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The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the relative impact of different Tony Award nominations and wins on the financial success of a Broadway theater production, as defined by the length of the production’s run.

Cox hazard regression was used to identify the impact of Tony Award nominations and wins (time-varying covariates), while controlling for several time-invariant covariates: type of production (play or musical, revival or original Broadway production), production costs (operationalized via the cast size), the month and year of opening, and initial marketing success (defined as the percentage of first full week’s tickets sold).

The award with the strongest relationship with production longevity was the Tony Award for Best Musical (nomination OR=0.566, p=0.110; win OR=0.323, p=0.020). Several other awards had a relationship with production longevity, but most were not statistically significant.

The limitations include the low statistical power for many time-varying covariates and the cumulative impact of multiple awards was not investigated. Future researchers interested in the Broadway industry should not combine Tony Awards because of the varying impact on economic outcomes for a production.

This study is the first to investigate all 22 Tony Award nominations and wins and their individual impact on an economic outcome. This paper includes the study’s raw data and SPSS syntax to comply with open science practices. The author encourages readers to replicate the analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the influence that newspaper, blog and social media sources of information about a play have on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket to a theatrical production.

Respondents saw two advertisements and one review for theatrical productions. The authors randomly varied the version of each advertisement and review so that information regarding the production appeared to originate from a newspaper, blog or social media site. The authors asked respondents to rate the professionalism of the review and advertisements and how likely they were to purchase a ticket. The authors also collected demographic information.

The authors found that newspapers, blogs and social media had similar influence on respondents’ willingness to purchase a ticket. Respondents also viewed the blog-based play review as being as professional as the review from a newspaper. However, respondents were more likely to say they would purchase a ticket to a well-known play than a new play. Female respondents were more willing to purchase a play ticket.

Implications for marketers include the usefulness of non-traditional media (e.g. blogs, social media) in promoting a play – especially for new plays. Theater critics will find that their opinions are equally influential, regardless of whether the medium of publication is traditional (e.g. a newspaper) or digital (e.g. a blog). Principal limitations are the artificiality of a true experiment and an overly simplistic pricing method in the study.

Professionals selling tickets to theatrical productions should use favorable quotes and responses from social media and blogs when marketing tickets because audience members trust that these sources of information as much as newspapers. Internet-based theater critics should appreciate that they are perceived as being as reputable as newspaper-based critics.

Research on theater advertising is extremely limited (especially outside of Broadway), as are studies on the influence of theater critics. The study adds to this meager body of research and provides needed practical guidance to theater marketers.

In October we begin our librarianship studies, if we are still students, and never in library history have so many facilities, in whole and in part‐time schools, been available. It still remains for all library authorities to accept the idea that it is a natural and proper thing for every entrant into library work to come into it, either by way of a library school, or with the intention (and the opportunity) of attending a library school, with aid equivalent to that given in the training of the teacher. In October, too, we note that eight meetings of librarians, three of them week‐end conferences, have been arranged. This is indeed activity and we hope that attendances in all cases justify their organizers. At a more general level, the Election of the Library Association Council occurs this month. Here is a real obligation upon librarians—to elect a Council representative of every library interest, general and special, public and otherwise. Next year, the Centenary Year of public libraries, is a great one for them; we want the best Council for it. We want, however, non‐public librarians to participate in its celebrations.

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.

With this number the Library Review enters on its ninth year, and we send greetings to readers at home and abroad. Though the magazine was started just about the time when the depression struck the world, its success was immediate, and we are glad to say that its circulation has increased steadily every year. This is an eminently satisfactory claim to be able to make considering the times through which we have passed.

Procuring best value should be one of the key objectives in public sector construction projects. Best value depends upon sound “selection” strategies which ensure that the outlined project procurement objectives, including client/user demands are met. Examples of “best value” procurement are presented to demonstrate their usefulness and acceptance in principle. Further conceptualizations of various aspects of best value and the “dominance vectors” influencing the ultimate value definitions are developed, in accordance with basic public sector procurement principles. Presents a structured best value based contractor selection framework to optimize realizable value in public sector construction projects.

MID‐SEPTEMBER, with the summer gone irrevocably, allows the librarian a fortnight of reflection time before the strenuous interests of autumn and winter become active. That is, if he returns stimulated in body and mind from a reasonable holiday and does not become immersed immediately in the almost compelling series of meetings of librarians arranged for the last fortnight of September and for October. For the student members the Birmingham Summer School remains in session until the 20th; for their elders ASLIB will confer at Swanwick from the 19th to 21st, and, in the same week‐end at Buxton, there will be the conference on library work for children; and, a week later, 26th to 29th, the University and Research Section will occupy Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. The arrangements for October are set out in the L. A. Record. Their profusion embarasses many librarians. It is only natural that, as librarianship extends, every organized part of it becomes keenly aware of its individuality and, as the profession today grows more and more conference‐minded, few can keep step, save in a general way, with more than a fraction of the meetings arranged. Some effort is made by the L.A. and by librarians to preserve and strengthen the basic unity of all librarianship, but otherwise the diversity is great.

THE recruitment, training and payment of librarians are matters of import, not only to the youngest entrant into this work, but also to established librarians and to the public. Although training was initiated forty years ago by the then chief librarians of libraries, it has in recent years become a very intimate concern of library assistants and of parents and others in charge of young folk who are considering librarianship as their possible career. After thirty years of experiment, with minor changes, the Library Association syllabus has now been completely remodelled. We have also reached a stage when we can consider to some extent, although not adequately, the effect upon the profession of our whole‐time library school of university rank. The various phases of the work must therefore be of great interest to every reader of The Library World; and this is sufficient justification for the special attention which the subject receives in this number. The first question must always be the economic and human one. Is the profession sufficiently large, and of enough importance, to justify parents in allowing lads or girls, who have gone through a secondary or even university training, to devote themselves to the somewhat protracted study which is prescribed for the work? Then, again, is the training now placed before the would‐be aspirant to library work a wise training? Is it too special, too technical, too scholarly; indeed, is the library authority, whoever and wherever it may be, asking too much for what most people regard as the very simple work of managing and distributing and exploiting books?

THE regular search for the good book for the child will continue so long as there are children's libraries. A recent report on an enquiry has reached us from Bethnal Green and follows the familiar lines of getting the children to vote on what they like; with the result that the “William” books, which should be making all concerned in their production a fortune, head the list, and the simple “small”‐child books, the Milly‐Molly, Mandy series, come next. The field surveyed was small, for “William” polled only 34 votes; only 800 of the 6,000 children registered as borrowers participated. It is questionable if such enquiries, however much they interest us as librarians, can effectively help to improve child reading, unless some method of finding and providing high literature in the type the youngsters prefer can be devised. Mr. George F. Vale prefaces his brief list of books chosen with a really interesting discussion on the subject, but a quotation from it indicates part of the problem. He writes, speaking of Tom Sawyer, Alice and The Wafer Babies, “What elements go to make a permanent children's book is one of the mysteries of literature, but evidently these books possess some quality which overrides all the chances and changes of time. It is not merely the appeal of a good story; there are many better stories than The Water Babies. The secret seems to be some mysterious rapport between the author's mind and that of the readers, an ability to see and to think upon the level of the child mind.” All this is true, but it is more than that, we think; it is the power of recording what is, has been or may be, within the child's own range of experience; that is, it is true in that it realises the conditions of the world of childhood. It is curious, and possibly significant, that a book for children in these enquiries means a story. An enquiry is overdue into the type and quality of non‐fiction read by them, the sort of child who reads and in what circumstances: Real information here might reveal gaps and surpluses in book provision that are not now widely recognized!