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The purpose of this paper is to analyse visitor perceptions of the Lincoln Magna Carta exhibition, in the context of an experiential servicescape perspective.

Data come from a questionnaire carried out with visitors to the Magna Carta exhibition in Lincoln Castle, UK. The approach was framed by the student as producer perspective, that is about re‐engineering the relationship between academics and undergraduate students.

It is found that three main problems exist in terms of the servicescape. These are guidance signage, the small, dark inauspicious surroundings of the exhibition itself and the level of visitor interactivity present.

This is only a small‐scale project of one Magna Carta exhibition. Research with more visitors would help to further validate the findings and conclusions of this paper and also assist in other representations of the document in other sites.

Suggestions are made for improvement to a number of experiential servicescape elements. These improved representations also need to be planned for adequately in the new staging of the document, when Lincoln Castle receives planned additional funds from the Heritage Lottery.

This paper draws attention to the fact that the Magna Carta is a shared part of a global cultural identity, where the marketing of the document represents a great privilege.

In this paper, the experiential servicescape framework is used in an original way to critique aspects of the current exhibition and to propose new ideas for representing the Magna Carta. The paper is based on original data that makes a novel contribution to the debate regarding research and learning in higher education.

ON MONDAY the fifteenth of June 1215 the profligate King John came down from Windsor Castle to Runnymede to keep an important appointment with the Barons of the Realm encamped at Staines. Tall, glowering, with a paunch from licentious living he listened to the ‘Articles of the Barons’ before reluctantly affixing his Great Seal. These articles drafted in the form of a royal charter promised a return of ‘ancient and accustomed liberties’ putting an end to the arbitrary and unjust rule that the King exercised over his subjects. Thus the most famous possession of the Salisbury Cathedral Library came into existence, the ‘Magna Carta’ or Great Charter upon which our political and legal history is founded.

The Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise have published a Taxpayer's charter. Welcoming this initiative by the two departments, Norman Lamont, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said that “it sets out for the first time what they see as their responsibilities to the public: what we all have the right, as taxpayers, to expect from them”. The charter states that you have important rights and entitlements as a taxpayer, and you are entitled to expect that:

It was idle curiosity which drove me to trouble the staff of the British Museum for the first time. My pretext was the collecting of material for a long undergraduate essay; I could not presume to be “doing research”, and the object of my visit was to see the copy of the 13th century musical round “Sumer is icumen in”. I was shown into an uncomfortable little room near Magna Carta and within a few minutes was being kindly catechized by a scholarly librarian who was aged about forty. After two sentences from me, he realized that I knew nothing about the manuscript but that I was simply curious. With great courtesy he took me into a little manuscript room where the copy was brought to me at my desk and I could inspect it, under glass, for as long as I liked. But it was only when I was a few years older that I grew to understand a little about the life that goes on behind the great colonnade of the British Museum.

Robin Hood had clearly now become a serious problem. Previously he had been known for taking from the rich, giving to the poor and fighting against injustice and tyranny. Much of the proceeds of his robberies had also gone towards raising a ransom to free Richard the Lionheart from an Austrian dungeon where he had been imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his return home from the Third Crusade. When Richard returned to England, taking back his rightful place on the throne, all had been well for a number of years. However with Richard restored to the throne, Robin had lost his purpose in life. There was no longer any justification for living as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest or for robbing the rich, and so Robin had grown old and disillusioned. After a while, the carriages carrying the King's tax revenues in the Nottinghamshire area had begun to be attacked again. The raids were well planned and executed and the modus operandi bore a distinct resemblance to the raids carried out by Robin's band in the years when they had been outlaws.

Filby, P. William. American & British Genealogy & Heraldry: A Selected List of Books. 3d ed. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1983. $49.95. 736p. LC 84—865. ISBN 0—88082—004—7. OCLC 9322929. With the publication of his first edition of American & British Genealogy & Heraldry in 1970, William Filby began an enterprise that was to qualify him as the leading contemporary bibliographer of genealogy and local history. Revised first in 1975 and now in 1983, this important work has grown through successive stages to a size and scope that is unmatched in its field. When the first two editions of his work were published, Filby was serving as director of the Maryland Historical Society. Since his retirement from that post, he has devoted his time to writing or editing several important genealogical works, notably the Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, A Bibliography of Ship Passenger Lists, and Who's Who in Genealogy and Heraldry, in addition to this third edition of his bibliography.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

A sociology of human rights is a modern challenge, and this study draws on the universalizing codification in the history of human rights documents from ancient societies to the present challenges of modern society. Power contradictions and conflicts are analyzed in the case study of historic inequalities and the modern deprivation of human rights of the People of Indian Origin in their diaspora in the modern world. Insider perspectives are posed to increase awareness and knowledge to the forming of community identity and to challenge others to study these complex social conditions. A public sociology is assumed in this chapter, derived from the author's public speech to further the development of a sociology of human rights, one that will reflect the complexity, universality, and inclusiveness protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Established methods and theories may be augmented by challenging their bases and working collaboratively to research contemporary human rights.