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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the diverse issues that affect heritage projects during their lifecycle and in particular, why heritage-listed projects often fail to meet the delivery goals of time, budget, quality and scope.

This research was undertaken on a qualitative basis by conducting series of semi-structured interviews drawn from three case studies in SE Queensland. Qualitative research involves the evaluation of people’s experiences, feelings, social interactions, and the data gathered from this type of methodology is often varied and rich. A case study allows a researcher to test and generate theories based on real-world practice.

This paper presents the findings from a data collection exercise accomplished by conducting a series of qualitative case studies. Using a cross-case analysis approach, this paper highlights critical heritage project delivery issues and their causes.

The lessons learned from the study cases could be used in helping to prevent potential heritage project failures in the future.

The paper aims to bring greater awareness to practitioners and academics of the repeating issues that every heritage project is likely to face and offers some insight in how these may be mitigated.

With the increasing interest in public private partnership (PPP), there is a need to investigate the factors contributing to successful delivery of PPP projects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perceptions of respondents from Hong Kong, Australia and the UK on the importance of 18 such factors.

An empirical questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong and Australia. The survey respondents were asked to rate 18 factors which contribute to delivering successful PPP projects.

The findings from this survey were further compared with the results achieved by a previous researcher in a similar survey conducted in the UK. The comparison showed that amongst the top five success factors ranked by Hong Kong respondents, three were also ranked highly by the Australians and British. These success factors included: “Commitment and responsibility of public and private sectors”; “Strong and good private consortium”; and “Appropriate risk allocation and risk sharing”. Therefore, it can be concluded that there are certain common critical success factors for conducting PPP projects, irrespective of the geographical locations.

The findings presented in this paper have highlighted the most significant critical success factors which may be applicable to all jurisdictions, and also those which are specifically for Hong Kong and Australia. It is believed that the participants of future PPP projects can use these findings to maximize the success of conducting similar projects.

This paper sets out to present the findings of a study to investigate the reasons for implementing Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong (also commonly referred to as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), Australia and the United Kingdom. The survey respondents were asked to rate the importance of nine identified reasons for implementing PPP projects.

The findings of the top three ranks for each respondent group were investigated. Ranked top by the survey respondents in Hong Kong was “Private incentive”. Ranked second by all three groups of survey respondents was “Economic development pressure demanding more facilities”. Third in Hong Kong and first in Australia was “High quality of service required”. The reason “Inefficiency because of public monopoly and lack of competition” was ranked third by the Australian respondents. And finally ranked first and third by the British respondents was “Shortage of government funding” and “Avoid public investment restriction”. The rankings showed that in general those rated highly in the United Kingdom focused on financial elements whereas those rated highly in Hong Kong and Australia were more related to the overall performance of improving public projects.

These findings were believed to provide an idea of the possible reasons for implementing PPP projects, and as a result illustrate a clearer understanding of the process.

The purpose of this paper is to study the measures that enhance value for money (VFM) in public private partnership (PPP) projects from the findings achieved in a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong (also known as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) and Australia, and is compared to the results conducted by other researchers in the UK.

Respondents to the questionnaire were asked to rate 18 VFM measures in PPP projects.

The results found that the top five VFM measures ranked by the respondents from Hong Kong included: efficient risk allocation (allocating the risk to the party best able to manage it); output‐based specification; competitive tender; private management skill; and private sector technical innovation. The first and second of these VFM measures were also found to be ranked high by the respondents from Australia and the UK, indicating that these were true for these jurisdictions.

When the risks are handled well, less pitfalls are experienced and as a result VFM is more achievable. Hence, an efficient risk allocation is vital in determining whether VFM can be achieved in PPP projects. A clear output‐based specification can enable a more obvious project design and concept hence minimizing the possibility of delivering the wrong product for the user. Therefore, this measure is also important in determining whether VFM has been achieved for a PPP venture. Despite the interest in PPP, there is need for more systematic and in‐depth research to examine the measures that enhance VFM in PPP projects in Hong Kong.

In addition, this project also forms a comparative study for the use of PPP in Hong Kong, Australia and the UK.

As part of a comprehensive research study looking at implementing public private partnerships (PPPs), interviews with experienced researchers were conducted with the aim of realizing their views on private sector involvement in public works projects.

Amongst these interviews, five were launched with academics from Hong Kong and Australia, and two were conducted with legislative councillors of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region Government.

Findings show that Hong Kong and Australian interviewees had previously conducted some kind of research in the field of PPP. “Different risk profiles” and “private sector more innovative/efficient” were highlighted as the main differences between projects that were procured by PPP and traditionally. Other differences include risk transfer. In a PPP arrangement the public sector passes on a substantial amount of the project risks to the private sector, whereas in a traditional case the public sector would take the largest responsibility in bearing these risks. Another common feature of the private sector is that it tends to be more efficient and innovative when compared to the public sector; hence its expertise is often reflected in PPP projects. It was agreed that the key performance indicators for PPP projects were unique to individual projects. The critical success factors mentioned by both groups included “transparent process”, “project dependent” and “market need”. Because PPP projects tend to be large‐scaled costly projects, adequate transparency in the process is necessary in order to demonstrate that a fair selection and tendering process is conducted. A market need for the project is also important to ensure that the project will be financially secure and that the private sector can make a reasonable profit to cover their project expenditure.

The findings from this paper have enabled a comparative analysis between the views of researchers in two completely different jurisdictions. With the growing popularity to implement PPP projects, it is believed that the results presented in this paper would be of interest to the industry at large.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereinafter referred to as Hong Kong) is an international leading commercial hub, particularly in Asia. In order to keep up its reputation a number of large public works projects have been considered. Public‐private partnership (PPP) has increasingly been suggested for these projects, but the suitability of using this procurement method in Hong Kong is yet to be studied empirically. The purpose of this paper is to specifically consider whether PPPs should be used to procure public works projects in Hong Kong by studying the attractive and negative factors for adopting PPP.

As part of this study a questionnaire survey was conducted with industrial practitioners. The respondents were requested to rank the importance of 15 attractive factors and 13 negative factors for adopting PPP.

The results found that in general the top attractive factors ranked by respondents from Hong Kong were efficiency related: these included “Provide an integrated solution (for public infrastructure/services)”, “Facilitate creative and innovative approaches”, and “Solve the problem of public sector budget restraint”. It was found that Australian respondents also shared similar findings to those in Hong Kong, but the UK respondents showed a higher priority to those economic driven attractive factors. Also, the ranking of the attractive and negative factors for adopting PPP showed that on average the attractive factors were scored higher than the negative factors.

The results of this research have enabled a comparison of the attractive and negative factors for adopting PPP between three administrative systems. These findings have confirmed that PPP is a suitable means to procure large public projects, which are believed to be useful and interesting to PPP researchers and practitioners.

This paper aims to explore the range of free and inexpensive technologies that are available and have been simply implemented with practical and immediate benefits both for library staff and clients.

The paper demonstrates positive examples of integrating technologies such as blogs, wikis, RSS aggregators, podcasts, vodcasts, web conferencing, and instant messaging into library services and programs. The paper reports the take up of these technologies by public libraries nationally and internationally and examines Australian public library use and promotion of these services to their clients. Questions around the level of use or non‐use by public libraries are also explored.

The paper finds that these technologies have increased clients' interaction with and access to library services and collections. By providing information in various formats these technologies are meeting client's various and individual requirements, and reflect the increasing demand of services in virtual environments. A case study around the OPAL Training Project Emerging Technology course will examine library staff buy‐in and involvement in the development of new services and explore the difference these emerging technologies can make to our clients.

Emerging technologies provide librarians with a unique opportunity to substantially enhance user‐centred services and to facilitate and promote collaboration between libraries and their clients.

This paper aims to survey the web sites of the academic libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (USA) regarding the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.

The websites of 100 member academic libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (USA) were surveyed.

All libraries were found to be using various tools of Web 2.0. Blogs, microblogs, RSS, instant messaging, social networking sites, mashups, podcasts, and vodcasts were widely adopted, while wikis, photo sharing, presentation sharing, virtual worlds, customized webpage and vertical search engines were used less. Libraries were using these tools for sharing news, marketing their services, providing information literacy instruction, providing information about print and digital resources, and soliciting feedback of users.

The paper is useful for future planning of Web 2.0 use in academic libraries.

The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of open access (OA) repositories that have embraced Web 2.0 technologies. The main focus of the paper is to explore the occurrence of Web 2.0 tools used in the open repositories.

Repositories having English as one of the interface/content languages and indexed in Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) were selected and analyzed under different parameters.

A total of 1,499 open access repositories having English as one of the interface/content languages (75.82 percent of total OA repositories) are developed from 81 nations and only 61 countries have most of their repositories Web 2.0 enabled. About 57 percent (804) repositories make use of Web 2.0 tool/s, 43 percent (608) have yet to avail benefits of Web 2.0 tools while 5.8 percent remain inaccessible (87) during the study period. Though the USA leads in terms of OA repositories, the percentage of Web 2.0 enabled repositories is higher for the UK (75.27 percent) as compared to the USA (51.08 percent). Really Simple Syndication (RSS), a syndication tool, is found in the majority of repositories (736, 91.54 percent) followed respectively by Social Bookmarking and ATOM (syndication tool) in 228 and 160 repositories

Repositories have to develop a more productive Web 2.0 outlook in order to converge with an interactive learning model. A follow-up study can explore the use of Web 2.0 tools in open access repositories. The impact of Web 2.0 tools on the associated activities of the users as well as repository administrators can also be carried on. How Web 2.0 tools have helped to improve the services of the repositories and how they have influenced the information seeking behavior of users in the open access repositories can also be researched.

The research is the first of its kind and can act as an opener to the issues related to use of Web 2.0 in open repositories.