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The state of the U.S. economy is causing some media pundits to issue gloomy reports deploring the decline of manufacturing and the concomitant growth of the service sector. There is no question that our economy is changing — and changing rapidly.

A GREAT deal of recent library news has been about money: rising prices, budget cuts, staff cuts; generally, the call to do more with less. Sometimes citizen protest or the recognition that reduced library services harm everyone has managed to turn the tide. Mostly, however, libraries and librarians have simply bowed to pressure and tried yet again to stretch their budgets. As Barbara Moran said, “even in the sixties libraries never overcame their traditional poverty” (Academic Libraries, 1984, p. 25). Now, when information sources are multiplying and the cost of accessing information is escalating, those already inadequate budgets are being reduced once again.

This study aims to examine how government policies have influenced the governance paradigm of Australian public universities from a historical perspective. In doing so, it addresses current uncertainty on government-governance connectivity.

The study draws on Foucault’s concept of governmentality and governance and uses a developed framework of three constituents of governance to explore government–governance connectivity through a critical discourse analysis.

The findings reveal that government policies have influenced the three constituents of governance differently since 1823, resulting in three distinct governance discourses. In the third governance discourse, the findings reveal a deviation from policy directions towards corporate managerialism, resulting in a hybrid governance control environment. This scenario has arisen due to internal stakeholders continuing to be oriented towards the previous management cultures. Other factors include structural and legalistic obstacles to the implementation of corporate managerialism, validity of the underlying theory informing the policy directions towards corporate managerialism and doubts on the achievability of the market based reforms associated with corporate managerialism. The totality of these factors suggests a theory practice gap to be confirmed through further empirical research. There are also policy implications for policymakers to recognize the hybrid control environment and ascertain the risk the hybrid control environment poses towards the expected outcomes of corporate managerialism.

The findings are limited to a critical discourse analysis of data from specific policies and journal publications on higher education and a developed framework of constituents of governance.

The study is the first to examine government–governance connectivity in Australian public universities and also the first to introduce a three-constituent governance framework as a conduit to explore such studies. The findings contribute to the literature in identifying a theory-practice gap and offer opportunities for further research to confirm them.

Since the Industrial Age has given way to the Information Age, our attention has been focused on the new electronic media. But sometimes we forget that even electronic information has to be read. All libraries have a stake in literacy.

The Subtler Budget Cuts. While the new federal budget will have a direct effect on many libraries, subtler changes in the federal tax Jaws may also significantly affect library budgets. Among the changes are:

Library of Congress Faces a Severe Budget Crisis. “An essentially declining annual appropriation has begun to erode the Library's ability to serve the nation,” said Librarian of Congress James Billington, in congressional testimony on February 5th in support of LC's budget request of $326,499,000, up 22% over fiscal year 1990.

Columbia Closes Library School. The Trustees of Columbia University voted Monday, June 4, to phase out the School of Library Service (SLS) over the next two years and seek to move it to another institution. This fall's class will be the last admitted to degree programs.

Mental health conditions such as depression are prevalent in working adults, costly to employers, and have implications for legal liability and corporate social responsibility. Managers play an important role in determining how employees’ and organizations’ interests are reconciled in situations involving employee mental ill-health issues. The purpose of this paper is to explore these situations from the perspective of managers in order to develop theory and inform practice in workplace mental health promotion.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 Australian managers who had supervised an employee with a mental health issue. Interview transcripts were content analyzed to explore themes in managers’ experiences.

Managing an employee with a mental health issue involves becoming aware of the issue, taking action to understand the situation and develop an action response, implementing the response and managing the ongoing situation. Each of these tasks had a range of positive and negative aspects to them, e.g., managing the situation can be experienced as both a source of stress for the manager but also as an opportunity to develop greater management skills.

Understanding line managers’ experiences is critical to successful implementation of HR policies regarding employee health and well-being. HR strategies for dealing with employee mental health issues need to consider implementation support for managers, including promotion of guiding policies, training, emotional support and creating a psychosocial safety climate in their work units or teams.

The insights gained from this study contribute to the body of knowledge regarding psychosocial safety climate, an emergent theoretical framework concerned with values, attitudes and philosophy regarding worker psychological health. The findings also have important implications for strategic human resource management approaches to managing mental health in the workplace.

The needs and achievements of smaller libraries often are overlooked because the larger libraries tend to dominate the news. Nevertheless they have, too their success stories.

The last Fiscal Currents examined the challenges represented by budget cuts. This column will look at some of the ways that libraries have responded and suggest further action if libraries are to emerge from the present fiscal crisis in shape to continue their role as information providers to society.