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The trends in library systems today is to utilize Web resources and services that the library does not own to provide services and useful innovations for library users. This paper aims to explore the two concepts behind this new trend. Explored will be the concept of cloud computing and Web collaboration, the ideas that are revolutionizing library automation in the 21st century.

The paper focuses on the two ideas driving library automation innovations, Web collaboration enabled by cloud computing.

Cloud computing facilitates external collaboration, which in turn causes libraries to provide innovative Web services for users.

The paper showcases how library managers can provide new useful library services for users using Web software that are not necessarily owned by the library. The author also advocates a new approach to the online public access catologue (OPAC) utilizing the new library automation trends.

The purpose of this paper is primarily to report on a 2011 online discussion on tablets and their adoption in libraries, as observed by the researcher in blog postings and micro‐blog postings.

The researcher examined blogs and tweets about the diffusion of tablets in academic libraries to find out why early adopters or academic librarians adopted tablets and implemented them into library services.

Results reveal that academic librarians and libraries adopt and integrate tablets into library services because they can offer wireless access to the library's e‐collection and e‐resources in ways better than e‐readers or smartphones and because librarians have some level of familiarity with using tablets for their own work purposes before they considered extending such purposes to users.

Academic libraries are investing in devices to facilitate users' access to growing e‐resources. Tablet devices are one such option. However, many tablets are expensive, equalling or totalling more than the costs of laptops. The decision to adopt and implement them into library services needs to be informed by the experiences of others, in order to determine if it is a worthwhile purchase.

This paper departs from the general pattern of library literature on the subject of tablet adoption, by breaking with the tradition of being only informed by practice and emerging trial and error, to a more reflective approach to those experiences informed by Rogers' theory of the diffusions of innovations.

The primary objectives of this research paper are to explore the concept of social search, evaluate the performance of Facebook as a social search engine, and to understand the relationship between social networking sites (SNS) and social search. The author's intention is to examine the possibility that Facebook presents as the future of on‐line search and the implications for libraries.

This study reviews the literature on SNSs, Facebook studies, and the concept of social search. It then explores Facebook as a social search engine through participant observation, personal experience and experiment. The experiment is based on two identified search queries. Both queries are performed, wherein the results retrieved are displayed using tables and evaluated.

Facebook as a people search engine, yields irrelevant results in response to search queries for unknown persons or groups. Facebook may also fail to provide timely and relevant results when attempting to get information from persons with whom the user has a weak relationship. Findings also indicate the limitations of users functioning as quasi‐librarians as it relates to the quality of information retrieval.

The findings are relevant for library and information science academics and professional practitioners.

The author provides an approach for evaluating the quality of information retrieval in social search using the traditional information retrieval evaluation methods of library and information scientists. He also revisits old arguments on the importance of the profession to web information in light of new trends and data.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss research articles from authors who have just left school.

This is an opinion piece.

Bad research should not be accepted just to help young professionals get published, but the best can be offered opportunities like this special issue with explicit invitations to publish their research via a peer‐review process.

This paper identifies the potential of young professionals and peer‐reviewed journals.

This paper aims to demonstrate how Web 2.0 technologies may be used to counter some of the challenges encountered traditionally by the Caribbean library and information science (LIS) field.

This paper explores the key features of each Web 2.0 technology discussed and then shows how these characteristics might be beneficially applied to resolve or alleviate one of the challenges explored.

By providing examples of best practice the paper shows that there are Web 2.0 technologies being used by the LIS community in the Caribbean to encourage wider communication, collaboration and community building. It notes however that there are still more emerging technologies which may be successfully used to overcome other traditional challenges.

The paper adds a Caribbean perspective to the Web 2.0 discussions. It also demonstrates how emerging/Web 2.0 technologies might effectively be used as problem solving tools.

Heat treatment, in view of later knowledge, is seen to have other effects than to destroy or lower the vitality of micro‐organisms initially present; there are the more obvious changes of flavour and of consistency brought about by the partial cooking, but there are also the possible lowering of the vitamin potency and the still more subtle changes in the salts which may, after heat treatment, be rendered less available than in the raw product. The importance of these considerations cannot be too much stressed when it is remembered that heat treatment is, generally speaking, an inherent stage in the process of canning. It is the heat treatment which preserves the goods, the sealing of the can being merely a means of prevent re‐contamination. The chemist, no less than the physiologist, has been much concerned with the changes in foods caused by heat treatment as a method of preservation, and, as a result of his investigation, there is now a better understanding of the changes which take place, with a consequent improvement in the methods of processing. For a number of years, however, this country, in common with many others, has relied, in so far as its supplies of meat are concerned, on products preserved by “cold,” and the freezing of beef, the chilling of mutton, have made available to us the cattle of the Argentine and the sheep of New Zealand. Initially the processes employed were crude, the post‐mortem changes were imperfectly understood, conditions of storage, before, during and after shipment, were haphazard, and the methods of defrosting far from scientific. How far the methods have advanced, and to what extent the scientist has been concerned in the elucidation of the many problems, will be realised from the reports of the Food Investigation Board. It is not suggested that all the advance is due to the work of the Low Temperature Station a Cambridge—much has been done in other countries‐but the investigations carried out by the scientists a this station have been fundamental. Food producers in America were the first to realise the importance of the latest development in freezing, the advent of the “ Quick Freezing Processes ” marking a distinct advance in technique. When cellular tissue is normally frozen and subsequently defrosted, rupture of the cells may have occurred and the structure of the substance consequently partially broken down. When, however, the tissue is quickly brought down to a very low temperature, it is found that in many cases this breakdown in tissue does not take place. These principles have been applied to commercial installations, and fish, meat, fruit and vegetables so treated show on defrosting remarkably little change in character. Preservation by desiccation is a method employed for certain materials with great success. Sun‐drying of fruits (sultanas and dates, to quote but two) and the sun‐drying of cereal products such as macaroni is still practised. An important industry concerned with the drying of milk has developed in most milk‐producing countries, whilst dried eggs and dried egg‐albumin form important items of commerce. It is obvious that the object of concentrating such substances as fruit juices, milk and vegetables and animal liquid extracts is ideally to reduce the water content and obtain a product which, when the water is ultimately restored, gives a solution or material having the original taste, aroma and food value. The effect of heat is often, however, to change these characteristics, and although by the use of a vacuum the temperature to which the substance is submitted is lowered, changes still take place, and much of the aroma depending on volatile constituents is lost. To a very great extent this has been overcome by a method of desiccation which is essentially partial freezing, a method which has not yet received much publicity as it has only lately emerged from the experimental stage. The practical application of this principle is due to Dr. G. A. Krause, of Munich, who has invented and designed a dual process of concentration. In this process the liquid is first concentrated by freezing out water as ice, which is removed by mechanical separation in a centrifuge. By ingenious mechanical and regenerative devices this process has been made extremely efficient, the losses being only 1–2 per cent. of the original juice, although the efficiency is not maintained when the solids‐content of the product has been raised to 40–50 per cent. This liquid is then further concentrated by evaporation at a low temperature, about 10°–15° C. The differential evaporation of water as compared with the aromatic flavour constituents occurs because the removal of water as vapour at this temperature depends solely on the rate of diffusion of the molecules into the gas space. As water has a small molecule compared with the large molecules of the esters, ethers and alcohols of the flavouring substances, it escapes more readily ; the conditions of evaporation as given in the patent are all designed to aid this escape. A reduction in pressure may be used to speed up the process without interfering with the differential diffusion, and the provision of an atmosphere of small molecules (e.g., hydrogen) also has the same effect. A large surface for the evaporation is made by spreading the liquid as a thin continuously renewed film. The condenser is situated very near the evaporating liquid to remove the water molecules quickly (a distance of 3 cm. is the maximum diffusion path). The atmosphere may be circulated or disturbed to hasten the diffusion and, most ingenious of all, it may be blown towards the evaporating liquid when, if a velocity is used just greater than that of the heavy molecules leaving a liquid surface, the loss of flavour may be entirely eliminated while the rate of water evaporation is only reduced by 10 per cent. By these means a concentrate containing as much as 65 per cent. solids and capable of storage without deterioration at ordinary temperatures may be prepared, and 80 per cent. of the original vitamins retained. The use of refrigeration in the preservation of food has necessitated the use of refrigerated transport to complete the links between producer, manufacturer, retailer and customer. The variety of commodities and the different conditions they need create varying demands on the methods of insulating and refrigerating transport vehicles. The British railways have 4,000 refrigerated railway vans, and such vans, containing perishable produce, came regularly to England from Austria and Italy by way of the train ferries. These vans are designed for fairly high temperatures, 35–40° F., and long hauls, and use ice as a refrigerant. At the other end of the scale is the road vehicle, which may have a temperature as low as 0° F., but is only on its journey about 12 hours. It is in these road vehicles that the greatest advances have been made, for conditions in England do not justify the railways in expenditure on elaborate equipment. The early road vehicles were insulated boxes on a lorry chassis and were refrigerated by ice and salt, which was “messy” and caused bad corrosion of the chassis. The introduction of an eutectic solution, virtually a mixture of a freezing salt and water in a definite proportion, which was frozen as a whole in a sealed tank, was made some few years ago. This removed the “messiness,” conserved the salt and produced greater efficiency and a more stable temperature.

The concept “emotional intelligence” (EI) resonates in the business world and many authors have called for more research that clearly conceptualizes it. Within the controversy of defining EI, the behavioral approach, defining and measuring EI in terms of competencies, has not received much attention. The aim of the present chapter is threefold: (1) to propose a new structure of emotional and social competencies that is useful within organizational settings; (2) to discuss a comprehensive model of emotional competencies within organizational contexts that includes personality, emotional and social competencies, and performance; and finally (3) to draw its implications for practitioners.