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Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science and continued refinements place identification of patron’s needs and connection of those needs to library services of primary importance in libraries. Identifying and developing personas or user group descriptions helps to identify the unique nature of library patrons. Personas help librarians identify or create specific services for each patron persona. Understanding each library persona allows the library faculty and staff to prepare and to plan service delivery. The purpose of this paper is to develop personas for undergraduate students followed by the identification and development of personas for graduate students and faculty.

The identification and development of undergraduate patron personas engaged communications students, as part of their course work, to use a review of previous studies to develop theories of library patron personas. Each of the three groups within the communications class verified their initial persona theories using surveys, focus groups, interviews, observations and ethnographic methods. All personas from each group was further developed and refined into a final list and description of ten library personas. A principal components analysis helped to provide interconnections between the personas and estimate the percent of patrons each persona comprised.

The study identified ten personas (user groups) who use a wide variety of library services. Descriptions of personas enabled library faculty and staff to identify personas accessing their services, to further develop and refine current services and to create new services to meet the needs of patrons. A principle components analysis further facilitated the understanding of interrelations between the personas based on persona use of library services. Personas that had common needs or use patterns were grouped together to further understanding of patrons use patterns and needs. While an attempt was made to determine the percent of total patrons each persona was, evidence was found that indicated the fluid nature of personas in regards to library services. That is, as the patron needs shifted, so did their persona. Patrons moved from one persona to another to meet their shifting needs as the academic semester proceeded.

Personas have several practical implications for librarians. First, they enable librarians to reflect on provided services in terms of personas. This reflection enables library services to be refined to meet patron needs. Second, the interconnection between personas enables librarians to market other services. As a patron uses one service, librarians can point out related services that may be of interest or help. This is particularly important for new student orientation tours. Finally, matching the personas with other library trends and patterns assists librarians with the development of the library as a space suited to meet the needs of its patrons.

While the use of personas is common in communications, marketing and business, their development and use in academic libraries is quite unique. They become quite useful in associating library services to the patrons that use them. Strategic planning also uses personas as services are upgraded and improved or new services are created to meet more persona needs.

The USA’s higher education leaders and professional organizations have called for increased professional development programming at graduate colleges to better prepare US graduate students for their future careers. This study aims to investigate the demographic characteristics of graduate students participating in co-curricular professional development (PD) and sociocultural development (SD) programming at a graduate college at a large, selective and research-intensive public university in the Midwestern USA.

Using institutional data from six semesters, the authors examined the characteristics of students that attended the graduate college’s programs at one university. The authors analyzed which students were most likely to attend PD and SD programs using multinomial logistic regression models.

Female students, students from US historically marginalized racial groups, and US Pell Grant recipients (low-income students) were found to have a higher likelihood of attending both PD and SD programs at the centralized graduate college.

The findings will be of interest to graduate deans and educators who support graduate students. Further evaluative research on the usefulness of such programs at other institutions would help graduate colleges better understand the role they play in meeting graduate students’ needs.

The findings contribute to the understanding of the important role of the US graduate college in the development of graduate students. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study to evaluate the backgrounds of graduate students who pursue co-curricular PD and SD opportunities.

The aim of this article is to explain one of the interventions—known as Career Development Conferences—being made by the Training Services Division (TSD) of the Manpower Services Commission to help mature unemployed executives reorganise their careers. The activity includes a certain amount of counselling by counsellors and by peer groups and, since the activity is directed at mature individuals, a certain amount of self‐counselling.

The purpose of this study is to develop a model for business to business salesperson performance (SP) with a service ecosystems perspective.

To achieve the research aims, classical grounded theory was used. The data was gathered through in-depth interviews with 20 sales managers and main sales actors.

After coding and analyzing the data, salesperson institutional performance is introduced as a core category including three main dimensions of regulative, normative and cognitive-cultural performance. Multi-level factors determining SP are identified and performance results are introduced in a multi-level long term way. The sales actors, macro variables, actors’ orientations and sales method are introduced as circumstances, while salesperson stressors are presented as covariants deterring the fulfillment of salesperson’s activities.

This study focuses on the contributions of the salesperson in the alignment of institutional arrangements or the results of their being institutionalized, as well as determining the factors and variables affecting it.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) is a major new collaborative socio‐economic research programme involving five higher education institutions in Wales. This paper introduces the work of the WISERD data integration team and describes their plans for the development of an online geo‐portal. Their aim is to support WISERD researchers by providing a framework for integrating, managing and disseminating quantitative and qualitative socio‐economic data in Wales. This paper outlines the goals of this major project, discusses the concept of the WISERD geo‐portal and reports on initial investigations into geo‐portal development using free and open‐source (FOSS) software. The paper concludes with a brief summary of the future work of the WISERD data integration team.

Reference librarians in various library settings are often assigned responsibilities for training students, support staff, or other new professionals, a task for which they rarely have sufficient professional education. This bibliography recommends readings on topics that will assist reference librarians in understanding the philosophy of staff development. The readings listed here cover subjects such as: establishing an atmosphere that facilitates learning, assessing training needs, describing competent performance, writing clear and specific objectives, selecting appropriate training methods, maintaining skills and providing feedback, and evaluating the effectiveness of a training program.

The brewing industry in the Netherlands is an industry of great importance, and the brewers of lager beer in that country have established a first‐rate reputation in foreign markets throughout the world. Two kinds of lager beer are exported, one in cask, the other in bottle. It also appears from the official figures given in the Jaarstatistick for 1933 that a relatively large amount of beer is imported in casks. This seems to come mainly from Germany. There is no suggestion that this importation is part of the transit trade, and yet the quantity of the imported cask beer is considerably in excess of that which is exported. The number of litres imported each year from 1930 to 1933 are in round numbers as follows:—4 million in 1930, 4·3 million in 1931, 4 million in 1932, and 3 million in 1933. The exports of cask lager for these years are 3·8, 3·4, 2·5, 2 27 millions of litres. The nature of the beer so imported is not stated, it is returned simply as “beer,” but if the declared value is to be taken as any indication of quality, then we may say that the value of the imported cask beer is to that of the exported cask beer in the ratio of about two to three.

The purpose of this paper is to review the extensive and wide‐ranging published literature on the skills needed to get your point across effectively and succeed in the art of persuasion. It provides a structured, evidence‐based framework of learnable interpersonal skills. This framework can be used in training and development to describe current thinking and best practice in the essential skills needed to persuade others. It can be used by training and development professionals to help those they work with reflect on previous attempts at persuasion and prepare for future ones. It can also be used in training and development work to analyse and give feedback on role‐plays and presentations. The use of a structured, standardised and evidenced‐based framework increases the reliability and validity of the assessment process and, inconsequence, improves the quality of feedback.

The article begins by looking at previous research by the author showing that the frequency with which people at work use six influence strategies, and combine them to form various styles, is related to a variety of contextual variables. However, it concludes that, while a focus on strategies and styles, and their appropriateness to particular contexts, has much merit, it is inevitably limited. In particular, it lacks specificity and any notion of quality. The concept of “skills” overcomes such limitations and provides important additional insights, particularly when focusing on the skills involved in using “reason”, the most frequently used and least context‐specific of the six influence strategies, to convince other people at work. Skills are defined as abilities, expertise or proficiency acquired through learning or training. The skills described herein are “interpersonal” skills or skills that people need to interact effectively with others.

Seven skills people need to get their point across effectively and be successful in the art of persuasion are identified: be clear about “who”, “what” and “why”; target your case on the other person; search for common ground; keep it simple; appeal to “head” and “heart”; be calm and confident; and make it interactive.

The originality and value of this paper lies in the way in which it reviews previous theory and research on interpersonal influence, identifies seven specific skills from this literature review and provides a structured, standardised and evidence‐based framework of learnable skills. These findings have implications for anyone who needs to get their point across effectively and succeed in the art of persuasion, as well as training and development professionals working in this area. The conclusions complement other research carried out by the author and published in a previous edition of Industrial and Commercial Training, showing that influencing behaviour varies in different contexts and arguing that the art of successful influence involves using strategies and styles appropriate to the context.