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In this chapter I describe and analyze the decisions and strategies made by marketplace vendors in Challapata, Oruro, Bolivia, by presenting four detailed case studies. I demonstrate that rather than trying to simply gain a profit in order to accumulate capital, a variety of goals and objectives underlie the way in which vendors operate their businesses. These numerous goals and objectives can be recognized when vendors’ businesses are comprehended as one aspect of household maintenance activities. I conclude that when viewed from this perspective, vendors’ decisions and strategies can be understood to be shaped by moral and social obligations as well as by the rationality of the market.

Although the organizational practice of using “contingent or non-traditional workers” has been escalating since the mid-1980s, only recently has research begun to focus on the consequences of this practice. In unionized workplaces, labor leaders have begun to organize these workers. Although it is believed that contingent workers are responding positively to union organizing drives, little is known about the attitudes and behaviors of contingent workers as union members. Using the Union Commitment scale developed by Gordon, Philpot, Burt, Thompson and Spiller (1980), the research project reported here compares the Union Commitment of traditional faculty and three categories of adjunct faculty. The results reveal that there are no significant differences across these employee groups for the factors of Union Loyalty, Responsibility to the Union, Willingness to Work for the Union and Alienation from the Union. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special article, “Libraries in Birmingham,” by Mr. Walter Powell, Chief Librarian of Birmingham Public Libraries. He has endeavoured to combine in it the subject of Special Library collections, and libraries other than the Municipal Libraries in the City. Another article entitled “Some Memories of Birmingham” is by Mr. Richard W. Mould, Chief Librarian and Curator of Southwark Public Libraries and Cuming Museum. We understand that a very full programme has been arranged for the Conference, and we have already published such details as are now available in our July number.

Studies uniformly portray the assistant principal (AP) position as challenging given a number of systemic issues that negatively impact job satisfaction and performance. Mentoring has been proposed as a way to redress these problems. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate an alternative to traditional mentoring and make recommendations for how to utilize this approach in supporting APs and principal interns.

The authors employ a retrospective and conversational approach, sharing incidents and interactions from their professional experience and making connections to existing research literature. The authors explain the relevance of three concepts developed in relational cultural theory (RCT) including: interdependent self-in-relation, growth-fostering interactions, and an exploration of systemic power.

The narrative exposes the ambiguity of school leadership and its toll, as well as how relational mentoring facilitates integration and making sense of challenging experiences for improved coping. Barriers in communication are described and the ways relational mentoring addresses these weaknesses by building trust, recognizing the expertise of mentor and protégé, and encouraging protégé empowerment and judgment.

Potential research limitations such as inaccuracies in recall, reliance on a single method, and hindsight bias are recognized and addressed to reduce their threat.

RCT may provide ways to develop and structure more effective mentoring programs and educate both aspiring leaders and their mentors in their work together to provide for leadership development.

Improved mentoring practices have the potential to help APs socialize into the role more quickly and become more effective school leaders.

The authors describe the use of RCT in a new context. The paper provides insights and guidance for APs, principals, principal interns, and leadership preparation faculty to offer a pathway on which to prepare the next generation of school leaders equipped with the desired competences and experiences to transform schools.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

Early paradox research in organization theory contained a remarkable breadth of inspirations from outside disciplines. We wanted to know more about where early scholarship found inspiration to create what has since become paradox theory. To shed light on this, we engaged seminal paradox scholars in conversations: asking about their past experiences drawing from outside disciplines and their views on the future of paradox theory. These conversations surfaced several themes of past and future inspirations: (1) understanding complex phenomena; (2) drawing from related disciplines; (3) combining interdisciplinary insights; and (4) bridging discourses in organization theory. We end the piece with suggestions for future paradox research inspired by these conversations.

The emergence of an evidence-based medicine logic represents a major change in the large and complex field of American healthcare. In this analytical case study, the authors show that the intellectual school of evidence-based medicine became an important meso-structure that facilitated the growth of the new logic in American healthcare. The new intellectual school was a community of scholars who generated shared rules and resources through intergenerational mentoring. The school engaged in advocacy to advance new intellectual paradigms for conceptualizing healthcare quality that, when connected with material practices in the field of American healthcare, came to form a new institutional logic.

The present paper sketches the way Gordon Pask has influenced our lives as human beings and intellectuals. The first part refers to some of our memories of Gordon Pask as a most remarkable person, a kind of mix between gentleman and Bohemian. The second part tries to overview how Gordon Pask and cybernetics in general inspired, on the one hand, our thinking on a category of poets and writers we label “absolute writers” and, on the other hand, the making of music and our thinking about making music. We have concentrated on these artistic aspects to show how many‐sided Gordon Pask’s influence on people really was.

THIS issue opens the new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD and it is natural that we should pause to glance at the long road we have travelled. For over forty years our pages have been open to the most progressive and practical facts, theories and methods of librarianship; our contributors have included almost every librarian who has held an important office; and we have always welcomed the work of younger, untried men who seemed to have promise— many of whom have indeed fulfilled it. In the strain and stress of the First World War we maintained interest and forwarded the revisions in library methods which adapted them to the after‐war order. Today we have similar, even severer, problems before us, and we hope to repeat the service we were then able to give. In this we trust that librarians, who have always regarded THE LIBRARY WORLD with affection, will continue to support us and be not tempted because of temporary stringency, to make a victim of a journal which has given so long and so independent a service.