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Considers issues involved in developing a costing model for a hybrid library shell. Set up and running costs are identified. Concludes that the overwhelming costs of building and operating a hybrid library are related to people, but with good administrative procedures and careful planning the demand for staff time can be reduced.

Discusses the questions of not only mixing print and electronic resources, but also local and non‐local resources in the hybrid library. Attention is drawn to the significance of local resources which are important in the day‐to‐day work of people in higher education. Examples are provided and the organisation of the resources is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the mechanisms through which Chinese National Science Parks' (NSPs) services facilitate returnee entrepreneurs' (REs) acquisition of resources for their new ventures. Resource acquisition is crucial for new ventures, but it inevitably leads to significant costs increase. Although the NSPs offer various services to REs to reduce these costs, they still struggle to find the right mix of services.

From the transaction cost's perspective, an exploratory multiple-case study was conducted with data collected from six NSPs in China.

The results reveal that four types of NSP services (mentoring and training, social event, promotion of REs and accreditation of resource holders (RHs)) have both individual and joint effects on reducing REs' resource acquisition costs. Specifically, the “accreditation of RHs” service directly helps REs reduce search costs. The combination of “accreditation of RHs”, “promotion of REs” and “social event” services help REs and RHs to establish guanxi. Further, guanxi, working along with the “mentoring and training” service, helps REs to reduce contracting, monitoring and enforcement costs.

This study is among the first to explore the matching mechanisms between science parks’ services and entrepreneurs' cost reduction. This helps reconcile the inconsistent findings on science parks' effect by explaining why some NSPs are able to provide strong support to REs while others are less successful. In addition, the findings are useful for NSPs to develop the right mix of tailored services for REs. Finally, REs will find this study useful to evaluate which NSP is a more suitable location for their new ventures.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are widely used by large corporations around the world. Recently, universities have turned to ERP as a means of replacing existing management and administration computer systems. This article provides analysis of the rollout of an ERP system in one particular institution in the UK, the particular focus being on how the development, implementation and use of both generic and university specific functionality is mediated and shaped by a fundamental and long standing tension within universities: this is the extent to which higher education institutions are organisations much like any other and the extent to which they are “unique”. The aim of this article is not to attempt to settle this issue of similarity/difference in one way or another. Rather, it seeks to illustrate the value of taking discussions of similarity relationships surrounding the university and other organisations as the topic of analysis. One way of working with these kinds of issues without resolving them is to consider their “distribution” and where ERP shifts the responsibility for their final resolution. This is a novel and insightful way of understanding how ERP systems are refashioning the identity of universities. The article suggests, moreover, that ERP software is “accompanied” by such tensions in which ever site it is implemented. The research presented here is based on a participant observation study carried over the period of three years.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the influence of the creative industries on design education in New Zealand.

A range of contemporary literature is presented to help define the term “creative industries”, and to locate this new “culture of creativity” within a wider global trend of creative cultural theory.

Cultural policy initiatives from Britain, Canada and New Zealand are reviewed and used to demonstrate how creative industries theory has sought to combine social, cultural and economic development.

This paper is primarily concerned with recent changes to design education and the ways in which universities and polytechnics are attempting to meet the challenges of this new holistic approach to creativity and innovation.

In the final section the concept of interdisciplinary study of design is explored. This new model is developed through the example of a new interdisciplinary programme structure developed by the Wellington Institute of Technology in New Zealand.

In conclusion the concept of a “virtuous cycle” is used to describe the relationship between design education and the creative industries. This paper argues that, if this cycle continues, the creative industries will expand to become the model for a new economy based on social, cultural and economic entrepreneurship and change.

Explores the idea of trajectories of innovation in software development. Patterns of Innovation are analysed within social and institutional contexts, and within the context of changes in the ways computer technology is used. Three main trajectories of innvation in software development are discussed: technical change (e.g. languages, techniques, tools, methods); organizational and managerial change; and commodification (the substitution of packaged products for custom development). Sub‐trajectories are also described. Concludes that the scope and heterogeneity of software development activity has supported the formation of a number of different and competing trajectories which lead to quite different conclusions about the future of software development.

THE New English dictionary on historical principles founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, edited by James A H Murray, forty‐four years in the making, and now known the world over as the Oxford English dictionary holds an unchallenged place in that remarkable series of substantial works of learning and scholarship planned, nurtured, and executed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Rolls series, the Dictionary of national biography, and at the turn of the century, the Cambridge moderm history and the Victorian history of the counties of England, all bear witness to the tremendous, almost incredible, energy of the Victorian middle classes who, sometimes holding academic posts at the universities, or perhaps earning their bread as publishers (regarded then as one of the very few commercial pursuits allowed to gentlemen), formed clubs and learned societies to occupy their ‘leisure’ hours, and conceived and brought to fruition their costly schemes for ambitious publishing programmes, refusing to be deterred by years of unremitting toil which consumed their time, their money, but never sapped their vision or their dedication.