Search results

Green Light was developed to enable service providers to implement the National Service Framework for Mental Health (NSF MH), and asks how good your mental health services are for people with a learning disability. A multi‐agency user and carer project in Hampshire has evaluated and improved the quality of existing service provision for adults with learning disabilities who also have a mental health problem.

This is a comprehensive list of books, some pamphlets, and a few sound recordings about or by Ronald (and Nancy) Reagan. Collections of photographs and cartoons as well as biographies, political commentary, speeches, quotations and even recipes are represented. Omitted are books in which there is only brief mention of him. The bibliography was compiled in connection with a major exhibit on Ronald Reagan at the Colorado State University Library. It is the author's intention to continue to collect Reagan materials.

In my article on the New World of Work I alluded to three stages of business development and to their implications for work and employment. Via the ‘creative re‐integration of business’, I also conjured up a new world of business, where ‘intrapreneurs’ and ‘enablers’ came together with managers and entrepreneurs, and with consultants and craftsmen. In this follow up piece I want to focus on ‘Creative Re‐integration’, as our next step in business development. As a result, I shall be: • making the case for ‘Business Development’ as a new and vital, though hitherto neglected framework, for thinking about organisations • drawing together the economic, social and technological threads that are converging upon us, resulting in a genuinely new world of business • citing examples of innovative moves, within major corporations, towards creative re‐integration.

We live in an age of change, unbalanced change. One computer generation succeeds another at the virtual drop of a hat. No sooner have we digested the silicon‐chip than our appetites are whetted with bio‐technology. The rate of technological progress, in the industrialised world is quite shattering. By comparison organisational change is proceeding at a snail's pace. A thousand years ago organisations, that is the church, the government and the army, were formed on hierarchical lines. In other words, there were those who ruled and those who were ruled. Things have changed but slowly since. Our major organizations are still run along largely hierarchical lines. But there are changes in the wind.

Are states effectively managing contracting and procurement activities? Are they striking the right balance between central administrative control and empowerment through delegation? How effective is training and monitoring? How do these practices compare to the principles of best practice? What role will information technology play in the future for procurement and contracting? As part of the Government Performance Project, budget, procurement, and contracting managers in 48 states were surveyed, providing descriptions of their procurement and contracting practices. There are numerous developments that speak to the practical details of contemporary public management. Five key findings are (1) information technology needs are challenging states, with some responding well, but others struggling, (2) in most states staff training needs to be improved, (3) restrictions prohibiting “best value” purchasing need to be removed, (4) states can learn from and improve practices by partnering with other governments and private organizations, and (5) most states use a hybrid of both centralized and decentralized management structures when it comes to contracting and procurement.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

Describes the random growth of specialist libraries within the BBC and their survival in the 1970s. The nature of the post of head of these multifarious services is considered, and the question of employing qualified librarians or experienced news personnel is discussed. Retention policies and harmonisation of services are discussed, and the microfilm method adopted for archiving news and programme information is described.

THE centenary celebration is that of the apparently prosaic public library acts ; it is not the centenary of libraries which are as old as civilization. That is a circumstance which some may have overlooked in their pride and enthusiasm for the public library. But no real librarian of any type will fail to rejoice in the progress to which the celebration is witness. For that has been immense. We are to have a centenary history of the Public Library Movement—that is not its title—from the Library Association. We do not know if it will be available in London this month; we fear it will not. We do know its author, Mr. W. A. Munford, has spent many months in research for it and that he is a writer with a lucid and individual Style. We contemplate his task with a certain nervousness. Could anyone less than a Carlyle impart into the dry bones of municipal library history that Strew these hundred years, the bones by the wayside that mark out the way, the breath of the spirit that will make them live ? For even Edward Edwards, whose name should be much in the minds and perhaps on the lips of library lovers this month, could scarcely have foreseen the contemporary position ; nor perhaps could Carlyle who asked before our genesis why there should not be in every county town a county library as well as a county gaol. How remote the days when such a question was cogent seem to be now! It behoves us, indeed it honours us, to recall the work of Edwards, of Ewart, Brotherton, Thomas Greenwood, Nicholson, Peter Cowell, Crestadoro, Francis Barrett, Thomas Lyster, J. Y. M. MacAlister, James Duff Brown and, in a later day without mentioning the living, John Ballinger, Ernest A. Baker, L. Stanley Jast, and Potter Briscoe—the list is long. All served the movement we celebrate and all faced a community which had to be convinced. It still has, of course, but our people do now allow libraries a place, more or less respected, in the life of the people. Librarians no longer face the corpse‐cold incredulity of the so‐called educated classes, the indifference of the masses and the actively vicious hostility of local legislators. Except the illuminated few that existed. These were the men who had the faith that an informed people was a happier, more efficient one and that books in widest commonalty spread were the best means of producing such a people. These, with a succession of believing, enduring librarians, persisted in their Struggle with cynic and opponent and brought about the system and the technique we use, modified of course and extended to meet a changing world, but essentially the same. Three names we may especially honour this September, Edward Edwards, who was the sower of the seed; MacAlister, who gained us our Royal Charter ; and John Ballinger, who was the person who most influenced the introduction of the liberating Libraries Act of 1919.

The concept of company culture is now playing an ever‐increasing role in the continuing endeavour to work towards ever better company management, particularly in the industrial field. This monograph reviews the history and development of both national and company cultures, and then goes on to demonstrate the significance of a culture to proper company management. Well‐managed companies will have both a “quality culture” and a “safety culture” as well as a cultural history. However, it has to be recognised that the company culture is subject to change, and effecting this can be very difficult. Of the many national cultures, that of Japan is considered to be the most effective, as is demonstrated by the present dominance of Japan on the industrial scene. Many industrialised nations now seek to emulate the Japanese style of management, but it is not possible to copy or acquire Japan′s cultural heritage. The text is illustrated by a large number of practical examples from real life, illustrating the way in which the company culture works and can be used by management to improve company performance.