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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the issue of professional development education for school board members. The research question that guides this mixed study is: does school board member professional development have an effect on student achievement?

The standardized protocol for this study was to send a developed questionnaire to 50 directors of state school board associations. An inductive analysis was made of the state school board directors' responses on whether they felt professional development had a positive effect on student achievement. Their responses were then compared with Education Week's 2009 rating of state education systems.

From the response from the 26 responding state directors, the study found that most states do not require professional development for school board members. State board directors did feel that school board professional development had a positive effect on student achievement. Of the states that did require school board professional development, they received an overall rating of B or C according to the Education Week 2009 rating, while those states that did not require professional development received a rating of C or D.

Mixed research such as this adds to the conversation of the need for required school board professional development but the findings need to be re‐analyzed with all 50 states responding.

The practical implications are profound in that it is desired that children should succeed and learn in quality schools. School board members' lack of education (i.e. they only require high‐school diploma or GED) has an effect on student achievement. School board members need to take required professional development in all areas of public schooling so that quality decisions can be made for children's education.

The social implications are that school board member professional development sends a message to students that continued adult learning is necessary in all walks of life for the USA to continue its leadership in the world.

School board members with the barest qualifications are elected to, in essence, run public schools. Little research has been done about the effects of school board member education on student achievement. This paper explores the voices of state directors in relation to professional development for school board members in US public school discourse and fills some of the gaps in the research.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the interplay between selected consumer behavior constructs and their individual and joint influences on purchase intentions of global, local, and hybrid brands. This is a topic that is becoming increasingly important as the world moves toward global economic interdependence and increasingly more firms expand abroad.

As the paper is in its conceptual/modeling phase, its research design is not yet complete, nor does it offer any findings. Resting our work on attitude and identity theories, we derive hypotheses about the potential influence of consumer behavior constructs, that is, the levels of the consumer’s global consumption orientation, globalization attitude, consumer ethnocentrism, and consumer cosmopolitanism on global brand attitude and its influence on willingness to purchase global versus nonglobal brands. We also derive hypotheses about influences that might moderate this relationship; specifically the consumer’s affinity with the home country of the particular brand, and the perceived value embedded in the brand.

Our work will contribute to the expanding literature on global consumer culture and consumption patterns and will thus provide valuable insights for international marketing managers and for social policy.

Our work will examine the joint influences of several consumer behavior constructs on brand purchase behavior, in addition to the independent influences of these constructs. It will also explore the possible mediating influence of global brand attitude on purchase intentions and moderating effects, if any, of perceived value and consumer affinity on consumers’ choices of global over local and hybrid brands.

WITH this issue we are commencing the twenty‐seventh year of our career as an independent Library Journal and trust that we shall carry on the tradition of our illustrious founder and continue to criticise or praise without fear or favour. During the past twelve months our editorial staff has successfully produced special numbers dealing with Bookbinding, Book Selection, Children's Departments, Classification, and Colonial Libraries. Judging by the correspondence we have received, our efforts have been greatly appreciated by the majority of our readers. Naturally we have not pleased everybody and we have even been dubbed the “little contemporary” in some quarters. However, we can point to an unbroken record of twenty‐six years' endeavour to serve the library profession and we ourselves are justly proud of the contemptible “little contemporary” that did not cease to appear even during the darkest hours of the dread war period.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

States that there are concerns within the banking industry that its image may be confused, which raises the question, by what criteria do the stakeholders perceive their banks and, consequently, how can banks establish programmes to develop their image? Concludes that Britons are largely satisfied with the performance of banks, and are less antagonistic than the media indicate.

Offender-led dog-training programmes (DTPs) are increasingly used throughout US correctional facilities. The rather sparse literature on these programmes is outlined in this manuscript, including the reported benefits of participation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the opinions of programme coordinators and staff from 13 programmes.

The perceived effects were measured using an open-ended questionnaire, with attention paid to those benefits reported in the extant literature.

Respondents noted improvements in several factors including impulsivity, self-efficacy, empathy, social skills, emotional intelligence, and employability.

It is argued that DTPs should be implemented in other countries including the UK, and that well-designed, larger scale evaluations are needed.

Though potentially limited by sample size and self-selection biases, these findings expand on the existing literature by supporting existing reports as well as expanding the breadth of the DTPs that have been studied.

The following annotated bibliography of materials on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources covers publications from 1979. A few items from 1978 were included because information about them had not been available in time for the 1978 listing. Some entries were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the item. The bibliography includes publications on user instruction in all types of libraries and for all types of users from children to adults. To facilitate the use of the list, it has been divided into categories by type of library. Even though the library literature includes many citations to items on user instruction in foreign countries, this bibliography includes only publications in the English language.

THIS month usually sees the estimates adopted that must govern public library spending for the year to come. It is likely to be a testing time for many librarians and we look forward with much interest to their experiences this year. The international rearmament programme, which authority has told us will not radically change our economic position, must have its repercussions on all municipal activities; expansion, so badly needed and so often deferred, is not likely to come immediately. However, as we remarked last month, dismal prophecies have so often been confounded by the subsequent facts that we hope 1951 will not be an exception. The defence programme may have some Staff effects, especially if the Z reserves are called again to the Colours. There is much that we may hope and much we should plan for in the months immediately ahead.

OUR correspondents have commented upon the meagreness of the newspaper attention to the Annual Meeting of the Library Association. The opportunities which the affair would seem to afford for press comment are probably exaggerated by librarians, who quite naturally think their matters to be of importance. They are, but they have never been spectacular and are not likely to be so. What the modern pressman wants is a story ; he is not often interested in passive matters nowadays, and more than one editor has admitted that he is not concerned with what people say but with what they do. We may console ourselves to some extent by believing that our quiet work is more enduring than much that is greeted with fanfares. Snippets of facts about high issues of books, parsimony, or believed extravagance, are things that do find their way into the small paragraphs of daily papers. These may be good for our movement but there is no certainty that they are. The only sure advertisement of a library, publicly or otherwise maintained, is the quality of the service it can give.