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The Fred Meyer Charitable Trust, Division of Library and Information Resources for the Northwest, has funded five research projects that will demonstrate the potential of various techniques and new technologies to facilitate communications and resource sharing in the Northwest. The experience and information derived from these projects will be of value to all libraries and information centers, not just those conducting the research. The techniques and technologies being evaluated include: simultaneous remote searching, which uses inexpensive terminals and modems; a mini‐computer‐based union list and resource sharing network (INFONET); networks using facsimile machines; networks that transmit documents that have been optically scanned into bit‐map image files; and use of optical character recognition equipment to capture ASCII machine‐readable information that can be broadcast by television stations to user‐sites. Contributors of reports are: Verl Anderson, Linda Brander, Millard F. Johnson, Jr., Bruce Morton, and Steve Smith. Summary observations are provided by Joseph R. Matthews.

The Student Christian Movement (SCM) arose from the formal integration in one unit of a number of different strands of student‐run evangelical religion in British Universities(1). The Jesus Lane Sunday School in Cambridge, staffed by students, had been open since 1827. David Livingstone's visit to Cambridge in 1858 inspired the Church Missionary Union and in the same period Cambridge students began a Daily Prayer Meeting. In 1877, the students brought their various efforts together into the Cambridge Inter‐Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU). Similar movements were developing in other colleges. The first major links were created by the “Cambridge Seven”. Even at the end of the period of the “Saints” (as Wilberforce and his fellow evangelicals were known), more than three‐quarters of the men who volunteered for foreign missions were artisans, shop‐boys, labourers and apprentices(2).

Ten years ago Robert Bellah offered his symbolic realism perspective as an alternative to the classic social science treatment of religion that involved explaining religion by showing its “real” purpose. Bellah argued that religious symbols express reality and are not reducible to empirical propositions. In some sense religion is sui generis; it is true. It is interesting to note that Bellah had great hopes of theologians and sociologists speaking the same language through symbolic realism (1970: 94) and further to remember that this sort of convergence has characterised only one end of the theological spectrum. Only those liberal theologians who abandoned large parts of their traditional beliefs in “demythologising” exercises accepted the value of dialogue. What Bellah failed to see was that his symbolic realism was itself reductionist in that the assertion “religion is true” (1970: 92) contradicts, for example, the assertion that “Rastafarianism is true”. For all his opposition to reductionism of the grosser kind, Bellah's treatment of religion still involves replacing the accounts given by believers with some other story about what religion “really is” and as such cannot but be offensive to all believers who claim a unique possession of the truth.

Religion has long been seen as a conservative force in society. This view has informed the rhetoric and theory of many reformers and social philosophers in Europe in recent centuries, where religious institutions often historically developed a rather too comfortable accommodation with the state and ruling class. Religion came, therefore, to be viewed as essentially supportive of the status quo and hostile to change. Marx was one of the reformers and social philosophers to voice just such a view. For him, religion was primarily an ideological tool by means of which the ruling class legitimated its position, and mystified those whom it exploited by conveying the conception that the prevailing social order was not simply a product of the ruthless exercise of a monopoly of power and profit in the interest of a particular social group, but rather a divinely ordained order. Religion, then, further undermined the capacity for protest and rebellion among the disadvantaged, by promising equity and justice in a life hereafter, contingent in part upon accepting the injustice and inequality of the life here below.

Increasingly, librarians are being offered the same information from a range of different sources and through a variety of different delivery channels. Many Journal titles, for example, are now available as print subscriptions, on CD‐ROM, via online hosts and from on demand document delivery services. As part of the UK Electronic Libraries programme, the authors have developed a simple decision support tool which allows a Library Manager to compare the total cost of acquiring a given item of information from each of a number of different sources. The costing approach employed was developed by the Task Force on MA/HEM — Methodology for Access/Holdings Economic Modelling — and the system was implemented using Microsoft Excel.

The Looking Glass simulation was developed by behavioural scientists at the Centre for Creative Leadership, North Carolina. Looking Glass, Inc is one of the best known examples of a realistic behavioural simulation. Such simulations allow managers to be studied and trained in situations closely approximating their natural environment. A condensed version of an article which follows one manager through the simulation is presented, giving an insight into the process of self‐assessment and self‐discovery that can take place.

This paper aims to analyze the political background of the Hawthorne criticisms, positing that the political atmosphere of the 1940s, influenced by the decline of the new deal liberalism and the rise of the conservative coalition, stimulated scholars to challenge the Hawthorne studies.

Primary sources used in the guise of archival commentaries, journal articles and other published works (books and book chapters). Secondary sources are offered to provide additional insight and context.

The findings show that politics unnecessarily discredited Mayo. As a result, contemporary scholars failed to recognize Mayo’s work as an important part of the basis for modern management theory.

The purpose of the research is to look into the political context of the Hawthorne studies to understand how management practice and research is impacted by ongoing political issues.

To date, no work has fully accounted for or understood the political climate of the time in considering the criticisms of the Hawthorne studies. By more fully understanding the political context, scholars can reevaluate the weight they place on the then criticisms of the Hawthorne studies.

Vanco’s Group HR Manager, Steve Mansfield, explains how the telecomms company was able to deliver a consistent benefits package to employees covering all of its regions.