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The article starts by describing the procurement process for a Library Management System at Kings College, London. The library chose Aleph 500 (version 11.4), the system and the implementation process at KCL are described.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between (1) employed parents' work–family conflict (WFC), (2) their children with disabilities' support needs, (3) their children's age, and (4) those parents' levels of school engagement.

Data were collected from 193 US parents of children with disabilities who completed a survey regarding work and family strain as well as school engagement. Descriptive statistical and correlational analyses were used, followed by moderated regression analysis.

Results indicate that higher levels of WFC have a negative impact on parents' school engagement. Similarly, children with disabilities' increased needs for parental support have a negative impact on school engagement. Moreover, the age of children with disabilities holds a moderating role in the relationship between support needs and school engagement.

Human resource managers can acquire information regarding employed parents of children with disabilities' increased support needs and formalize flexible policies leading to supportive workplace cultures. School personnel can instigate a range of options that facilitate parents' school engagement, such as maximizing use of technology via virtual meetings and activities.

These innovative findings contribute to theoretical underpinnings in work and family strain research as well as conservation of resources theory, given the lack of previous empirical work specific to children with disabilities and their employed parents.

In this paper we first discuss the wide variety of possible scenarios in which an evaluation may be carried out. On this basis, an attempt is made to pick out some general characteristics relevant to the design of evaluations and the search for a general framework for evaluation methodologies is motivated. Some resources for use in data collection for evaluation purposes are briefly described and discussed, and the work of the EEC EAGLES Evaluation and Assessment Group is summarized.

WITH the end of the month Mr. C. B. Oldman will retire from the presidency of the L.A. He has had a successful year and—if that were possible or necessary—has increased the high esteem in which his colleagues hold him for his unobtrusive, friendly and efficient work for all kinds of libraries and especially for his direction of the examiners and assessors. Of the liaison he has maintained between the British Museum and the Association we and others have frequently made gratified comment. The year produced the best conference of recent years and has been one of steady progress in the rehabilitation and building of all sorts of libraries public and institutional; and, so far as public libraries are concerned, the annual lending of books is some thirty millions more than the record of a year or two ago. If there has been no spectacular event, no great new library, no revolution in library policy, and if the desired new legislation is still delayed, we can still say that our work increases in spite of the many things, alleged to be inimical to reading, from TV to cross‐word puzzles and pools, and the great demands modern industry makes upon the minds as well as the bodies of our people.

The first series of colours experimented upon was the high‐grade Kohnstamm colours, which have been physiologically tested and prepared especially for use in colouring food products. The results recorded below are not the results of a single determination, but the experiments were repeated until we were satisfied, working with the chemicals we used, and by the methods employed, that the results were uniform and reliable. The results with the Kohnstamm dyes are as follows : —

The purpose of this paper is to use Motivating Language Theory (MLT) as a framework in determining leader use of different language styles during times of dynamic change.

This exploratory study of executive members of the Australian Institute of Management examined how MLT may provide a mechanism for analyzing what leaders say in the context of a work setting. Written transcripts of interview data were analyzed to determine leaders’ use of three language styles: meaning-making (locutionary), direction giving (perlocutionary), and empathetic (illocutionary) language. The software program NVivo was used to help aggregate themes emerging from written and interview data into discrete modules to enable more robust and comprehensive analysis of the data.

A range of issues pertinent to the way executives lead and manage their businesses, both in private and not-for-profit organizations, was identified in this study. Direction giving language was most prominent in management activities and leadership that was strategic or people related, followed by meaning-making and empathetic language. The findings suggest that business leaders could develop a repertoire of language approaches in order to achieve organizational outcomes.

More research of the language of leadership and its implications for organizational outcomes is warranted. For instance, the strategic integration of motivating language with a compatible set of leader behaviors, organizational objectives, and cultures may reveal mechanisms as yet unknown for achieving outcomes. Research is needed to determine the content and construct of these behaviors, objectives, and cultures. Some questions also remain regarding the appropriateness of using the Motivating Language Scale to examine the types of language used by managers and leaders in the work place. The authors recommend further application of MLT through the Motivating Language Scale in order to help clarify these queries.

This paper used MLT as a framework for identifying leader use of different language styles during times of dynamic change. MLT has been used to identify the speech patterns of leaders during verbal communication exchanges with staff and work colleagues, but this study is the first example of the use of MLT when examining leader responses to interviews and in their written responses to survey questions.

WE seem to be immediately facing a drive for much more technical education and for many more technical colleges and schools to produce it. In the condition of the world today this is an inevitable, an indispensable, process. The reasons are loudly proclaimed and patent to every librarian, and the library must come strongly, as it always has, into the picture but perhaps now more universally and with greater intensity. Dr. Chandler, who is proceeding at a rare pace to specialize his departments, has created a new local council to unify the information work that has already been done at Liverpool. Every technical book costing over five shillings is bought, and the usual collections of periodicals and other material of technical and industrial interest are being increased and a bulletin of additions is being issued soon after the end of each month. The Technical library is one that combines lending and reference activities, telephone and postal services; in fact all the orthodox activities that have been standard in the larger towns since Glasgow began them in 1916, and possibly new and extended ones. The William Brown Library which was destroyed in Air Raids is being reconstructed and the enlarged Technical Library will be developed in it. This is one city only; every large city reports some increase in the services rendered, for example the Telex service is now available at Manchester. It is essential that public libraries everywhere realize the part they may play; if they do not, the suggestion made recently that the lending of technical books should become an activity of the Technical Colleges may become a reality.

OUR readers may be amused this month by the microfilm imaginings of our correspondent in “Letters on Our Affairs,” but there is undoubtedly a more marked disposition now than formerly to reduce to a mechanism many of the usual routines of libraries. We suppose routine is always mechanical, is repetitive and, for the enterprising ambitious library worker, a matter of boredom. How far the “electronic brain” and other more recent developments of science can be adapted to our simple processes remains to be seen, but all experiment is good even if it does not survive the initial stage. What is to be most feared in any profession is the standardizing inflexibly of its techniques ; that way lies its old age, perhaps its petrification. It is for this reason that we welcome such things as those we have already discussed at times in our pages—the central cataloguing experiment of Harrods, the punched‐card vouchers and other records sponsored (so far as libraries are concerned) by Mr. T. E. Callender, the highly mechanised method of classing propounded by Dr. Ranganathan, the placing of D.C. numbers on the title pages of the books they publish by Jonathan Cape and Harrap, the visible fines receiving box and many more such things. No one uses them all. They free librarians, it is urged, for more specifically library service. We hope that they do. We have always before us the undoubted truth that the good man scraps methods that are obsolescent and the librarian (if one now exists) who is not a business man—especially if he is charged with a large library—is a somewhat pathetic person.

AT the time this appears about ten per cent of the librarians of this country will be studying how best to profit by the Hastings conference at the end of the month. The town itself is interesting, the old and new being combined in a quite graciously intriguing manner, and the library service there is worthy of attention. We say that pointedly because the pressure of these meetings is so great that the library of the place, the local example of all librarians stand for, is, by the majority, not even visited. In our October issue we hope to give an impression, at any rate a preliminary one, of the proceedings. From the advance notices, which are all that are as yet available, they are to revolve somewhat loosely round staff, stock, and standards, which can be made to cover the whole of librarianship, so that we need not descant upon its importance or pretend that it presents any original subject. Its treatment we hope will be so, as the most ordinary library topic is an old one, but fresh light upon it is always possible. The speakers appear to be all librarians of relatively small libraries and, as these comprise 75% at least of public libraries, there can be no quarrel with that. The new chairman of the L.A. Education Committee, Mr. W. B. Paton, is to look again at the pressing question of staff recruitment and training; we know he will look with clear eyes at a real problem. The Annual Lecture will be by Sir Ben Bowen Thomas, who is Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Education. There will be the usual section meetings, annual dinner, and exhibition. We may be sure that the Presidential Address will be characteristic of Mr. C. B. Oldman, which means that it will be a scholarly reflection of many or some of his wide range of library interests; and also that, under his guidance, the whole conference will be managed well.