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The purpose of this paper is to explore how action learning concepts were used in two healthcare projects undertaken many decades apart. The specific purpose in both cases was to examine how action learning can contribute to shared learning across key stakeholders in a complex socio-technical system. In each case study, action learning supported joint design programmes and the sharing of perspectives about the complex system under investigation.

Two action learning projects are described: first, the Hospital Internal Communications (HIC) project led by Reg Revans in the 1960s. Senior staff in ten London hospitals formed action learning teams to address communication issues. Second, in the Better Outcomes for People with Learning Disabilities: Transforming Care (BOLDTC) project, videoconferencing equipment enabled people with learning disabilities to increase their opportunities to communicate. A mutual learning process was established to enable stakeholders to explore the potential of the technical system to improve individual care.

The HIC project demonstrated the importance of evidence being shared between team members and that action had to engage the larger healthcare system outside the hospital. The BOLDTC project confirmed the continuing relevance of action learning to healthcare today. Mutual learning was achieved between health and social care specialists and technologists.

This work draws together the socio-technical systems tradition (considering both social and technical issues in organisations) and action learning to demonstrate that complex systems development needs to be undertaken as a learning process in which action provides the fuel for learning and design.

This article reports a preliminary investigation into the man‐computer interaction (m‐c‐i) aspects of online searching. It describes the methodology developed for observing and recording m‐c‐i in the use of online information retrieval systems. A brief analysis of the data obtained is also given, together with an assessment of the extent to which the goal of effective m‐c‐i is being achieved.

This paper examines the general value to users of a range of electronic journal functions and their usefulness in the specific context of the SuperJournal Project. For the evaluation of each of the functions three types of data were analysed in relation to each other and in light of other contextual data: logged data of usage, survey data on user satisfaction, and survey data on the perceived importance of the function. The analysis shows that basic browsing, printing and search make up the core functions of electronic journals; other functions, such as saving of bibliographic data, alerting, customising, links with external resources and communication, serve as peripheral functions. The usefulness of both the core functions and the peripheral functions in a specific service is influenced by various implementation factors. However, it is the realised usefulness of the core functions which determines the use of a service.

On the basis of a twenty‐two month transaction log of SuperJournal and using K‐Means cluster analysis, this paper classifies a spectrum of user behaviour with electronic journals into a typology of eight categories of user (or eight patterns of use): the searcher, the enthusiastic user, the focused regular user, the specialised occasional user, the restricted user, the lost user, the exploratory user and the tourist. It examines the background and experience with SuperJournal of each type of user to illuminate its formation. The examination shows that the contents (both coverage and relevance) and ease of use of a system as they were perceived by the user were the most significant factors affecting patterns of use. Users’ perceptions of both factors were affected by a range of intervening factors such as discipline, status, habitual approach towards information management, availability of alternative electronic journal services, purpose of use, etc. As any service is likely to attract a great variety of users, so will it lead to differing patterns of use. This paper demonstrates the need for a service to meet the requirements of users with these varied patterns.

Adopting IT would usually imply implementing and applying some form of equipment for staff to use in order to achieve the objectives of the organization. Equipment would usually imply some form of computer hardware in possibly a local area network configuration, or perhaps a wide area network. In the past this may have been the cabling of dumb terminals located at the workplace to a central mainframe or minicomputer. In the future this may involve the networking of the new, exciting 486 processor with microcomputers in a more decentralized configuration. The 486 processor may well have quite a far‐reaching impact not only on what staff can do and how they do it, but also on the DP/MIS/IT departments, as well as on the organization's budget.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise the contributions made in this theme issue and draw conclusions about the issue’s key question “Why and how should the international volunteer tourism experience be improved?”, thereby providing a theme issue conclusion.

This paper summarises and critically reviews the seven articles that have contributed to the theme issue.

International volunteer tourism is a growing phenomenon that has received much criticism in the last decade and whilst there are a number of mechanisms to improve the quality of this sector as yet, there is little evidence to support any conclusion that there is wide-scale success in achieving best practice in quality assurance within the sector.

This theme issue explores international volunteer tourism from a range of contributors, academics, a practitioner and a travel writer, who have engaged with a range of stakeholders to offer different perspectives. The theme issue as a whole offers the reader an opportunity to engage in a unique and wide-ranging discourse on quality and international volunteer tourism.

OUR readers will, we trust, appreciate our double souvenir number issued in connection with the Library Association Conference at Glasgow. Special features are the articles on the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 1874–1924, by a member of the staff, Mr. J. Dunlop, and one on the Burns Country, by Mr. J. M. Leighton, of Greenock Public Library. We printed the provisional programme in our July issue and as we go to press have little to add to the particulars there given, except to compliment the Library Association and the Local Reception Committee on the excellent programme arranged for the occasion, from both the professional and social point of view.

SUN and moon and the substantial natural beauty of Folkestone combined to give the Library Association Conference this year an almost ideal setting. Moreover, it was a Conference equable in speech and with an atmosphere of good will and good sense not always present in such variegated company. This postlude to an abominable summer will be remembered with pleasure. One can say that the choice of President was entirely justified. Mr. Sydney, who spoke often with modest, often almost depreciatory tones, proved to be master of the art of handling an audience, deft in phrase, genial in his introductions and words of thanks, and as skilful at the Annual General Meeting in guiding the choppy waves of debate as we could desire him to have been. Further, the Presidential Address was a reflection of many of these qualities and in substance a candid review of the pleasures, opportunities, high aspirations which were those of many librarians but which were so often frustrated by the limitations of local thinking and, often, pinchbeck “economy”. At the same time, he emphasised the great developments that were taking place and the fail that libraries today were becoming more nationally and internationally pervasive and related. It seemed to be a most memorable address.

The shrinking supply of labour, the rising expectations of new entrants into the workforce, the trend towards corporate downsizing, and the growth in the number of plateaued middle managers will require corporations to develop innovative ways of recruiting, selecting, training, and developing new employees by the end of the century. Companies will need to be more effective in recruiting and maintaining a culturally diverse workforce, in managing new recruits in “flat track” careers, and in using plateaued middle managers more extensively as mentors.