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There is increasing evidence that participation in various art forms can be beneficial for health and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of participating in a poetry reading group on a group of older residents of an assisted living facility.

Six poetry sessions, each on a different theme, were conducted with a group of volunteer participants. These sessions, those of pre- and post-study focus groups and interviews with the group facilitator and staff contact were audio-recorded. The transcripts of the recordings were then subjected to a thematic analysis.

Overall the participants were enthused by the opportunity to participate in the project and the benefits were confirmed by the support staff. In addition, reading poetry on particular themes promoted different types of discussion.

The number of participants in this study was small and the study was conducted over a short period of time.

This paper confirms the impact of poetry reading for older people. The challenge is to explore this impact in more detail and over community as well as residential settings.

This paper is the first empirical report on the value of poetry reading for older people.

The increasing dominance of electronic media in our society compels today's librarian to maintain and develop a well‐rounded reference collection in this field. Indeed, this is one area where the patron's interest is guaranteed by the rising level of participation with the medium. According to the 1981 International Television Almanac there are 76,300,000 TV homes in the United States with 15,500,000 of those homes subscribing to cable. These figures represent a 50 percent increase over the 1975 statistics. This has resulted in panic‐stricken competition within the industry and a less paternal attitude towards CATV systems. Radio, too, is a pervasive element due to its mobility and its function as surrogate companionship. It is imperative, therefore, that the book librarian be able to provide information should the media junkie decide to learn more about his or her habit.

The State of Delaware recently passed a new banking law that allows banks and bank affiliates chartered in Delaware to sell and underwrite insurance nationwide. The new laws provide two potential benefits to banks; (1) increased profits from selling insurance and (2) reduced interest rate risk exposure from underwriting insurance. We find support for increased profit potential to banks from the law, but we fail to find a reduction in the interest rate risk exposure of the banks.

Increased global sourcing of manufacturing and service activities has been a prominent part of the restructuring of firms’ supply chains in the 1990s and beyond. Academics and consultancy firms have largely supported the view of global sourcing as one of the key drivers of superior performance. As we are now increasingly discovering, the drawbacks of offshore outsourcing – or, put differently, the advantages of vertical integration – have been underestimated or even neglected. In this chapter, we first discuss the need to balance sourcing levels and then how global sourcing levels must achieve a strategic fit with the environment. Finally, we synthesize these balance and fit perspectives to suggest how, over time, changes in the fit alter the required balance in global sourcing. From this synthesis, we develop a number of future research questions related to important conceptual perspectives on sourcing. For managers we provide indications of how they can achieve a balance and a fit of their sourcing strategies.