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Paper discussing the promotion of library services in a specialist library in a voluntary organization, with background to the history of the information service and an outline of existing current awareness services, and posing the question of how, even with on‐going promotional activities and methods to encourage user participation in the running of their library, to encourage end user independence in such an information environment with limited user potential.

Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.

This paper seeks to analyse trade unions’ approaches to equal opportunities in Scotland, focusing on issues of: recruitment of membership from different groups; promoting diversity in post‐holding; and the role of “key equalities issues” in collective bargaining.

The paper draws on in‐depth interviews with equalities officers of 26 unions in Scotland. The analysis takes as its starting point the three models of equality policies identified by Rees: the “sameness”, “difference” and “transformation” models.

The paper argues that, although some equalities officers demonstrated a thorough understanding of the issues, union approaches to equalities in practice reflect the “sameness”, and to some extent “difference”, models: attacking direct discrimination and insisting that members should be treated the same, establishing some limited mechanisms to reflect on the different needs of groups, but being less able to tackle the underlying structural causes of inequality. It is suggested that unions need to develop a more sophisticated analysis of equal opportunities which fully reflects the differences between the experiences of groups of workers and which challenges the fundamental, structural inequalities within (and therefore seeks to transform) organisations and labour markets. A key element of this agenda must be the mainstreaming of equal opportunities within collective bargaining.

Further research is required on how unions are beginning to deal with the issues raised in the paper. The paper is also limited to the views of individual equalities officers – further research on local practice is required.

The findings will be of interest to organisations engaged in equalities work and unions seeking to develop policy and practice in this area.

The paper will add to the literature on unions’ approaches to equalities. It applies the Rees model to extensive new data, and is the first major piece of research to address these issues within the Scottish policy context.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Increasing use of the Internet has heightened awareness among the information community of the need to provide user friendly searching and navigation tools that lead to quality information. An essential part of gaining effective access to Internet resources is to provide an index of available items in order to save users time and network overload. Discussions on metadata are focused on the format of the record used as the basis for the index. Control of the vast number of resources of the Internet requires an appropriate record format (or formats) which will enable the resource to be adequately described and easily located; records must be compatible with an appropriate search engine which in turn would ideally be compatible with a search and retrieval Internet protocol and all components should conform to international standards. At present there are a number of formats which meet at least some of these criteria, each of which has its own strengths.

Quality, an abstract concept, requires concrete definition in order to be actionable. This chapter moves the quality discussion from the theoretical to the workplace, building steps needed to manage quality issues.

The chapter reviews general data studies, web quality studies, and metadata quality studies to identify and define dimensions of data quality and quantitative measures for each concept. The chapter reviews preferred communication methods which make findings meaningful to administrators.

The chapter describes how quality dimensions are practically applied. It suggests criteria necessary to identify high priority populations, and resources in core subject areas or formats, as quality does not have to be completely uniform. The author emphasizes examining the information environment, documenting practice, and developing measurement standards. The author stresses that quality procedures must rapidly evolve to reflect local expectations, the local information environment, technology capabilities, and national standards.

This chapter combines theory with practical application. It stresses the importance of metadata and recognizes quality as a cyclical process which balances the necessity of national standards, the needs of the user, and the work realities of the metadata staff. This chapter identifies decision points, outlines future action, and explains communication options.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the extent to which the CIPD's professional project can be successfully realised.

The study is based on a two‐fold literature review that analyses the professional project with reference to nascent professions. This review is then applied to the CIPD's qualification scheme through a documentary analysis of four key components of it.

Analysis suggests that whilst a high degree of professional closure has been achieved, the concomitant rise in professional and organisational status sought by the CIPD has not and is unlikely to do so in the future.

Whilst the arguments presented need further empirical study, our analysis suggests that the policy aims and initiatives advanced by the CIPD do not eradicate the tensions and ambiguities that have long characterised personnel roles.

This analysis questions whether the CIPD's professional standards are yielding the business skills and knowledge needed to be an effective business partner; seeing the advent of individual chartered status as an implicit recognition of the standards inadequacies in equipping its students appropriately.

The paper contributes to knowledge in two areas: firstly, the difficulties faced by emergent professions in a wider political economy that has witnessed the erosion of professional power. Secondly, that the ambiguities faced when managing people in a capitalist market economy will not be resolved by recourse to the unitarist and managerial approaches seen in the CIPD's professional programme.

Recommendations for increased resource sharing between libraries have been emerging from a range of sources in recent years. However, the majority of local library management systems currently in use do not inter‐operate, so resources are fragmented and there is no unified access. The situation is complicated by organisational and business issues. This was the basis for the fifth MODELS (Moving to Distributed Environment for Library Services) workshop, which explored more effective management of access and resource sharing, and the development of a supporting systems framework. The focus was on public library developments and cross‐sectoral cooperation. The paper develops some of the key issues, together with discussion of the emerging MODELS Information Architecture.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelations between the evolution of industrial relations (IR) and IR research in Poland in the historical context. Two questions are put forward: How was the evolution of the IR system in Poland influenced by the re-constitution of a particular model of the capitalism and the strategies and struggle of IR actors? How were the ways of approaching and theorizing IR influenced by the aforementioned evolution?

The paper draws upon academic literature, secondary data on actors and processes of IR as well as four expert interviews with the representatives of the first generation of IR scholars in Poland.

The paper suggests that the development of the IR system and the related scholarship can be divided into three phases: the pre-1989 period characterised by the lack of autonomous interests representation and rather limited IR research; the early development of the post-1989 IR system marked by the debates on the integrative role of IR as peacekeeping mechanism in the period of deep economic and political changes (1989-2004); the post-EU accession consolidation of the IR system characterised by the weakness of the IR actors vis-à-vis the state and increasing neo-etatist tendencies.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the relationships between the emergent models of Eastern European capitalism and the evolution of IR systems. It critically analyses the state of the discussion on the IR field Poland emphasising the relevance of political-economic factors as well as the ideology of “social peace” for both the evolution of the IR system in the country and the state of the IR debate.