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A vast array of communication and behavioural theories and models has long assisted the communication management industry in its quest for excellence. While relying upon and discussing many of these theories in relation to website communication, this paper explores the development of theoretical platforms which are unique to the website mode of communication. It asserts that investigating new and varied theoretical paradigms can assist the communication management industry in analysing, extending and optimising its efforts in cyberspace. This paper explores the potential of a generic, theoretical approach to desired behavioural response via the website. It provides a modular definition of desired behavioural response to websites. This definition comprises six potential positive outputs and has been called “positive response action”. The paper proves, via comparative analysis, that positive response action parallels established communication goals and objectives. This paper also explores the concept of any one website belonging to one of three sender motivated categories: individual, strategic stakeholder communication and non‐strategic stakeholder communication. Traditional communication and behavioural response theories are analysed in relation to positive response action as are the essential cognitive needs of a website visitor. These needs are contextualised in a critical path “user gratification” format in relation to the achievement of the goal of positive response action. Excellence in effective website communication has become a priority for the public relations profession worldwide. While exploring this quest for excellence and its relation to theoretical dynamics, this paper reinforces the universally accepted requirement of accurate audience definition in order to achieve communication success and behavioural response.

The research examined Scottish public libraries and the libraries' response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020–2021. The research focussed particularly around the way that the libraries helped to support community resilience and cohesion during periods of lockdown. The study considered issues around the closure of services in March 2020, digital services, the loss of physical library spaces and governance models. The research presents the voice of service managers rather than being a user study. The research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation), as a part of the council's scheme to provide response to the pandemic of 2020.

This was an exploratory study examining how Scottish public library services responded to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Three methods were deployed in the investigation. First, the gathering social media and other web-based content from library services over the months March–September 2020 (amounting to over four thousands snips of content) were analysed thematically. Second, 19 semi-structured interviews with service managers across Scotland were conducted. These were recorded, transcribed and analysed. These elements formed the cornerstone of the research but were supported by a short survey distributed to all public library services in Scotland focussed on e-lending during lockdown.

Findings are presented in respect of the lessons to be learnt from the closure of physical services and the migration to digital only provision, the contribution made to supporting communities, health and well-being, the importance of the balance of physical and digital library services around governance models for library services, as well as around the process of reopening services. This research explores how staff responded to this unparalleled situation, how the staff maintained close relationship with the communities the staff serve, what services themselves learnt through lockdown, and how the staff's management practices adapted. The findings present voices from Scottish libraries during 2020.

The research presents a snapshot of activities during a period of fast-moving change. The research, therefore, presents a snapshot of March–December 2020, which is, however, an extremely important snapshot. The first lockdown was perhaps most interesting to study from a research perspective because the authors witnessed, real-time, how the staff responded and reacted (with lessons learnt and applied in subsequent regional or national lockdowns later in 2020 and in the 2021). The second lockdown and subsequent periods were outside the scope of this research.

Recommendations are offered around the need for a national conversation about digital content provision in public libraries and the exploration of possibilities of a national approach, the role libraries have as digital enablers (in supporting effort to overcome the digital divide in society), the crucial nature of continued strong advocacy for public libraries, the importance of the library as a physical space, and on how to maintain the flexibility, agility and autonomy which emerged during lockdown.

The research presents strong testimony about the social value of public libraries as free, safe and public spaces within communities. It also highlights the continued digital divide which exists in many places and the important role that public libraries have in being digital enablers for many members of the public. The closeness of library service staff to users is strongly evidenced in the testimony from managers as is the need for parent organisation (local authorities or in culture or leisure trusts) to recognise more fully the breadth of services the public library provides and how these are “essential” for many users.

The value and distinctiveness of this research lies in the fact that the research captured the voices, thoughts and perceptions of Scotland’s public libraries during the period of lockdown in 2020. The evidence gathered suggests important conversations are required around equity of e-lending provision, the role of libraries as digital enablers, the balance between physical and digital provision and around the ways libraries are managed (directly by local authorities or in culture trusts). The research affords lessons for public library provision beyond Scotland with many issues being transferable to other contexts.

THE Scot, I have noticed in international gatherings, is peculiarly liable to be chaffed about his country. One reason is the association of Scotland with whisky and the kilt. Another reason is the Scot's self‐consciousness about Scotland. When he hears it derided, he gives a wry smile, or enters on a flustered defence. Praise of Scotland specially annoys him, because it is generally praise of the wrong things,—and he is not quite sure what are the right things.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the utility of a postcolonial feminist girlhood studies approach to investigate, and better understand, how corporate-funded sport, gender and development (SGD) programs that adhere to the “Girl Effect” mantra take up: (1) the alleged benefits of SGD programming; (2) its (embodied) neoliberal tendencies; and (3) issues around gender and cultural difference in North-South aid relations.

This study uses qualitative methods, including 35 semi-structured interviews with staff members and young women, in order to investigate how a SGD program in Eastern Uganda that is funded by a Sport Transnational Corporation (STNC) and an International NGO used martial arts to build girls’ self-defense skills and address gender-based, sexual, and domestic violence.

Three major findings are revealed, including: (1) the martial arts program improved young women’s confidence levels, physical fitness, leadership capabilities, and social networks; (2) Western donors tended to use and frame sport (i.e., martial arts) as paramount for educating and training Ugandan young women to be (neoliberal) global “girl” citizens; and (3) issues of representation, racialized subjectivity, and cultural difference in SGD adversely influenced aid relations.

Evidence from this chapter suggests that it is crucial to question how global neoliberal development, as promoted via SGD practices, is not only racialized and classed, but also distinctly gendered. Infusing girlhood studies with a postcolonial feminist perspective enables a deconstruction, and attendance to, the ways in which colonial legacies, neoliberal processes, and the political resistance of development practices are taken up, and impelled by, SGD programs.

A study of the published statements of Australian school administrators revealed that two distinctive configurations of power and service relationships are projected in their publically presented images of state school administration as it relates to government and the public. A previous Traditional Centralist‐Unity configuration is now being replaced by an Emergent Devolution‐Diversity conformation. Analysis was directed to (a) understanding the significance of the two images in terms of their function as public communications, and (b) accounting for the shift in the imagery in the light of pressures for change, the way administrators are interpreting change as turbulence, and the projection of counter images incorporating critiques of government school systems. To help organise analysis, it was assumed that images of system administration have the potential to communicate: 1. information, 2. explanation, 3. judgements and value positions, 4. statements designed to advance sectional interests, and 5. themes and persuasive symbols. It was also assumed that the shift in the public images of administrators may be studied in the way their images relate to three basic sources of administrative tension: tensions which arise from problems of meaning, problems of aspiration, and problems of practice.

IN the April number of Public Libraries, Mr. Andrew Keogh, sometime of Newcastle‐on‐Tyne, now Professor of Bibliography at Yale University, comes forward in defence of American libraries from the aspersions alleged to be cast on them in this periodical. Other journalistic comments have also appeared, which we may have occasion to mention at another time; and altogether some pother has been caused in America over our very straightforward and simple remarks. Mr. Keogh assumes, quite erroneously, that the first Library World editorial was based on the one or two instances of American reference to European libraries which he quotes. He knows, however, just as well as ourselves, that the American pose in library work is to adopt an attitude akin to contempt for anything outside the boundaries of the United States, and this is shown in nearly every publication dealing with library work. The Nation example was only one which happened to come along at the moment, and it is direct confirmation of what was stated in these columns in April, namely, that even in secular journals the writers were, as Mr. Keogh now certifies, prominent members of the A.L.A. Our attitude is, therefore, not that of defence simply, against certain outsiders writing in non‐professional journals, but against American professional librarians lending themselves to the poor work of trying to belittle the efforts of European librarians on every possible occasion. The mere fact that, as Mr. Keogh affirms, the great research libraries of Germany were attacked in the Nation, does not justify the publication of such ungenerous articles, especially coming from librarians who profess so much friendliness and high feeling.

The purpose of this paper is to explore philosophies of progressive education circulating in Australia in the period immediately following the expansion of secondary schools in the 1960s. It examines the rise of the alternative and community school movement of the 1970s, focusing on initiatives within the Victorian government school sector. It aims to better understand the realisation of progressive education in the design and spatial arrangements of schools, with specific reference to the re-making of school and community relations and new norms of the student-subject of alternative schooling.

It combines historical analysis of educational ideas and reforms, focusing largely on the ideas of practitioners and networks of educators, and is guided by an interest in the importance of school space and place in mediating educational change and aspirations. It draws on published writings and reports from teachers and commentators in the 1970s, publications from the Victorian Department of Education, media discussions, internal and published documentation on specific schools and oral history interviews with former teachers and principals who worked at alternative schools.

It shows the different realisation of radical aims in the set up of two schools, against a backdrop of wider innovations in state education, looking specifically at the imagined effects of re-arranging the physical and symbolic space of schooling.

Its value lies in offering the beginnings of a history of 1970s educational progressivism. It brings forward a focus on the spatial dimensions of radical schooling, and moves from characterisation of a mood of change to illuminate the complexities of these ideas in the contrasting ambitions and design of two signature community schools.

MANY and sundry are the worries which fall to the lot of the librarian, and the matter of book‐repair is not the least among them. The very limited book‐fund at the disposal of most public library authorities makes it imperative on the part of the librarian to keep the books in his charge in circulation as long as possible, and to do this at a comparatively small cost, in spite of poor paper, poor binding, careless repairing, and unqualified assistants. This presents a problem which to some extent can be solved by the establishment of a small bindery or repairing department, under the control of an assistant who understands the technique of bookbinding.