pervasive neoliberal imperative of resuscitating the economy; whilst producing subtle and adverse effects on environmental decisions. This was best understood within a neo-Gramscian perspective of hegemony, borrowed from the field of political economy of states.

The gathered views were constrained within unknown biases that the participants may have had; and because the case study approach was not equipped to generalise the results beyond the study, more research testing cause-effect between the austerity and selected environmental parameters is needed, from various contexts.

Decision-making frameworks should explicitly acknowledge the unique pressures during austerity periods; and contemplate resilient decision-making frameworks that can withstand the hegemonic tendencies which prioritise economic goals above environmental ones.

Whilst the area of austerity’s impacts on the environment remains poorly evidenced, empirically, this seminal paper uses robust analysis to establish how the austerity policy atmosphere affects environmental decisions. This is insight into what may be happening in other similar situations outside Scotland, raising concern as to whether and how we should approach the challenge of hegemonic ideas.