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Argues the case for the appointment of specialist information managers to market information internally in organizations. Their role will be to ensure that the information systems of organizations are orientated to the current needs of managers, and are responsive to changes in these needs. Information managers, using the techniques and skills of marketing, can ensure that the information systems on which managers rely to make decisions reflect their individual needs. The effect will be to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business and justify investment in its information systems.

This article aims to uncover the influence employment relations, and more specifically union avoidance has on the decision to outsource road transport. Employment Relations literature often attributes outsourcing decision to decollectivist strategies, minimising the influence unions have in their workplaces or to labour cost reduction objectives. These explanations, however, fail to explain why some firms do not outsource when their sourcing structure incurs greater union involvement or industrial relation.

The author examines two case studies. Company A and Company B, while operating in a similar environment, selling similar products and offering a similar home delivery service have adopted different governance structures for their outbound transport function; Company A has integrated while Company B has outsourced. Was union avoidance or transaction cost reductions central to their respective decisions?

Company A did not integrate in an effort to circumvent union intervention or reduce costs. Company A’s integration, on the contrary, increased the firm’s dealings with unions, as well as regulatory compliance and transaction costs. Company B’s decision to outsource yielded similar results. While not experiencing an increase in union intervention, the firm failed to reduce the density of unionised labour and by maintaining ownership of delivery vehicles, saw a rise in costs.

Union avoidance is not an explanatory factor in the sourcing decision, nor is it possible to explain through transaction cost economics. Explication for outcomes lies in value enhancement. Companies are willing to incur higher employment relations and transport costs if the result is higher value capture.

The role, potential and interaction of networked catalogues and collection‐level description have recently been given emphasis in order that efficient resource discovery mechanisms, and the effective organisation of such resources, be facilitated within the UK's developing JISC information environment (IE). This article describes the work of CC‐interop, a JISC project, and related projects that inform the development of the IE and its ability to instantiate the functional model of online resource discovery to which JISC aspires. The article reviews the evolution of Z39.50 virtual union catalogue services and collection description services that preceded CC‐interop. The paper also discusses how such work is informing regional information environments, with particular reference to Scotland, and reveals how such local arrangements will benefit the wider JISC IE.

To report on the work of the SPEIR project and indicate its relevance beyond the Scottish information environment. SPEIR was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council to identify, research, and develop the elements of an internationally interoperable Scottish Common Information Environment (SCIE) for Library, Museum and Archive domain information services, and to determine the best path for future progress. A key focus was to determine the distributed information infrastructure requirements of a pilot Scottish Cultural Portal being developed in parallel with the SPEIR work, building on existing pilot initiatives such as the CAIRNS distributed catalogue and landscaper, the SCONE collections database, the SCAMP staff portal and an embryonic organisational infrastructure based on the Confederation of Scottish Mini‐cooperatives (CoSMiC).

A series of practical pilots was undertaken. These were underpinned by relevant desk and field research and conducted within an overarching holistic approach to developing the distributed environment.

Key outcomes included the creation of a single upgraded integrated service incorporating an extended distributed catalogue, collections database, and landscaper, the creation of a pilot distributed digital library, the development of open‐URL‐based facilities to permit portals to incorporate “canned searches” of the catalogue, the collections database, the SDDL, and other compatible services, an illustrative pilot Scottish terminology mapping service, and various organisational infrastructure and professional support improvements.

The embryonic technical and organisational infrastructure reported may provide a model for other small countries (or regions within larger countries) seeking a coherent approach to the development of an interoperable information environment.

This paper tests the potential for the food and wine tourism model developed by Hall and Sharples to be used as a tool for identifying specific food and wine segments in a destination. Using Cairns, Australia, as a case study a survey of tourists identified three food and wine segments and confirmed the ability of the model to be used to classify the destination's position as a food and wine destination based on the categories developed by Hall and Sharples. Results of the survey indicate that while almost all participants experienced the destination's food and wine products, only one group of respondents (45%) self-identified as food and wine tourists. A second group participated in food and wine experiences but did not select specific destinations on the basis of the destination's food and wine sector. A third group expressed no interest in food and wine as a tourist experience but did consume unique food and wine as part of the overall tourist experience. The research found that the food and wine tourism model developed by Hall and Sharples was a useful tool for both identifying the stage of development of the food and wine industry and planning strategies to develop the sector. The paper concludes by outlining a number of implications for marketing food and wine tourism.

When an individual achieves exceptional outcomes in a particular endeavour - sporting success, academic achievement, business results, creative outputs and more – various influences, such as physiology, education and IQ – play a part. Yet these influences often fail to explain the essential difference between one individual's outstanding performance and another's.

This chapter describes the use of clean language interviewing to research the patterns of beliefs, values, thinking and behaviours of a person who gains consistently excellent outcomes in a specific pursuit. The analysis of the data gathered can be used to create a model of the individual's process which describes ‘the elements, patterns and relationships that are characteristic of a particular ability’ (Gordon & Dawes, 2005, p. 8). Modelling is ‘the process of identifying and describing in a useful way those patterns that make up an ability. Once we know the patterns, we can make them our own and begin to manifest the ability’ (Gordon & Dawes, 2005, p. 5).

The case study presented here focuses on a case manager, Tanya, who worked with neurodiverse (mostly autistic) offenders, supporting them to move successfully into education, training or employment. Tanya, who had attained outstanding results, dramatically outperforming her peers, was the exemplar who became the subject of the research. The methodology involved is described, and the ways in which an interviewee's conscious and unconscious processes were elicited through clean language questions are outlined.

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co‐ordinated “virtual Scotland” and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co‐operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini‐Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co‐operation.