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To report the highlights of the 2007 American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

Provides a brief review of the conference program on technology issues in libraries.

This summary of library program with presentations and information. The presentations focus is on new technologies and their applications in a variety of library environments. The program offered a wide variety of timely presentations that were on new and emerging technologies and the application to the library environment.

Provides descriptions of programs and presentation of interest to library and information professionals.

Introduction‐Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Do you have trouble concentrating in meetings? Do you find yourself forgetting what you just read? Do you constantly fight a losing battle at “getting organised”? Do you become “depressed” too often?

In 2005, the Qualitative Methods in Psychosocial Health Research Group (QMiPHR) at the University of Nottingham was established as a forum to bring together academics, researchers and practitioners with an interest in qualitative methods. The group has provided colleagues in nutrition, psychiatry, psychology, social work and sociology with a forum for discussion around the question of how qualitative research is able to contribute to understanding mental health and the development of evidence‐based treatment. As a group, we asked ourselves where we stood in relation to the use of qualitative methods in mental health. While we are unified in our view that qualitative research is important and under‐utilised in mental health research, our discussions uncovered a range of views on the underlying philosophical stance of what it means to be a qualitative researcher in mental health. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of our discussions and our view that as qualitative approaches have become more widely accepted they have largely been assimilated within the mainstream ‘medical model’ of research. In this paper, we call for researchers to re‐engage with the philosophical discussion on the role and purpose of qualitative enquiry as it applies to mental health, and for practitioners and decision‐makers to be aware of the implicit values underpinning research.

Recent years have seen the emergence of the recovery perspective. However, as yet there is no overriding theoretical framework which supports our understanding of recovery and its counterpart, stigma. In large part this is because discourses concerning mental health remain dominated by the medical model and an illness ideology, even though there is growing interest in more socially defined determinants of disability. We propose symbolic interaction as a theoretical framework which might address this shortcoming. Published literature concerning the use of this approach in the mental health field is reviewed and we discuss the implications and ways forward for future research on mental health, stigma and recovery. In particular, we consider how this approach can help identify ways in which contemporary practices and conventions might inadvertently hinder recovery and contribute towards a disabled self.

The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 prompted a significant debate on corporate governance and shareholder empowerment. A question arises as to whether shareholders ought to be further empowered to have a greater influence over the companies’ activities. Yet, it is not self-evident that shareholder empowerment ensures better-run companies’ corporate activities. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine, identify and explain the corporate regulation forms and control collectively to evaluate the effectiveness of shareholder empowerment fully.

To do so, this paper sets out a comparative analysis approach between two jurisdictions, the UK and Delaware in the USA. The paper further addresses by undertaking three case studies; Barclays Plc which illustrated the Comply or Explain role, AVIVA (2012) that concentrated on the impact of the shareholder revolt, and the case of Hills Stores Co. v. Bozic (2000), which involved a claim brought by shareholders on the grounds of a breach of fiduciary duty.

This paper argues that the shareholder empowerment theoretically provides an effective means through which corporate activities can be regulated. However, to do this, account must be taken that a distinction should be made between long-term and short-term investors to encourage shareholder engagement by responsible long-term investors. Furthermore, the shareholders can exercise their powers effectively and influence the Board’s decision to award executive compensation.

This paper offered two distinct contributions: assessing whether in times of crisis shareholder empowerment represents a way to regulate corporate activities and by assessing the distinction between the perception of shareholder empowerment and the reality in practice.

A request for proposals (RFP) may be required by purchasing laws and regulations of a local jurisdiction. A library may choose to use the RFP to determine the capabilities and limitations of a number of possible systems. However, the RFP can be badly conceived, constructed, and applied, resulting in few responses by vendors and disappointment, lost time, and wasted resources for the library. Advice is presented on when to use the RFP, how to construct it, and how to use it to achieve maximum success: selection and implementation of the product that best meets a library's specific needs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new psychometric tool for the assessment of quality of life in adult informal carers.

Two empirical studies are reported. Study 1 describes the psychometric development. An initial pool of 100 items was constructed and completed by 385 carers across the UK contacted through carers ' centres. Principal components analysis was then conducted. In study 2, a further 101 carers took part; all completed the scale prior to the intervention and again post-intervention, allowing the authors to test utility as a tool to assess change.

Using principal components analysis with study 1 data the number of items was reduced to 40 that assessed eight domains; support for caring, caring choice, caring stress, financial implications, personal growth, sense of value, ability to care and carer satisfaction. In study 2 it was found that respondents scored higher post-intervention compared to pre-intervention.

There are many carers who are not recognised by services.

The AC-QoL promises to be a useful addition to the armoury of psychometric tools available for use with adult carers by both practitioners and researchers in health and social care, as well as of use to carers themselves and to policy makers in determining what interventions might be funded and further developed.

The paper shows that the AC-QoL is original because of its development from both carers and professional perspectives, breadth of coverage, multi-component structure and focus on both negative and positive outcomes.

With mounting complexity and interdependence and the increasing pace of change in organizational environments, leadership agility has become a much‐needed competency. This article aims to report research findings that appear in a new publication.

The study on which this article is based included a total of 604 subjects. Of these, 384 were participants in previous research studies that identified each manager's “stage of ego development” as measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT). The other 220 managers, who provided in‐depth case studies, were clients, interviewees, or evening MBA students, whose stage of ego development was also assessed.

This study identified five levels of leadership agility, each of which corresponds to a stage of adult ego development. It also resulted in the discovery of four leadership agility competencies (context‐setting, stakeholder, creative, and self‐leadership agility) and eight underlying capacities that evolve as managers develop from one level of leadership agility to another.

Fruitful areas for future research include: expanding knowledge about how leaders develop from one level of agility to another, identifying the competencies and capacities associated with the level beyond synergist, and better understanding the stages or levels of organizational development that parallel the levels of leadership agility.

This research has significant implications for an “integral” approach to leadership development that places emphasis both on professional skills needed in complex, rapidly changing environments and on the mental and emotional capacities that underlie these skills.

Managers and leadership development professionals both can benefit from the fresh perspective presented in this article.

Nowadays, organizations have to resist the rising competition more effectively than their competitors and take a step closer to excellence in offering the product to customer demands. To do this, organizations need agile leaders in order to implement agility principles and practices. Especially in the health sector, health managers must be agile because of the specific characteristics of health services. From this view, this chapter aims to develop a theoretical agile leadership model in healthcare organizations. First, the authors define agile leadership and its sub-dimensions based on previous literature. Then, the antecedents and outcomes of agile leadership have been analyzed. “Drivers of agile leadership,” “organizational factors affecting agile leadership” and “individual factors affecting agile leadership” are identified as the antecedents of agile leadership. “Organizational outcomes” and “individual outcomes” are determined as the outcomes of agile leadership in the health sector.