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This article explores the potential of an emerging group of farmers in Kenya, namely the growing segment of urban-based medium-size farmers, often called “telephone farmers”. To what extent do they benefit from an emerging ecosystem to support them in operating their farms, and what does that mean for the Hidden middle of agricultural value chains, the actors between the farmers and consumers? Unlocking the potential production of telephone farmers will require more services from collectors, traders, transport firms, the storage facilities, wholesalers and processing units and retailers. Ultimately, optimized telephone farm production benefits the business of Hidden middle value chain actors, increases incomes and jobs and improves food security.

Based on a survey and in-depth interviews a profile of the telephone farmers is given and their role as innovators is analyzed. The Latia Resource Centre (LRC) provides assistance to medium-size farmers, like the telephone farmers, helping them to prepare business plans and use modern technology and contributing to an emerging ecosystem providing support to all farmers.

The article analyzes the medium-size telephone farmers. It documents the contributions of this new agricultural actor to developing value chains and a dynamic ecosystem. The paper profiles the telephone farmers first and then identifies what they need and the support they receive. The emerging innovative ecosystem impacts agricultural productivity and production and hence the development of value chains. Small farmers gain access to opportunities offered by telephone farmers, working for them as outgrower or farm worker.

The authors used a small sample of 51 farmers and covered only a two-year period.

Small farmers are being helped through the emerging eco-system and farm labor acquire skills, which they can also you on another or their own farm.

Based on the analysis an even more effective ecosystem is suggested and policy recommendations are formulated before the conclusion is drawn that these medium-size farmers contribute to innovation diffusion, inclusive value chain development and food security and are becoming part of this expanding, innovative ecosystem. Following the debate on food security the results suggest to pay more attention to the development of telephone farmers given their role in developing agricultural value chains and innovative ecosystems.

Emerging literature from developing countries speak volumes of innovative application of mobile telephones to support the economic activities of the micro and small enterprises (MSEs). Invariably the technology is improving the efficiency of these operatives and boosting their competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contributions of mobile telephones to the development of micro and small enterprises in less urban and rural areas of Ghana.

The methodology used was basically questionnaire administration and was augmented by focus group discussions to collect data from MSEs in six locations in the country. The sample size was 600 enterprises and the selection was based on the International Standard Industrial Code.

The majority of the respondents were positive about the impact of mobile telephones on their businesses in terms of ease of contact with customers and suppliers, reduced cost of transportation and profitability. However, there is the urgent need for the development of innovative services to meet the changing needs of the enterprises.

Generally, these findings will contribute to the emerging empirical evidence of the strategic role mobile telephones are playing in the economies of developing countries.

The American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) divestiture and the resulting changes in telephone company regulation in the United States have allowed telephone companies to diversify into non‐regulated businesses including the online information services industry. How and when US telephone companies enter potential information markets is determined in large part by the changes in regulation that have occurred and will occur over the next few years.

To explore and evaluate the evidence about the value of using telephone surveys, especially in market research for a library.

A critical summary and review of the literature in this field.

This paper demonstrates that there are five major reasons for using this method of surveying customer preferences: response rates are higher; data can be analysed sooner; the cost of surveys is lower than alternative methods; calls can be monitored for quality; and the telephone offers the benefits of spontaneity.

The paper contains extensive information on “best practice” of telephone surveying including designing the questionnaire and conducting the interview. There is information on getting a representative sample, plus coping with “no answers”, unlisted numbers and answering machines.

Library managers with a commitment to using innovative techniques for market research will find telephone surveys offer a useful and cheap alternative to other survey methods. No previous paper has examined the use of, and the value of, telephone surveys in libraries.

Telephone directories have been an integral part of most public and academic libraries for nearly a century. Telephone directories represent an anomaly among library collections; known to virtually all users, they nevertheless often go unrecognized when librarians discuss reference sources. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine the history of telephone directory collections; second, to describe and analyze a survey of telephone directory collection use.

In the Spring 1992 issue of Reference Services Review, Douglas Ernest, Joan Beam, and Jennifer Monath noted that “Telephone directories have been an integral part of most public and academic libraries for nearly a century. Telephone directories represent an anomaly among library collections; known to virtually all users, they nevertheless often go unrecognized when librarians discuss reference sources.” After the break‐up of the AT&T telephone monopoly in 1984, the process of acquiring telephone directories became more difficult and expensive. Seven regional holding companies, called the “Baby Bells,” were created to provide competition for the equipment and services that were once dominated by “Ma Bell.” The regional Bell companies began to charge each other for directories; as a result, the regional telephone companies had to pass on the expense to customers. It is still common for a regional Bell to provide libraries with directories of in‐state white pages, but to charge for areas outside the state, separate yellow pages within the state, and independently published telephone directories. Telephone directories, once provided free of charge to libraries to reduce the workload of operators, are now in competition with the fee‐based service of directory assistance.

The only comprehensive list of British medical libraries hitherto available has been that in The Aslib directory 1928, and there is an extended account of those in London in Reginald Rye, The students' guide to the libraries of London (3rd ed., 1927), pp. 362–77. The new list, here put forward, is intended to bring the information from those two books of reference up to date, after nearly twenty years. British libraries are briefly listed among ‘Medical libraries outside North America’ in the Medical Library Association's A handbook of medical library practice, ed. Janet Doe, Chicago, American library association 1943, chapter 1, appendix 2, pages 41–64. The meagre information in that list, if contrasted with the detailed documentation of American and Canadian libraries in successive issues of the American medical directory, accentuates the need for us to know ourselves better. Several, perhaps many, medical librarians have had to compile lists of kindred libraries for their own convenience. A list which I had thus prepared seemed to Aslib to offer adequate basis for a Directory of British medical libraries, and in order to complete it Aslib issued a questionnaire in the autumn of 1944 to libraries known to possess medical collections and to hospitals, medical societies, and medical institutions throughout the British Isles. The information obtained from the generous response to this questionnaire is epitomized in the list which follows. I am responsible for all omissions and errors and I hope that those who detect any will supply corrections and additions so that this preliminary list may be revised and become a definitive Directory.

This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also aims to pay attention to what they do not talk about, what is found in the silence, especially with new technology when much can be taken for granted. This latter is, according to Foucault, even more important to understand.

The research draws on empirical research through 11 semi‐structured interviews and interviews with five focus groups, comprising between four and eight care assistants in each group. The interviews were with three women and three men between 25‐70 years old, five female public sector middle managers and care assistants from five focus groups at social services departments in the north of Sweden. A Foucauldian approach is adopted to interpret the findings and explore how their locations within the circuits of socio‐technical networks engender uncertainty with mobile technology. The present spread of IT reinforces a belief that people are integrated into the circuits of socio‐technical networks.

The findings suggest, on the one hand, that new technologies like mobile communication can be used to organise our everyday lives, whilst, on the other, there are risks with the new technologies, which can discipline discourses.

These issues are discussed from a sociological and informatics perspective.

The aims of this study are to review the literature examining the arguments for and against the telephonic qualitative research interviews, to develop criteria for assessing when the use of the telephone is suitable in qualitative research and if suitable to offer detailed strategies for the effective use of this data collection instrument.

The study is a thematic analysis of the literature, informed by the researchers’ experiences using the telephone, computer-based audio and face-to-face interviews for an accounting research project involving 50 semi-structured interviews with managers.

The study identifies five criteria to determine the suitability of using the telephone in qualitative research interviews. In addition, the study offers a set of detailed strategies on what to do before, during and after a telephonic qualitative research interview.

The study can assist qualitative researchers in deciding when to use the telephone and how to use it effectively.

The study builds on the limited prior research and provides a more complete list of strategies on the effective use of the telephone in qualitative social sciences research. These strategies are a synthesis of existing studies and observations drawn from the author's study, which examines the work of organisational managers. In comparison, prior studies have been based on research projects that explored sensitive personal issues and emotive experiences not always related to managerial work.

The purpose of this chapter is to provoke thinking about the directions in which the travel survey toolkit should move in the near future based on the author's personal experience and as an outcome of the Travel Survey Methods conference. The chapter begins with a brief historical review that attempts to show some of the major elements of change that have occurred in travel survey methods over the past 40–50 years. A more detailed review is provided about developments over the past 10–15 years. The chapter then explores a number of emerging challenges, including telephone contact of potential respondents, computer-assisted surveys, Internet surveys, mixed-mode surveys, the impacts of language and literacy and the potentials of mobile technologies. Based on this, the chapter then considers future directions that should be pursued. The chapter suggests that it has been changes in survey methodology that have, in the past, sometimes enabled and at other times led to changes in modelling paradigms, and that this may be an appropriate time for travel survey methodology again to enable changes in modelling paradigms. A speculative specification of a new household travel survey that makes use of a number of these developments is then offered. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks that issue a challenge to the travel survey community to think ‘outside the box’ and foster change and improvement in the accuracy and representativeness of travel surveys.