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The paper discusses information services which are being developed within the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), to support the Museum of Scotland Project. NMS has started to build a new museum in the centre of Edinburgh, to display its rich collections of Scottish material. It is due to open in 1998. The information needs of project teams are examined. A strategy for responding to the rapidly changing needs of project teams is described. The approach concentrates on developing a variety of information resources, which together meet the needs of users, and making some of them accessible throughout the organization as services on a data communications network. Internal services include collections databases, a collections management system for the Museum of Scotland Project, and the library catalogue online. External services include the development of a Scottish national database of museum objects, and access to the Joint Academic Network. The data communications network is described, and the management of the system is discussed.

A study has been made of the effect of controlled variations in indexing vocabulary size on retrieval performance using the Cranfield 200 and 1400 test collections. The vocabularies considered are sets of variable‐length character strings chosen from the fronts of document and query terms so as to occur with approximate equifrequency. Sets containing between 120 and 720 members were tested both using an application of the Cluster Hypothesis and in a series of linear associative retrieval experiments. The effectiveness of the smaller sets is low but the larger ones exhibit retrieval characteristics comparable to those of words.

IF we count the University of Strathclyde School of Librarianship as a “new” school—rather than simply an old school transferred from a College of Commerce to a university—then four “new” schools were established between 1963 and 1964, three of the four in universities and the other closely linked with a university, though remaining independent. All four schools have their special features but I consider the more significant of Belfast's features to be its right, from the outset, to conduct all its own examinations for graduates and non‐graduates. Queen's was also the first British university to provide non‐graduates with courses in librarianship. (Strathclyde is the second.) All successful students are eligible for admission to the Register of Chartered Librarians (ALA) after they have completed the prescribed period of practical experience.

While bank management has become aware of the need to identify and assess potential market segments carefully, single persons remain a segment overlooked. This study addresses the need to view singles as heterogeneous in composition and behaviour. Three categories of singles (divorced, widowed, never married) and a sample of married individuals were compared in respect to a number of bank‐related variables. The findings support the need to distinguish between the types of singleness. Theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.

Personal computers were predicted by workers in the field of Cybernetics many decades ago. The technology may not have arrived at that time but scientists, particularly those concerned with education, saw the personal computer as part of a new educational system.

Examines the plight and characteristics of a sample of mobility‐disabled consumers and, using primary information, looks at their sources of information, shopping patterns and decision criteria. Shows that the mobility disabled represent a unique market compared with the nondisabled, and discusses managerial implications relevant to the services marketer.

This article tests a number of channel behaviour hypotheses in a unique structural arrangement – the joint venture. The results indicate that goal disparity is a significant predictor of conflict and that perceived conflict is related to member satisfaction, manifest conflict, and desire for change. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

The value of branding as an effective part of a company's marketing strategy is changing as the needs of the consumer has changed. The purpose of this paper is to identify these changes and to prescribe specific modifications that should be made to the brand and its implementation.

To better understand the evolving consumer a anthropological approach was employed. A variety of recent studies were considered and it was determined that today's consumer has three prominent needs: knowledge, authenticity, and personal experiences. The paper posits that creating positive experiences, via knowledge and authenticity, represents the next evolutionary phase of brand success.

Based on this new perspective on branding, the paper offers the following recommendations to brand managers and CMOs: discern the nature of the relationship customers want with the brand; position brand managers as spiritual leaders; speak to the end‐user through experiences and metaphors; create a master narrative that reflects the company's core value and is operationalized through the brand; apply the paradox of transparency; build your brand from the inside out, by encouraging employees to be advocates; and examine your current and desired brand personality.

The recommendations and examples of implementation offer the brand manager a roadmap to success. Although these changes would require the support of top management, the benefits are apparent.

It is critical that brand managers both understand and embrace the changes that are occurring within the consumer sector of society. More importantly, these managers must develop strategic and sound principles and practices that respond to these changes. This paper identifies these changes and offers solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospection on the importance, origins and development of the research programs in the author’s career.

The study uses an autobiographical approach.

Most of the articles, research monographs and books that constitute this research and publishing efforts can be categorized into seven distinct, but related, research programs: channels of distribution; marketing theory; marketing’s philosophy debates; macromarketing and ethics; relationship marketing; resource-advantage theory; and marketing management and strategy. The value system that has guided these research programs has been shaped by specific events that took place in the author’s formative years. This essay chronicles these events and the origins and development of the seven research programs.

Chronicling the importance, origins and development of the seven research programs will hopefully motivate and assist other scholars in developing their own research programs.

There has been extended debate about how to conceptualise inter‐organizational restructuring in late twentieth century capitalism, giving rise to a number of models that attempt to represent productive change. A number of such conceptualisations of transformation under the banner of “agility” attempt to provide guidance about “managing” physical and social relationships within and between companies in response to growing market complexity. The theoretical argument in this paper is that inter‐firm agility cannot be objectively understood in all cases using simple unidirectional cause and effect as such theories do not take into account more subjective aspects of interaction. Specifically, we argue that to have a vision of agility in action there must be an evaluation of complexity in and between organisational boundaries with a theoretical approach that gives a more robust appreciation of inter‐firm ties. Conceptualising agility in this way captures the essence of tacit knowledge between firms along with the physical dynamics of network functioning.