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The traditional concept of people’s participation through their representatives is changing to the mechanism of direct participation of community people in the local governing process. In coupling with these, the Constitution of Bangladesh and the local government acts guarantee to foster the direct participation of people in the formation of local bodies and development programs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the avenues of people’s participation in local government, particularly the Union Parishad (UP) in Bangladesh, and to evaluate the empowerment of marginalized community through those avenues.

Using a broad descriptive and analytical approach, this paper evaluates the relationship between participation and empowerment of local community based on the review of secondary sources of information.

The local government institutions, particularly UP, has existed many mechanisms through which people participate in decision-making process. It is also believed that participation of community people in local government institutions is not only an opportunity for them but also an apparatus of empowerment. Hence, the process of empowerment is entrenched in the notion of participation. It is evident that the people at grass root level have been participating in UP in diverse arrangements, but the effectiveness of these participations in terms of empowerment is still meager and even lack.

Though a long time has passed after introducing these participatory mechanisms, very few studies have undertaken to assess the people’s participation in local government. Additionally, no single initiative was undertaken to assess how empowerment of marginalized people happened through these initiatives as empowering community people is the key objective of it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how structural and economic issues of organising inter-firm relationships influence a supply chain (SC) performance, by using the insight of organisational theories and institutional economics.

The study is an exploratory field study in the Australian agri-food industries. Using a conceptual model and a set of semi-structured interview questions, data collection was done through in-depth interviews with eight agri-food firms from the agri-food SCs in Western Australia (WA).

The findings demonstrated the requirement of higher coordination and integration from the downstream industries to include upstream producers as the integral part of the SC.

The study is based on eight in-depth interviews on cross-sectional food SCs in WA and generalises the result for the overall food industry in WA.

The study provides valuable information to the existing literature on industrial management and has important value to the users of agri-food SCs. It provides empirical evidence of the factors of SC performance for agri-food producers, processors and retailers, other stakeholders and government agencies for their planning and benchmarking.

In Bangladesh, there are only 0.2 million Internet users out of a population of 140 million. Because there is a lack of academic research on Internet usage, the prime objective of this study is to report the level of Internet use by university academics for their information and communication needs. The study also sought to find out whether differences exist among the various levels of academics in terms of their use of the Internet. Six categories of information and communication needs were identified and a survey conducted among the lecturers of Rajshahi University where the Internet was introduced in 2001. Findings showed that Internet use by academics is useful for some common needs and that the academic rank of users is an important factor in determining the priority of needs. It also showed that there are some barriers to adequate use of Internet resources. Suggestions are made for increased use of the Internet, to benefit the nation as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to find the effects of human capital inequality on economic growth.

Thailand Labor Force Survey has been used to generate provincial average years of schooling and Gini coefficient of years of schooling for the years 1995‒2012. Econometric techniques have been employed to identify the effects of human capital inequality on economic growth.

Economic growth is inversely affected by the distribution of human capital in Thailand. The coefficient of human capital inequality suggests that if Gini coefficient increases by 0.01 points, gross provincial product (GPP) decreases by about 2 percentage points in the long run. However, the effect of average years of schooling in GPP is not significant.

There is a lack of strong theoretical background for the relationship between human capital inequality and economic growth to support the empirical study.

The findings of the study help to design and evaluate education policies in developing countries like Thailand and other low- and middle-income countries.

This paper is among the first attempts to analyze the effect of human capital inequality on economic growth with sub-national level annual data. In addition, it considers cross sectional dependence in panel model.

The purpose of this paper is to find the rate of intergenerational transmission of human capital and comparative schooling attainment between lower and higher income families using the labor force survey in Thailand.

Instrumental variable (IV) approach has been used in this paper. The author proposed an alternative instrument for parental education to identify the rate of transmission, which is the parents’ cohorts’ mean schooling in their respective provinces.

This paper found that the rate of transmission of human capital from father is higher than that from mother in Thailand. For both, the rate of transmission in Thailand is higher than that in the developed countries. In addition, it is found that children from lower income families are getting lesser education than those from higher income families in Thailand.

This paper is used as an alternative instrument that could solve the endogeneity problem in the literature of intergenerational transmission of human capital.

The results of rate of transmission can help to make educational policies in countries like Thailand. It also could help the policymakers to evaluate and redesign the student loan scheme (SLS) in Thailand.

This study is used as an alternative instrument for parental education to identify the rate of transmission in an IV approach. This paper is the first to identify the intergenerational transmission rate in Thailand. In addition, it evaluates Thai SLS in an intergenerational framework.

To evaluate the magnitude of public library uses and resulting values among the general people with associated socio‐economic‐cultural features of Bangladesh and thus to indicate strategies for better library impact in societal, cultural and economic development.

Primary data were collected from the users of four public libraries in the cities of Dhaka and Rajshahi considering rich library profiles and wide variety of users. Interviews were conducted based on a structured questionnaire by visiting the sample libraries that also result in studying the users and libraries closely.

Some factors like age, income, education, and gender are very important in using public library in relation to particular socio‐economic features of Bangladesh. Though the study reveals dissatisfaction in library resources, it shows a strong library impact on recreation and culture, self‐learning, social welfare, and on economic development of the country. The findings lead some recommendations for improved utilization of library.

The paper provides focus on studying the demographic variables of users to measure public library values and benefits in the areas of learning, recreation, culture, social welfare, and development.

Concerned authorities should come forward to minimize the funding and administrative barriers to make public library exclusively worthy to all with quality access.

Studying social factors are unavoidable to understand the magnitude of social inclusiveness of libraries and their strength of impact, and importantly, to ascertain the ways of comprehensive access to libraries by acquiring indication of realistic policy implementation from empirical evidence.

Development of an effective search system and interface largely depends on usability studies. The aim of this paper is to present the results of an empirical evaluation of a prototype web site search and browsing tool based on multidimensional taxonomies derived from the use of faceted classification.

A prototype Faceted Classification System (FCS), which classifies and organizes web documents under different facets (orthogonal sets of categories), was implemented on the domain of an academic institute. Facet are created from content oriented metadata, and then assembled into multiple taxonomies that describe alternative classifications of the web site content, such as by subject and location. The search and browsing interfaces use these taxonomies to enable users to access information in multiple ways. The paper compares the FCS interfaces to the existing single‐classification system to evaluate the usability of the facets in typical navigation and searching tasks.

The findings suggest that performance and usability are significantly better with the FCS in the areas of efficient access, search success, flexibility, understanding of content, relevant search result, and satisfaction. These results are especially promising since unfamiliarity often leads users to reject new search interfaces.

The results of the study in this paper can significantly contribute to interface research in the IR community, emphasizing the advantages of multidimensional taxonomies in online information collections.

The aim of this paper is to develop and implement a multidimensional classification system in the web that can provide an alternative but convenient structure for organising and finding information content.

A prototype system is developed following the views of Ranganathan's faceted classification, which is to provide multiple classifications of the web documents through content oriented metadata organised under different facets (orthogonal groups of categories).

Based on an architectural framework this study demonstrates a prototype faceted classification system (FCS) that is integrated into a general open‐source content management system and populated with a sample collection of institutional web pages/documents.

The study provides significant grounds for the IR community to improve interface structure for easy access, management, and retrieval of web information. In addition, the integration of content management tools with multidimensional taxonomies can be a new instance of a corporate web system for easy content creation, organisation, and navigation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement a faceted classification structure to improve web information organization, access and navigability.

Some case studies of commercial web sites using faceted metadata were analyzed to develop the classification approach. The proposed framework adapts the facet analysis theory from Faceted Classification System (FCS) to use semantic web tools especially XML and RDF store, and ontology, and is designed to be integrated within a Content Management System (CMS). A detailed example of a faceted classification system for an academic information system is used to demonstrate the construction of an FCS from metadata.

Detailed examples show how classifying and organizing information in multidimensional hierarchies is more accessible than simple one‐dimensional taxonomic hierarchies.

A prototype, based on the proposed framework, is being developed using the web site of an academic institution as a case study.

Enhances the FCS research with a notion of integrating ontology driven faceted classification structures by XML/RDF language and content management tools. A dynamic approach to organizing and searching web information provides users with multiple ways of accessing information based on their knowledge and information needs.

This study is designed to investigate the patterns of internet use by the faculty including purposes for use, its impact on teaching and research, internet resources that they use, and the problems faced while using the internet.

A questionnaire, expert‐reviewed and pilot‐tested, was used to collect data from the faculty coming from four colleges of Kuwait University, i.e. Arts, Social Sciences, Sciences, and Engineering. Half of the 491 potential participants were selected as the sample, with a response rate of 62.6 percent.

A large majority have been using the computer and internet for more than five years. They use the internet mostly for, and give importance to, e‐mail, search engines, and WWW resources mainly for communication, research, and publication. It has helped them to save time, find up to date information, and cooperate with their colleagues. Slow speed, lack of time, and lack of access from home are the major problems. Most of them are interested in improving the internet use skills through formal training.

Kuwait University needs to improve its IT infrastructure, including providing distance access, and to provide formal training in the use of internet resources.

This is the first comprehensive study of the use of the internet by the Kuwait University faculty. Its findings should help Kuwait University in its plans and programmes related to e‐learning and strengthen pertinent resources and services of its libraries.