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The changing demands of consumers, advances in technology and the pressures of the economic climate have led to many changes in catering over the last two decades. Among other systems introduced to rationalise large‐scale catering are cook‐freeze and cook‐chill, with the latter becoming increasingly popular due to its advantages in energy saving and food (textural) quality over cook‐freeze. However, the microbiological risks of cook‐chill have always been acknowledged as being higher than those inherent in cook‐freeze and, in a recent survey of operations in the UK, cook‐chill food was regarded only as poor to good by consumers – few “high‐class” caterers were found to be using the system. New systems which utilise vacuum packaging either before or after cooking in combination with the chilling techniques of cook‐chill are becoming more popular and appear to give higher quality food. Sous‐vide cuisine is one of these. In combination with cook‐chill (sous‐vide/cook‐chill), this method is claimed to give rise to a host of benefits yet very little laboratory research work has been published on sous‐vide/cook‐chill. The few research publications on the sous‐vide/cook‐chill method in the context of food safety and the use of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and quality assurance techniques like Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) are discussed. It is argued that sous‐vide/cook‐chill, like standard cook‐chill itself, should be regarded more as food manufacturing methods than catering methods.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

With the web being such a universally popular medium, accounting forever more a people‘s information seeking behaviour, and with every move a person makes on the web being routinely monitored, web logs offer a treasure trove of data. This data is breathtaking in its sheer volume, detail and potential. Unlike previous computerised logs ‐ like those of OPACs for instance, web logs are capable of tracking literally millions of users worldwide and they are not confined to the actions of niche groups with specialised and largely academic needs. The data are of enormous strategic and widespread concern. Unfortunately the logs turn out to be good on volume and (certain) detail but bad at precision and attribution. They raise many questions ‐ what actually constitutes use being the biggest of them ‐ but provide far fewer answers. There are also many ways of reading logs. All the problems really arise from the fact that, in the case of the web, the virtual user is the computer. Resolving use to an individual is extremely difficult. Nevertheless, there is much that can be gleaned from web logs. Before this can be done, however, it is necessary to take precautions. First, do not rely on proprietary log analysis software. Second, do employ statistical methods to fill in the knowledge gap. Third, try to improve/enhance the data capture through other methods, like linking subscriber details to the web log. Fourth, bring an understanding of what users do when online to the interpretation of the data. The benefits (and problems) of web log analysis are demonstrated in the light of the experience of evaluating The Times and Sunday Times web sites. These sites are subscribed to by nearly a million people from around the globe and it is the online actions of these people ‐ the new international and information consumers ‐ that will be the subject of the paper.

This paper is a conversation piece which highlights the ways in which succession planning in large company might be handled. The discussion focuses on Christopher Oughtred the former Chairman of William Jackson Food Group, one of the largest family businesses in the UK. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper presents a conversation with a panel of leading family business experts and a family business owner. The paper presents latest thoughts on family business research, insights into a real family business succession project and reflections from a former Chairman on the succession process.

Findings highlight possible stages and requirements of a successful transition and succession plan. Also suggestions for areas of further research are presented.

The conversation recorded in this paper represents a rare opportunity to obtain reflections and insights on a succession process and how it was managed in a large family business. The conversation also highlights the kinds of challenges often experienced by family businesses during transition and succession. As a case study this is an exemplar of how succession might be planned.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the usage of e‐resources in academic libraries. It also describes various studies undertaken to study the users' behavior and attitude towards e‐journals.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of the recent published literature on the importance of the usage statistics of e‐resources subscribed to by the academic libraries.

The findings show that the usage statistics help in studying and evaluating the users' behavior in an online environment. The library services can be extended and modified, to reflect user interests suiting the users the most, in the light of the evaluation and analyses done.

The paper has pertinence and wider implications for library staff engaged in providing e‐resources' services to readers.

The purpose of this article is to alert researchers to software for web tracking of information seeking behaviour, and to offer a list of criteria that will make it easier to select software. A selection of research projects based on web tracking as well as the benefits and disadvantages of web tracking are also explored.

An overview of the literature, including clarification of key concepts, a brief overview of studies of web information seeking behaviour based on web tracking, identification of software used, as well as the strengths and short‐comings noted for web tracking is used as a background to the identification of criteria for the selection of web tracking software.

Web tracking can offer very valuable information for the development of websites, portals, digital libraries, etc. It, however, needs to be supplemented by qualitative studies, and researchers need to ensure that the tracking software will collect the data required.

The criteria is not applied to any software in particular.

The criteria can be used by researchers working on web usage and web information seeking behaviour to select suitable tracking software.

Although there are many reports on the use of web tracking (also reported in this article), nothing could be traced on criteria for the evaluation of web tracking software.

There is very little qualitative data on what impact the Internet is having on information seeking in the workplace. Using open‐ended interviews, questionnaires and observation, the impact of the Internet on the British Media was assessed. The focus was largely on newspapers, with The Guardian being covered in some depth. Over 300 journalists and media librarians were surveyed. It was found that amongst traditional journalists use was light. Poor access to the Internet – and good access to other information resources – were largely the reasons for this. Of the journalists it was mainly the older and more senior journalists and the New Media journalists who used the Internet. Librarians were also significant users. Searching the World Wide Web was the principal Internet activity and use was generally conservative in character. Newspapers and official sites were favoured, and searches were mainly of a fact‐checking nature. Email was used on a very limited scale and was not regarded as a serious journalistic tool. Non‐users were partly put off by the Internet‘s potential for overloading them with information and its reputation for producing information of suspect quality. Users generally dismissed these concerns, dealing with potential overload and quality problems largely by using authoritative sites and exploiting the lower quality data where it was needed. Where the Internet has been used it has not been at the expense of other information sources or communication channels, but online hosts seem to be at most risk in the future.

The study set out to determine: (1) what were the searching characteristics of end users in a non‐academic environment and explain this in the light of their information needs; (2) whether these characteristics were those that were ascribed to end users in the professional literature; (3) whether they differed materially from those of information professionals working in the same fields. Searching characteristics were interpreted in their widest sense to include: command utilisation/knowledge; search success and satisfaction; volume of searching; searching style/ approach; duration of searches; file selection; willingness to delegate and levels of training. These issues were explored in relation to two practitioner groups — journalists from The Guardian newspaper, and politicians from The House of Commons. Comparative data were also sought from information professionals in these two organisations. A mixture of social and statistical methods was used to monitor end‐user and professional searching, though transactional log analysis was strongly featured. Altogether the searching behaviour of 170 end users was evaluated in the light of the searching behaviour of seventy librarians. The principal findings were that: in some respects end users did conform to the picture that information professionals have of them: they did search with a limited range of commands; more of their searches produced no results, and search statements were simply constructed. But in other respects they confounded their image — they could be very quick and economical searchers, and they did not display metres of print‐out. However, there were variations between individual end users, and it was often possible to find an end‐user group that matched an information professional group on one aspect of online searching or another. The online behaviour of end users was very much related to their general information seeking behaviour; and to the fact that they were not trained.