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Every letter which begins ‘Thank you for your inquiry of …’ is a waste of the typist's time — and that means her employer's money. With dictation and typing accounting for anything up to 35 per cent of office costs, Geoff Tyler outlines the practical benefits of current editing techniques — or word processing as it has come to be known.

I am using the word ‘publications’ in a broad sense, to cover the many bits of paper with inscriptions on them which are produced in quantity and distributed to the library's public. Most of them are book lists of one kind or another—subject lists, bibliographies, reading guides, library bulletins and the like—but there are other categories too, such as recruitment material, leaflets on the use of the library, plans of the library, annual reports, and even the miscellaneous forms used by or to the public.

The user interface, in broad terms, is the medium through which the user and the information come together. The types of searches a public access catalog (PAC) can perform are defined by the indexing strategy and retrieval software. The way the user's interest is communicated to the retrieval software and the way the results are communicated to the user is, by a more narrow definition, the interface software. Both the kinds of searches that can be performed by a variety of CD‐ROM PACs and how their workstations are used to accomplish the searches are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the two main existing text input techniques based on “eye gestures” – namely EyeWrite and Eye-S – and compare them to each other and to the traditional “virtual keyboard” approach.

The study primarily aims to assess user performance at the very beginning of the learning process. However, a partial longitudinal evaluation is also provided. Two kinds of experiments have been implemented involving 14 testers.

Results show that while the virtual keyboard is faster, EyeWrite and Eye-S are also appreciated and can be viable alternatives (after a proper training period).

Writing methods based on eye gestures deserve special attention, as they require less screen space and need limited tracking precision. This study highlights the fact that gesture-based techniques imply a greater initial effort, and require proper training not only to gain knowledge of eye interaction per se, but also for learning the gesture alphabet. The author thinks that the investigation can drive the designers of gaze-controlled writing techniques based on gestures to put more consideration on the intuitiveness of gestures themselves, as they may greatly influence user performance in the first stages of the learning process.

This is the first study comparing EyeWrite and Eye-S. Moreover, unlike other analyses, the investigation is mainly aimed at assessing user performance with the three text entry methods at the inception of the learning procedure.

An information system is the result of a hierarchy of decisions—Who are the system users? What are their information needs? What formal services will be offered to them? Through what media will services be provided? How will these media be produced? At every point there are alternative answers to these questions.

Describes a study to measure the quality of service provided by food‐poisoning surveillance agencies in England and Wales in terms of the requirements of a representative consumer ‐ the egg producing industry ‐ adopting “egg associated” outbreak investigation reports as the reference output. Defines and makes use of four primary performance indicators: accessibility of information; completeness of evidence supplied in food‐poisoning outbreak investigation reports as to the sources of infection in “egg‐associated” outbreaks; timeliness of information published; and utility of information and advice aimed at preventing or controlling food poisoning. Finds that quality expectations in each parameter measured are not met. Examines reasons why surveillance agencies have not delivered the quality demanded. Makes use of detailed case studies to illustrate inadequacies of current practice. Attributes failure to deliver “accessibility” to a lack of recognition on the status or nature of “consumers”, combined with a self‐maintenance motivation of the part of the surveillance agencies. Finds that failures to deliver “completeness” and “utility” may result from the same defects which give rise to the lack of “accessibility” in that, failing to recognize the consumers of a public service for what they are, the agencies feel no need to provide them with the data they require. The research indicates that self‐maintenance by scientific epidemiologists may introduce biases which when combined with a politically inspired need to transfer responsibility for food‐poisoning outbreaks, skew the conduct of investigations and their conclusions. Contends that this is compounded by serious and multiple inadequacies in the conduct of investigations, arising at least in part from the lack of training and relative inexperience of investigators, the whole conditioned by interdisciplinary rivalry between the professional groups staffing the different agencies. Finds that in addition failures to exploit or develop epidemiological technologies has affected the ability of investigators to resolve the uncertainties identified. Makes recommendations directed at improving the performance of the surveillance agencies which, if adopted will substantially enhance food poisoning control efforts.

Existing entrepreneurship literature has provided mixed evidence as to whether resource providers discriminate against female-led innovative start-up ventures in their resource commitment decisions either in terms of the likelihood or conditions of resource provision. While some studies revealed evidence indicative of negative discrimination against female entrepreneurs, others have provided evidence suggestive of positive discrimination. In light of these divergent findings, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more nuanced and integrative approach to studying gender biases in entrepreneurial resource provision with greater attention paid to both moderating contingency factors and mediating mechanisms.

The authors develop a conceptual model and empirically testable propositions describing whether, how and when entrepreneurial resource providers are likely to under-, over- and equivalue female-led innovative start-up ventures relative to equivalent male-led start-up ventures. The model applies not only to institutional or private investors as providers of financial capital to start-up ventures as discussed extensively in extant entrepreneurship literature but also to prospective employees as providers of human capital and prospective consumers as providers of money in exchange for an entrepreneurial product or service. The authors discuss the gender-typing of the entrepreneur's core product/service offering as a key contingency factor likely to moderate the proposed relation. The authors further delineate the importance of what they refer to as the “first”- and “second-order” mediating mechanisms underlying the hypothesized relation between resource provider evaluations of the male versus female founder-CEO, the attractiveness of his/her start-up venture and the (conditions of) resource provision to their start-ups.

Building on social-psychological theories of descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes and extant entrepreneurship literature, the authors establish that gender biases are likely to occur because of resource providers' perceptions of women entrepreneurs at the helm of male-typed start-up ventures to be less competent and agentic, as well as less warm and other-oriented than equivalent male entrepreneurs leading male-typed start-up ventures. The authors discuss the implications of such gender-biased evaluations for the application of stricter performance standards to female-led-male-typed start-up ventures and the likelihood and conditions of resource provision to their companies. The authors further discuss why and when female founder-CEOs of a female-typed (gender-neutral) start-up venture are likely to be overvalued (equivalued) compared to equivalent male founder-CEOs. The authors also develop propositions on additional contingency factors and mediators of the gendered evaluations of founder-CEOs and their start-up ventures, including resource providers' “second-order” gender beliefs, the high-cost versus low-cost resource commitment, individual differences in gender stereotyping and the perceived entrepreneurial commitment of the founder-CEO. The authors conclude by suggesting some practical implications for how to mitigate gender biases and discrimination by prospective resource providers.

Discussing the implications of descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes on evaluative decisions of entrepreneurial resources providers, this study advances not only the women's entrepreneurship literature but also the more-established scholarship on the role of gender stereotypes for women's advancement opportunities in the corporate world that has traditionally viewed entrepreneurship as the solution for women fleeing the gender-stereotype-based discrimination in the corporate setting to advance their careers.

The Friden Flexowriter was acquired by AERE Library primarily as a better method of producing a greater number of catalogue cards and lists with less clerical and typing effort, and to provide basic records of documents which might be used at any time in the future with little additional labour.

IN the current issue of the journal of the Institute of Practitioners in Work Study, Organisation, and Methods one of its Members, a Mr. E. Cule Davies, plausibly argues that ‘professional standards’ are interdependent with what he terms ‘practical results’. Mr. Davies cites a notional case of a company inviting a ‘specialist’ (the quote marks are his) to improve productivity in a given section and who gave their own professional work study practitioner the same objective to attain.

This study was initiated in order to develop a system for made‐to‐measure (MTM) pattern generation with special reference to computer‐aided design (CAD) applications. Recognition of the relationship between body figuration and pattern construction is essential for the production of MTM clothing with good fit. By linking theory and practice, a methodology has been developed for research in this field from female figure typing through sizing, pattern design construction and grading to pattern alteration. The study is divided into three parts. In the first part, the background to women's sizing systems and categorisation of female figure types is discussed, and a new system of size codes and size charts is proposed.