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TECHNICAL Education, after looming before the British public for half a century, is now with us a recognised factor in our national life. The passing of the Technical Instruction Acts of and 1891, and the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of gave an impetus to the movement, and has produced results of a most gratifying character. Technical schools, or institutions bearing other names in which technical instruction is given, are now considerably more numerous than Public Libraries. According to a return of the National Society for promotion of Technical Education in England (excluding London), 319 technical schools, under municipal and public bodies, have been erected at a cost of £3,186,102—an average of £10,000 per school in round numbers—and of this sum, one quarter of a million has been involved since 1901. In order to obtain an adequate idea of the extent to which technical instruction is given, it is necessary to take into account the higher grade schools and other institutions which are used for this purpose. But if technical schools be numerically stronger than Public Libraries, the former institution is incomplete without the latter. In such isolation, its relative position to the student, is like a conservatory without a garden to the botanist. A Public Library, with carefully selected books of reference, bearing on the subjects taught in the technical school as well as on all the industries carried on in the neighbourhood, is an indispensable condition to the success of the technical school, and I hope County Councils will, in the near future, use their influence to promote the establishment of Public Libraries in every locality where a technical school is considered essential.

IN his admirable survey of library methods and problems in Great Britain, read—unfortunately by proxy—at the St. Louis meeting of the American Library Association, which the author of this paper had the pleasure of hearing, Mr. Bond, in writing of open access, was courageous enough to say that the system in question was the system of the future. It is true that he put that future a long way off, but it is none the less creditable to Mr. Bond's fairness and foresight that he recognises and admits that some time the system of shelf access—perhaps a better term than open access—is bound to prevail, and become the rule rather than the exception in the library administration of this country. One has therefore a shrewd suspicion that much of the fierceness with which the system and the personalities of those who have adopted and approved it, have been assailed, is due to an uneasy feeling on the part of its opponents that time is on the other side, and that they can at best only put the clock back, not stop it.

This paper aims to develop a framework for implementing the integrated project delivery (IPD) approach during the design process in architecture design firms (ADFs) in Egypt.

A research methodology consists of literature review, case studies and survey questionnaire was designed to achieve the abovementioned aim. First, literature review was used to identify and categorise the challenges of implementing IPD during the design process. Second, four case studies were analysed to investigate the values delivered to the client or missed due to the use of IPD or traditional procurement approaches, respectively. Finally, a survey questionnaire was carried out with a representative sample of ADFs in Egypt to investigate their perception towards the challenges of IPD implementation in Egypt. Based on the results of the above, the research developed a framework to facilitate the implementation of IPD in ADFs in Egypt.

Through literature review, the research identified 30 challenges that hamper the implementation of IPD in ADFs. These challenges were categorised due to their nature into five groups, namely, integration, cooperation, commitment and trust challenges, knowledge, experience skills and decision-making challenges, cultural challenges, legal and contractual challenges and technical and financial challenges. Results of data analysis showed that “poor communication and spirit of collaboration between project stakeholders” was ranked the highest influential challenge as IPD is based on collaboration and trust between project participants. In addition, “lack of training and motivation in investing for using IPD” was ranked the lowest influential challenge due to the poor attention paid to training in the construction industry. Moreover, despite the benefits of IPD implementations in many countries worldwide, it is not implemented in the Egyptian context. This necessitated taking action towards developing a framework to facilitate IPD implementation in ADFs in Egypt.

The research focussed on ADFs in Egypt.

Adopting the proposed framework developed through this research will help implementing IPD during the design process in ADFs.

The research identified, categorised and analysed the challenges that obstruct the implementation of IPD in ADFs. The research tackled a topic that received scant attention in construction literature in the Middle East generally and Egypt in particular. In addition, this paper presented a framework to facilitate the implementation of IPD during the design process, which represents a synthesis that is novel and creative in thought and adds value to the knowledge in a manner that has not previously occurred.

Publicly owned libraries deliver a fundamental public service, fostering the citizens' access to knowledge. However, little is known about the factors underpinning the public libraries' organizational attractiveness. The article aims to shed light on this issue, investigating how the public libraries' service offering contributes to increasing their attractiveness.

Secondary data were collected from the national census study of libraries carried out in 2019 by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). More than 4,500 publicly owned libraries established in Italy were involved in the analysis. A linear regression model was designed to examine the implications of public libraries' service offering on the number of people who visited them in 2019. The units of analysis were grouped in three clusters based on their organizational size.

Small-sized libraries' attractiveness relied on loan services (LS) and catalogs' integration, as well as on the availability of spaces for promoting social exchanges (SE) and interactions. The same was true for medium-sized libraries, whose attractiveness was also fostered by digitization. Large-sized libraries' ability to attract users was primarily affected by LS and by the provision of people-centered cultural services (CS).

Publicly owned libraries should arrange tailored strategies to increase their attractiveness. Small-sized and medium-sized libraries should exploit community-oriented initiatives to establish a co-creating dialog with users. Conversely, large-sized entities should advance the users' access to conventional services and implement people-centered cultural activities, recontextualizing their exchange with users in the digital domain to enhance service quality.

The article originally investigates the factors affecting the attractiveness of publicly owned libraries, providing intriguing insights to managers and practitioners.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of teaching style, English language and communication and assessment methods on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses such as Statistics for Business 1 and 2, Quantitative Methods for Business, Operations and Production Management and Operations Research in a non-Western setting.

Data was collected from 750 undergraduate business students in third- and fourth-year classes at the UAE University (UAEU). Descriptive statistics were used to gain some insights into the demographic and educational characteristics of respondents and their opinions regarding the importance of the three factors of concern to their understanding of quantitative courses material, along with multiple regression analysis that was used to test the hypotheses of the study.

The results of the present study indicate the importance of the teaching style in terms of the way the lecturer speaks and the pace of presenting the material, in addition to the structure of the lecture in understanding quantitative course material. Additionally, availability and contents of the material on the course website play an important role in helping undergraduate business students understand the subjects of quantitative courses. The study revealed that the UAEU undergraduate business students are, to some extent, uncomfortable in reading printed textbooks and writing reports on quantitative topics in English. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that both teaching style and English language and communication have a great influence on the academic performance of UAEU undergraduate business students.

The paper has a number of limitations. For instance, the sample was taken only from students in a single university. Moreover, this study focuses on the business students and in turn, it excludes students of other colleges. On the other hand, it has a number of implications for administrators, instructors and researchers. Administrators should pay special attention when setting admission standards. Instructors teaching quantitative courses should prepare well-structured lectures and deliver them at a reasonable pace to allow students the time to understand them. They should also pay attention to the way they speak. For researchers, this study will indicate the need for further research to confirm or refute the results of the present study.

The present study is the first attempt to investigate the impacts of the three factors of concern on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses in a public university setting in the UAE context.

This paper aims to present a number of important reminders and examples of oft‐overlooked managerial capabilities found to be useful in a variety of businesses.

This paper's “reflections on practice” are prompted by observations of kids in action – youth soccer. Combining those prompts with personal experiences drawn from over 30 years of working with business managers, and from a synthesis of over 100 contemporary business articles, 11 important bits of business wisdom are surfaced, explained, championed, and storied.

The paper presents 11 oft‐overlooked, under‐valued, subtle, bits of business wisdom. In addition, the usefulness of analogical thinking is demonstrated as observations from a non‐business setting spark insights and reflections applicable to business.

The field‐based bits of business wisdom presented here are immediately, broadly, and beneficially applicable across the corporate landscape.

Readers are provided with an engaging narrative, drawn from the youth‐soccer sidelines, that points to 11 specific business foci that can be embraced to broaden and deepen their managerial repertoires. Each of the points is embellished with numerous business examples…examples not often grabbing the business press headlines.

Understanding policy consequences for cities is very important in an urban setting, especially in this era of developing solutions for grand challenges. Climate change adaptation and smart cities are emerging topics in the climate change and sustainability domain. Therefore, this paper aims to achieve a better understanding of policy consequences and exploring synergies of climate change adaptation and smart cities are valuable for both research and practice.

This paper systematically reviews synergies of smart city applications in urban climate change adaptation literature. A systematic literature review and content analysis are carried out to answer the research questions and a theoretically based smart cities concept matrix with synergetic coproduction theory is used to assess the empirical studies.

Key findings are that the model of synergetic coproduction could identify the benefits co-existing in smart city and climate change adaptation. While smart people and smart government play the fundamental roles, synergies could co-occur in other smart city dimensions. Smart city applications in climate change adaptation could increase competitiveness in cities by exploiting the opportunities as well as reducing the harmful risks.

The outcomes of the smart city applications in climate change adaptation aim to contribute to the exploration of developing indicators for smart city studies in climate change.

The findings provide successful examples for city governments and stakeholders to identify the low-hanging fruits as well as win-win adaptations. The results could also serve as the exploration of indicators in the field of smart city in climate change. The smart cities concept with the synergetic coproduction theoretical model could be further developed into a sustainability accounting and reporting methodology for cities to improve their sustainability information management.

The successful cases showing benefits could serve as examples for public-private partnerships to develop strategies to exploit opportunities in smart city applications and climate change adaptation. The review results also show that the integrated approach of smart city and climate change adaptation is possible and beneficial – hopefully the city managers and policymakers will continue to apply the integrated approach with smart city and further climate action agenda.

This study combines two emerging topics in the assessment, climate change adaptation and smart cities, and represents a new way of assessing literature and possibly policy outcomes for the cities. By using the theoretical framework from smart cities and theory of coproduction, a theory-based framework is developed for assessing the empirical studies of climate adaptation in cities. The findings from the systematic literature review indicate relations among smart city dimensions in a clear manner and also identify the synergies of smart cities and climate adaptation.