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The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory practice‐based framework that identifies strategic goals, objectives, and activities for each of the five areas of modern‐day reference, namely – access to electronic resources, user instruction, library commons, outreach liaison, and virtual reference – with a focus on meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals during the coming out process.

The paper highlights findings for progressive reference services in the twenty‐first century based on qualitative studies and action research conducted by two openly gay library and information science professionals in the University of Tennessee‐Knoxville during the period 2005‐2011.

Findings reveal elements of the proposed framework geared towards meeting the needs of LGBTQ patrons during the five phases of coming out – self‐recognition, sharing with other LGBTQ people, telling close friends/family, positive self‐identification, and integration of LGBTQ identity.

Minimal research has been done involving reference services for LGBTQ patrons. This paper's original value is in its extended vision of traditional reference that focused solely on information provision to a more encompassing conceptualization and implementation that designs, delivers, and assesses reference services in a community engagement context to develop fair and equitable services for LGBTQ patrons.

Discusses strategies for implementing modern knowledge management curricula in academic programs for adult professionals. References the perspectives of multidisciplinary curricula covering information and society; multimedia and hypermedia; electronic information design and presentation; and infrastructure development and implementation. The analysis assumes the increasing involvement of highly trained professionals in adult education programs; the continuing growth of corporate universities in scope and breadth; the integration of corporate programs with traditional colleges and universities; and the increasing use of the Internet as a mechanism to coordinate, supplement, support, and integrate learning experiences. Advances historical and pedagogical methodologies as a means to provide perspective and structure for program development and future research. References an information technology (IT) program for mid‐career information managers in Northern California and serving the high‐technology area known as Silicon Valley.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the prevalence of the use of discipline matrices across large US police departments, as well as to compare the structure and content of such matrices.

The study employs a two phase approach. Phase I consisted of a brief online survey of a stratified, random sample of police departments with 100 or more sworn police officers and asked about whether or not the agency employed a discipline matrix. Phase II consisted of requesting a copy of the matrix and corresponding materials from all agencies who indicated they employed a matrix, and analyzing the content of those matrices.

In total, 37 percent of responding agencies said they are using or are planning a discipline matrix, and the authors obtained a matrix from 32 police departments. The structure of the matrices and recommended discipline varied widely across these departments, indicating a lack of consensus on the development of this relatively new accountability tool.

The survey focussed on large police departments and the response rate was somewhat lower than other past national surveys.

Discipline matrices are employed to a greater extent than is implied by the current research literature. The lack of consensus and variability in policies around matrices indicates a need for more research which could contribute toward the formation of a model policy in this regard.

To date the prevalence of discipline matrices across US police departments was unknown, and very little was known about how they were structured or what comprised their content.

This paper aims to serve two main purposes. In the first instance it aims to it provide an overview addressing the state‐of‐the‐art in the area of activity recognition, in particular, in the area of object‐based activity recognition. This will provide the necessary material to inform relevant research communities of the latest developments in this area in addition to providing a reference for researchers and system developers who ware working towards the design and development of activity‐based context aware applications. In the second instance this paper introduces a novel approach to activity recognition based on the use of ontological modeling, representation and reasoning, aiming to consolidate and improve existing approaches in terms of scalability, applicability and easy‐of‐use.

The paper initially reviews the existing approaches and algorithms, which have been used for activity recognition in a number of related areas. From each of these, their strengths and weaknesses are discussed with particular emphasis being placed on the application domain of sensor enabled intelligent pervasive environments. Based on an analysis of existing solutions, the paper then proposes an integrated ontology‐based approach to activity recognition. The proposed approach adopts ontologies for modeling sensors, objects and activities, and exploits logical semantic reasoning for the purposes of activity recognition. This enables incremental progressive activity recognition at both coarse‐grained and fine‐grained levels. The approach has been considered within the realms of a real world activity recognition scenario in the context of assisted living within Smart Home environments.

Existing activity recognition methods are mainly based on probabilistic reasoning, which inherently suffer from a number of limitations such as ad hoc static models, data scarcity and scalability. Analysis of the state‐of‐the‐art has helped to identify a major gap between existing approaches and the need for novel recognition approaches posed by the emerging multimodal sensor technologies and context‐aware personalised activity‐based applications in intelligent pervasive environments. The proposed ontology based approach to activity recognition is believed to be the first of its kind, which provides an integrated framework‐based on the unified conceptual backbone, i.e. activity ontologies, addressing the lifecycle of activity recognition. The approach allows easy incorporation of domain knowledge and machine understandability, which facilitates interoperability, reusability and intelligent processing at a higher level of automation.

The comprehensive overview and critiques on existing work on activity recognition provide a valuable reference for researchers and system developers in related research communities. The proposed ontology‐based approach to activity recognition, in particular the recognition algorithm has been built on description logic based semantic reasoning and offers a promising alternative to traditional probabilistic methods. In addition, activities of daily living (ADL) activity ontologies in the context of smart homes have not been, to the best of one's knowledge, been produced elsewhere.

The chapter introduces the reader to select language of human sexuality and the definitions and characteristics of some key terms related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ+), identifies different theoretical perspectives of human sexuality and sexual orientation, and discusses select LGBTQ+ theories and concepts in a historical context that library and information science (LIS) professionals should consider while performing their roles related to information creation–organization–management–dissemination–research processes. It helps better understand the scope of what is LGBTQ+ information and traces its interdisciplinary connections to reflect on its place within the LIS professions. The chapter discusses these implications with the expectation of the LIS professional to take concrete actions in changing the conditions that lack fairness, equality/equity, justice, and/or human rights for LGBTQ+ people via the use of information. Important considerations in this regard include the need for an integrative interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ information model, growth of a diversified LGBTQ+ knowledge base and experiences, holistic LGBTQ+ information representations, LGBTQ+ activism, and participatory engagement and inclusion of LGBTQ+ users.

The valuation of artworks is challenging since their value encompasses economic, social and cultural values. This study examines two specific questions about the economics of Indian art market: first, the determinants of the price of paintings by Indian artists and second, the risk and return characteristics of investment in Indian paintings. The authors also analyze the role of local context for both questions.

This study uses 8,865 paintings that are auctioned between January, 2000 and June, 2018. A generalized additive model (GAM) is employed to identify the determinants of auction prices and estimate art market price index.

The results indicate that the price of paintings in the Indian market is impacted by both global and local factors. Consistent with the previous research, this study finds that provenance, literature, living status of an artist, artist reputation, auction house, location and gender determine prices. However, the unique behavior of artwork medium and art movement affiliation in the Indian art market signifies the importance of local context in the valuation of artworks. An analysis of the second aspect of the study, i.e. risk and return characteristics of art investment, suggests that though overall art market returns are not lucrative, there are sub-sections in the market that outperform stocks and other assets. Further, the Indian art market shows a weak or negative correlation with other assets, thus making it a good candidate for a diversified portfolio. One of the important findings of this study is that artworks created by artists associated with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) command a significant price premium over all other artworks. Moreover, the average return on investment in paintings by artists affiliated to the Bombay PAG is not only significantly better than other art movements but also higher than all other art assets.

This study contributes to the growing literature on the economics of art market by providing a comprehensive analysis of the economics of Indian paintings. This research highlights the importance of local factors in price determination and on the risk and return characteristics of art investment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the most comprehensive study of the economics of Indian painting market and the first study to identify the relationship between Indian art movements and prices of paintings and returns on investment in paintings.

This paper delineates a literature review on fire-induced progressive collapse on structures and the effect of high temperature on structures and elements. After the occurrences of fire in the World Trade Center in the USA, the researchers started concentrating on the progressive collapse that happens due to high temperature. Currently, most of the researchers are working on fire-induced progressive collapse on structures using high-temperature behavior on materials which are used for construction. The researchers have been doing an intensive study to find a better strategy to prevent the building from structural fire damage or collapse with available codes and guidelines throughout the world. This paper aims to provide a better understanding and analytical solutions on the basis of the recent works done by researchers in fire-induced progressive collapse and methods adopted to find the collapse mechanism.

This paper is written by studying different literature papers of 109 related to progressive collapse on structures and fire-induced progressive collapse.

The behavior of structures due to high temperature and collapse conditions due to fire in different scenarios is identified.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how the structure can withstand high-temperature conditions in our day-to-day lives.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss South Africa’s trajectory of socio-economic development since the advent of democracy a quarter century ago. This is done through a critical discussion and review of major policy interventions that have been implemented to achieve the goal of racial justice. The author argues that while the advent of democracy brought about significant opportunities for social justice, socio-economic development in South Africa has been characterised by increasing wealth and income inequality, which has undermined the cause of racial justice. The key argument the author advances in the paper is that the decline in the power resources of the working class and the poor accounts for the neoliberal turn in economic policy in South Africa.

The paper relies on primary policy documents of the government and on primary political and policy documents of the African National Congress and its political allies such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party. The author also reviews the extensive literature on the subject of development policymaking in the new South Africa.

The main finding is that the advent of democracy a quarter century ago and the policy interventions by the government have brought about social progress in some areas. However, the colonial and apartheid domination still shapes access to social-economic opportunities in South Africa. In anything, income and wealth inequality has increased since 1994. The goal of racial justice appears far from being achieved.

The key implication arising from the research is that strengthening political organisations of the working class and the poor is critical to attaining the goal of social equity. This is particularly true in a context where elite interests in the state and the corporate sector have been ascendant for the past two decades.

What is original about the paper is that it is one of the first papers that assess the progress that has made in bringing about racial justice 25 years after the advent of democracy in South Africa. Furthermore, the paper uses the power resources theory to explain the dearth of pro-poor social reform in South Africa. This is a departure from the dominant approach, which explains the adoption of neoliberalism in South Africa as either inevitable due to poor economic performance or an outcome of the sell-out by the ANC political elite.

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.