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To report on the 9th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) held at the Universite Laval in Quebec City.

A review of the main activities of the symposium.

Building on the successes of previous ETD symposia, the content presented at this one demonstrated how the ETD has matured and captured the attention of the higher education communities worldwide. With more organizational interest in the growing Institutional Repository movement, the links between ETDs and institutional repositories is not only natural but well positioned as open access and archival preservation techniques become common in electronic and scholarly publishing.

A piece that of value to all involved with information management.

A report on the 7th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) and some of the sessions presented at the 2004 conference, which had the theme of “Distributing Knowledge Worldwide Through Better Scholarly Communication.”

This paper aims to examine the conceptual arguments surrounding accounting for heritage assets and the resistance by some New Zealand museums to a mandatory valuing of their holdings.

Evidence was derived from museum annual reports, interviews and personal communications with representatives of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand (ICANZ) and a range of New Zealand museums.

ICANZ's requirement that heritage assets be accounted for in a manner similar to other assets is shown as deriving from a managerialist rationality which, in espousing sector neutrality, assumes an unproblematic stance to the particular nature and circumstances of museums and their holdings. Resisting the imposition of the standard, New Zealand's regional museums evince an identity tied more strongly to notions of aesthetic, cultural and social value implicit in curatorship, than to a concern with the economic value of their holdings. Museum managers and accountants prefer to direct their attention to what they see as more vitally important tasks related to the conservation, preservation and maintenance of heritage assets, rather than to divert scarce funds to what they see as an academic exercise in accounting.

The paper points to some of the difficulties inherent in the application of a one‐size‐fits‐all application of an accounting standard to entities and assets differentiated in their purpose and essence.

To describe the issues involved in the introduction of mandatory submission of electronic theses at Cranfield University.

Background information on how the availability of e‐theses has developed at Cranfield University is provided along with discussions and advice on issues such as the choice of software, thesis submission workflow and timeframes, particularly in relation to the publication of thesis‐related articles. It also looks at metadata issues as well as both retrieval and usage of electronic theses. Finally it describes how the service has expanded from e‐theses to other types of material and to the development and expansion of an institutional repository for Cranfield.

It is shown that there are a number of issues that will need to be addressed from the points of view of librarians, academic staff and registry staff and that one effective method of managing the process is to set up a working group with all stakeholders in the process. There is a clear need for administrative procedures to be discussed in detail and a recognition that the time involved in changing regulations may be significant.

It is clear that most of the issues that have arisen at Cranfield as outlined in the paper will be mirrored at other institutions that are considering the same changes, and so those institutions looking at the area of e‐thesis submission may gain some useful insights.

This paper provides useful advice on the issues that will arise as institutions go through the process of introducing the mandatory submission of electronic theses.

A conceptual framework for police deviance and crime has recently been suggested and presented by other scholars. This research attempts to test the framework empirically based on court cases where police employees were prosecuted and convicted.

The sliding slope in the conceptual framework was separated into two dimensions, motive and damage, respectively. Court cases were coded according to these dimensions.

Empirical results provide support for the framework by linking seriousness to court sentence in terms of imprisonment days to the sliding slope. However, further validation of the framework is needed.

It is useful to both academics and practitioners to have an organizing framework when considering police complaints and prosecuting police crime.

In response to recent evidence which indicates that UK companies are losing trading opportunities due to relatively poor linguistic skills, an increasing interest has been expressed by government agencies, training bodies and the business and academic community in the foreign language requirements of UK firms. Currently, however, little research has examined the importance of language barriers relative to other factors which are perceived to inhibit export performance. In addition, previous research has not focused on how these factors differ in respect of SMEs and their larger counterparts. Based on a survey of 939 Welsh manufacturing firms, from which a 22% response rate was obtained, the purpose of this paper is to present some new empirical evidence relating to language barriers, and other perceived inhibitors, to improving the export performance of domestic manufacturing firms located in Wales. A comparative analysis of small, medium and large companies was undertaken and indicates that there are significant differences in perceived export and language barriers which are related to firm size. A further key finding of the study is that a number of export impediments are considered to be significantly more problematic than language barriers. However, 21% of respondents considered that communication barriers currently presented a problematic/very problematic factor inhibiting export performance; with a larger proportion (29%) of respondents indicating that they considered that their future trading performance would improve significantly if language skills were improved within their firms.

During oral exams at the German distance learning university, we noticed that students fear that they will be faced with questions that they have not anticipated. In our opinion, this is mainly because students have no chance to train and thereby gather positive experiences with exam situations as they are distributed all over Germany and thus it is difficult for them to meet each other. In this paper, we present a design space of 23 learning gadgets, i.e. tools that support collaborative learning, to allow collaborative exam preparation in peer‐based distributed student groups. We discuss this design space according to eight dimensions of the concept of FLOW (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) that constitutes enjoyable situations. Two of the learning gadgets were implemented and integrated in the CURE environment, a web‐based collaborative learning platform that was developed to support different collaborative learning scenarios, e.g. collaborative exercises or virtual seminars. We discuss these learning gadgets in more detail and show how they promise an enjoyable collaborative exam preparation.

This paper aims to explore how in Irish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), problem-based learning (PBL) could possibly provide a paradigm which addresses two key research objectives: What are the learning needs and challenges faced by Irish SMEs? and How could PBL satisfy these needs through integrating formal and informal learning?

An action research methodology was adopted using Lewin’s (1994) action research cycle. In the reconnaissance stage, surveys and focus groups were conducted with a purposive research sample of Irish SMEs regarding their learning needs and challenges. Based on these results, a plan was formulated to adapt the traditional PBL model into a workplace PBL model (wPBL). Lastly, the wPBL model was implemented and evaluated in 42 SMEs.

The research identified several specific learning needs for SMEs, namely, learning that is cost-effective, tailored to the company and its challenges, immediately applied, demonstrates a tangible outcome (is measurable), organically fostering a learning culture, addresses knowledge gaps, continuous, develops communication, team work, problem-solving and technical skills. The traditional PBL model was adapted into a wPBL model to meet the above learning needs of SMEs. It was found that the wPBL model had the potential to address long-standing company problems (making it cost-effective), facilitate continuous learning and develop horizontal and transversal skills such as problem-solving and communication.

Much of the learning that takes place in SMEs is incidental or informal, and often does not contribute to the long-term sustainability of the organisation. This paper aims to propose a practical framework using wPBL to structure incidental and informal learning in SMEs so that it provides an immediate benefit to the company. To date, there has been little research into the application of PBL outside higher education, and the paper proposes a framework to assist the transition of PBL to a workplace environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the changes in externalising behaviour for young aggressive children differ between two evidence-based parent training (PT) programmes after treatment. The treatment formats between these programmes differ, and the authors were particularly interested in whether this influenced the results for participants with co-occurring problems (child variables such as heightened levels of attention and internalising problems, and parental variables such as marital status and education) and the consequent additional risk of poorer treatment outcomes.

A comparison of the individual treatment programme “Parent Management Training – Oregon model” (PMTO) and the group intervention programme “The Incredible Years” (IY) basic training sessions. Outcomes were explored in matched samples from two earlier Norwegian replication studies. The participants were matched on pre-treatment characteristics using a quasi-experimental mis-matching procedure.

There were no significant differences between the two interventions in parent ratings of externalising behaviours and the lack of differing effects between the two treatments remained when the co-occurring risk factors were introduced into the analyses.

The participants were matched on pre-treatment characteristics using a quasi-experimental mis-matching procedure.

A possible implication of these findings is that parents should be allowed to choose the treatment format of their preference. Further, individual PT may be more appropriate in rural settings with difficulties in forming group interventions.

Treatment effects did not differ between these two evidence-based interventions.

To the best of the knowledge independent comparisons of two evidence-based PT interventions are not previously conducted.

THE great advantage the contemporary librarian enjoys is the opportunity of meeting his fellows at so many library assemblies. It might almost be wondered whether, in such opulence, the one great Conference in September is really necessary: a wonder that is immediately modified by the thought that no other meeting can give a representation of what the profession as a whole is doing or hoping to do; the many parts of the whole come together briefly then. It is the more necessary that the Conference makes this annual revelation, and does it manifestly. This is “much easier said than done”. Looking back on the almost complete disregard by the Press of the Folkestone meeting, in spite of our own statement that we had sought publicity for at least half a century in vain, we are compelled to think that renewed efforts should be made to attract the newspapers, radio and T.V. in the service of libraries. We are assuming that such notoriety is desirable, an assumption which some deny. If it is, our programmes must be ready sooner, advance matter of papers should be in the hands of editors before they are read, paragraphs for the B.B.C. and other public address organizations should be prepared and distributed even longer, before the newspapers get them. All this, however, must be based upon the proceedings themselves which, as we have affirmed often, should with a few inspirational exceptions be based upon the programme of service every type of library gives to the community.