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A MAIN purpose behind adopting a policy of bookstock categorisation is to reduce the problem of bookstock supply (which equals customer choice), to understandable terms. If it is possible to determine a working ratio of shelf titles per topic/category to a given community of users a number of possibilities become available. A primary advantage is the determination of the minimum number of titles sufficient to meet a community of users' demand in each interest area. Increasing the range of titles can be seen as improving quality. A cost and quantity factor can be determined for an economic provision of bookstock and a cost factor placed on a stepped improvement in quality. By amalgamating these factors for a number of libraries a minimum economic provision can be determined for a county. The process of finding the minimum required bookstock will automatically, since the community of users is identified, identify both the timescale and the chance of finding a title by the user in which s/he is interested, has not already been read and is on the shelves, and will also identify the level of stock input and extraction that is required to maintain the quality of choice in any one library.

ALTHOUGH you are reading a professional journal, you may be interested in the impressions of a semi‐outsider, one who has teetered on the edge of the maelstrom of modern librarianship without actually having fallen in—yet. The experience may even be salutary; who knows?

Library of Congress update The Urgent Supplemental Appropriations Bill for FY 1986 signed into law in July by Ronald Reagan contained an appropriation of $867 000 for the Library of Congress. This means that the general reading room is able to restore evening and weekend hours. The ten “Books Not Bombs” people who first protested the closure spent several weeks in July in a courtroom trial, where testimony was given by the Librarian of Congress and other officials. Since the “freedom readers”; as they are called in a newspaper article, face jail and/or a fine, perhaps appreciative scholars and researchers should start a fund to help defray the costs of their protest.

This paper aims to identify both the traditional and novel forms of marketing behind New Zealand Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern’s landslide victory in the 2020 New Zealand General Election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research analysed both qualitative and quantitative data, including over 70 primary sources, the perspectives of practitioners, polling and data from surveys with over 450,000 respondents. The qualitative data was analysed interpretively against established theoretical concepts, whereas the quantitative data was analysed through descriptive statistics.

This research found that COVID-19 drastically changed what the public prioritised, allowing Ardern and Labour to position themselves as guardians of government stability, while camouflaging previous delivery failures. Labour also used a more emergent market-oriented and “polite” populist political marketing strategy.

While the survey data used is not a perfect sample of the population, it is the largest public opinion survey in New Zealand and, given its convergence with other sources, provides valuable insights into political marketing during a crisis more broadly.

This research reinforces marketing’s most important aspect; the market should drive action. How decision makers respond to the market should depend on the environment. Thus, up-to-date market research becomes even more important during a crisis, as the environment changes rapidly. This leaves prior assumptions obsolete and implies strategy needs to be adaptive. Additionally, greater public attention provides governing leaders with the opportunity to present a more well-rounded leadership image.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to look at marketing while in government and election campaigning in the context of successful management of a global pandemic.

This chapter presents two stories of inspiring women political leaders, Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minster of New Zealand, and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, to shed light on the dire importance of using feminine leadership models (i.e., embodying kindness, empathy and concern for others) during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as everyday practice. I use a multi-dimensional theoretical conceptualization grounded in gender stereotyping and the theory of androgyny to emphasize the transition from historical masculine leadership ideals (‘think manager, think male’ – Schein & Davidson, 1993) to leadership discourse that symbolizes inclusivity of leadership with an emphasis on using kindness, regardless of whether you identify as a male or female leader.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

The news that the Ministry of Education has set up two Working Parties in connection with the proposed new Public Libraries Bill is welcome and gives further hope that such a Bill will appear in the not too distant future. From the constitutions of these Working Parties, which seem to us to be fairly representative of all interests, it would appear that the first is going to concern itself with the main aspects of the Roberts Report recommendations, while the second will be given the task of studying the problems of library co‐operation. On the first party, county libraries are represented by Miss Paulin and Mr. Budge, while Wales is represented by Mr. A. Edwards, librarian of the Cardiganshire and Aberystwyth Joint Library. Mr. D. I. Colley, the city librarian of Manchester, will be keeping a watching brief on behalf of the large libraries, but it should not be forgotten that he is also a member of the Libraries Committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations. Mr. Gardner is rightly there, perhaps not only as librarian of Luton but also as chairman of the Library Association's Executive Committee. The Smaller Libraries Group can surely have no complaints, for out of the ten members of Working Party No. I there are three librarians from smaller libraries, these being Mr. Helliwell of Winchester, Mr. Christopher of Penge and Mr. Parker of Ilkley. This Working Party is completed by two legal representatives in Mr. W. B. Murgatroyd, who is Town Clerk of Hornsey, and Mr. J. H. Oldham, who is Assistant County Solicitor for Kent.

The study purpose was to assess the evidence on the effects of hospital restructuring that included layoffs, on nurses who remained employed, using a systematic review of the research literature to contribute to policy formation. Papers addressing research, hospital restructuring resulting in layoffs, effects on nurses, and a stated relationship between the independent and dependent variables were included. Data were extracted and the quality of each study was assessed. The final group of included studies had 22 empirical papers. The main effects were significant decreases in job satisfaction, professional efficacy, ability to provide quality care, physical and emotional health, and increases in turnover, and disruption to healthcare team relationships. Nurses with fewer years of experience or who experienced multiple episodes of restructuring experienced greater effects. Other findings remain inconclusive. Further research is required to determine if these effects are temporal or can be mitigated by individual or organizational strategies.

LIBRARIANS in Britain stand at the threshold of great possibilities. Having passed through the ages of the ecclesiastical library, the rich collector's private library, the academic institutional library, and the rate‐supported public library—all general libraries —they have reached the age of the special library. The next will be that of the co‐ordinated, co‐operative library service.