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Books serve as important information resources and provide space for reflection and identity-building for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) people. Many in this community have experienced reduced feelings of isolation through engagement with the writings of others. Providing a safe space for such engagement is vital. Library and information science (LIS) professionals are in an optimal position to meet such needs, particularly when efforts are made to implement changes based on explicitly expressed concerns.

This chapter provides a case study of the LGBTQ Center of Durham, North Carolina, to illustrate how the organization is integrating the local LGBTQ+ community into its library by using the community’s own vocabulary and interests to inform the center’s practices and policies. The chapter also offers a guide to the locally responsive, LGBTQ+-specific classification system created for the LGBTQ Center of Durham’s library collection. This classification system was designed to represent library materials for its Durham and surrounding-area users in a useful, accessible, and respectful manner – a feat that the library committee did not feel could be accomplished using existing classification systems.

Building on the case study for applicability, the author makes recommendations for how LIS professionals who wish to better serve LGBTQ+ users can incorporate the community into their library and/or collection. The author provides additional suggestions for action, with varying levels of commitment, for library professionals and volunteers. Through resource development, training, collection development, and classification revision, libraries can more closely align their practices with the needs of users of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

This paper aims at looking into the transmission of shocks between bond and oil markets using a bivariate GARCH (BEKK and DCC) model. As lots of financial assets have been exchanged due to these index returns, it is essential for financial market participants to figure out the mechanism of volatility transmission through time and via these series for the purpose of taking optimal decisions of portfolio allocation. The outcomes drawn reveal an important volatility transmission between sovereign bond and oil indices, with great sensitivity during and after the subprime crisis period.

In this context, we propose our hypotheses. Indeed, our study aims to see whether the financial crisis has been responsible for the sharp drop in oil prices since October 2008. To this end, we suggest, in this paper, the empirical study of the shock transmission between the bond and oil markets, using BEK-GARCH and DCC models. To our knowledge, this is the first document using the BEKK-GARCH and the DCC models in studying the shock transmission between a sovereign bond and oil indices.

We have noticed that in the event of a disruption in the bond market, oil prices respond to these shocks in the short term. It has also been emphasized, however, that this relationship has exacerbated if the period has extended. This makes us conclude that the financial market situation affects the oil price only throughout the crisis period; and that this situation is causally significant only in the event of a severe crisis, such as those of subprime and sovereign debt.

The global financial system has been going through an acute crisis since mid-2007. This crisis, initially occurred only in the US real estate market, progressively affects the global financial system, and is now becoming a general economic crisis. The objective of this work is to analyze the effects of the current financial market disturbance on oil prices based on econometric models in order to promote the proper functioning of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach based on an additive value function (AVF) to select the most economically advantageous tender under European Union public procurement regulations.

A case study in which the AVF tender evaluation model is constructed by the procurement personnel and the results of the original, real-life public procurement evaluation model are compared to those discovered by the MCDA approach.

The AVF model captures the preferences of the procurement authority in a more reliable and transparent manner than commonly used evaluation models based on scoring formulas.

While commonly used in public procurement, relative scoring formulas can neither present the preferences of a procurement unit accurately nor do they enable bidders to draft bids according to these preferences. The proposed MCDA approach can achieve both.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the successful construction of the AVF model with procurement personnel is introduced. Second, the model is used in an actual, real-life case. Third, a thoughtful comparison of features, structures and results of the AVF model and the evaluation model using scoring formulas is presented.

This chapter seeks to present an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the experience of criminal involvement in old age, drawing on data from a descriptive, phenomenology study with 20 offenders aged 50 and over at a total institution in Ghana. The findings show that the onset of offending in later life is embedded in diverse scenarios including a survival strategy pertaining to engagement in economic activities for survival with retirement planning implications. Correspondingly, the crimes committed are violent, namely, murder, causing physical harm, food poisoning, and those that are non-violent, namely, narcotics dealings, petty thievery in nature. Among others, cognitive impairment/dementia and poverty are contributory factors to the incarnation of older offenders between one month and 27 years. The older offenders were involved in second line criminal activities, namely, the sale of stolen goods obtained from first liners. Compliance with prison rules incentivised reduced prison sentence years, fostered peace of mind. Tipping colleague inmates to execute allotted prison work is another coping strategy resulting from inability to do same. Imprisonment induced Christianity-oriented reformation, served as an integrative factor between criminality and serving prison sentence(s). Also worth reiterating is the fact that imprisonment may induce stigmatisation and isolation-related loneliness, while serving as an antidote to the pangs of loneliness with consequences for recidivism among older offenders. Gerontological offending has debilitating effects on older adults and is associated with the social isolation of an age cohort that is already predisposed to witchcraft accusations. The conduction of cognitive impairment/dementia tests on older offenders may moderate the sentence they receive.

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver “equity pedagogy.” In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach for the identification of price thresholds, which enables learning true thresholds from previous buying decisions recorded in POS scanner data.

The methodology presented herein combines spline regression with generalized cross‐validation. Classical Chi‐square testing confirms the separation of regimes of the price response function by this methodology. Five propositions concerning the consumers' response to odd pricing in a Western‐type market are evaluated.

Despite the widespread retail practice odd prices are unlikely to flag the actual threshold in consumer response. The term odd price refers to prices with a non‐zero ending in the cent digit, e.g. .95, .98 or .99, which are commonly used in Western‐type markets. Moreover, the simple odd price effects are distinguished from odd‐ending prices with the first number left of the decimal point set to an odd number. The results show that even these prices not always flag a threshold in consumer response.

The discussion of the odd‐price effect is confused by conflicting empirical results and related interpretations of the underlying mechanisms. In contrast to many previous investigations – which are restricted to the consideration of very few price endings – this study covers all reasonable prices. Statistically significant odd‐price effects are found for some brands, but not for all within the same category.

One must argue for checking the thresholds for each brand individually rather than generalizing by applying misleading rules of thumb.

The paper provides researchers as well as practitioners with a methodology to evaluate price thresholds and outlines the shortcoming of contemporary retailers pricing practices in a detailed manner.

In this study we confirm the often assumed but largely untested belief that entrepreneurs think and behave differently than others. We examine a group of more than 700 nascent entrepreneurs and 400 nonentrepreneurs. We determine the entrepreneurs’ cognitive style propensity for problem solving (Innovator versus Adaptor); we compare their expectations; and, we examine the outcomes (performance and start-up) of their ventures. We find that nascent entrepreneurs are more likely to be overly optimistic Innovators, most people are Adaptors, and oneʼs cognitive style can indeed play a role in the initial development and outcome for the venture, but not always as expected.