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This study aims to understand whether entrepreneurial alertness is a relevant determinant in creating opportunities in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

To this end, qualitative research was undertaken, specifically the case study method. The study context was formed of four SMEs (cases) located in an inland region of Portugal. The data-collecting instrument was an individual interview held with the owners managers of the chosen firms, and the data treatment technique was content and thematic analyses.

The results obtained reveal that entrepreneurial alertness is always present in the SME entrepreneurs/business people’s daily lives and clearly creates good business opportunities not yet observed by the competition.

This study seeks to help SME owners managers to understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurial alertness and understand the importance of this determinant for their firms’ success.

This study is innovative as it helps to characterise and understand entrepreneurial alertness by showing its importance for SMEs in creating valuable opportunities and achieving success.

Background: Democratic societies thrive when citizens actively and critically engage with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. Not only can such practices result in more effective choice-making, but they can also lead to widespread support for progressive beliefs, such as social justice. Yet with western societies in the midst of environmental, social and political crises, it seems more pertinent than ever that citizens become “ideas-informed”.

Methods: Drawing on a survey of 1,000 voting age citizens in England, this paper aims to provide insight into the following: (1) the current “state of the nation” in terms of whether, and how, individuals keep themselves up to date with regards to new ideas, developments and claims to truth; (2) the impact of staying up to date on beliefs such as social justice; (3) the factors influencing people’s propensity to stay up to date, their support for value-related statements, as well as the strength of these influencing factors; and (4) clues as to how the extant “state of the nation” might be improved.

Results: Our findings indicate that many people do keep up to date, do so in a variety of ways, and also engage with ideas as mature critical consumers. There is also strong importance attached by most respondents to the values one would hope to see in a progressive and scientifically literate society. Yet, as we illustrate with our structural equation model, there are a number of problematic network and educational related factors which affect: (1) whether and how people stay up to date; and (2) the importance people ascribe to certain social values, irrespective of whether they stay up to date or not.

Conclusions: Suggestions for the types of social intervention that might foster “ideas-informed” democracies (such as improved dialogue) are presented, along with future research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to construct the linkage between libraries and up-to-date news. This study developed a system to recommend libraries’ resources to those daily news readers who are interested in the topics of the target news. The analysis of experiments results served as the reference for the development and improvement of linking libraries’ resources with other web resources.

Up-to-date news were gathered through the news feeds to make the integration with the libraries’ records. In task 1, the libraries’ records were linked and recommended to the target libraries’ records which are of the same topics. In task 2, the system aimed to find the relevant libraries’ records for target news. Three recommendation methods were compared in both tasks to find the most effective approach to the system.

Experiment results showed that: at first, in task 1, the system can assign the libraries’ records of the related topics effectively; second, in task 2, the recommending system can obtain a satisfied recall hit rate through human evaluation. Therefore, regarding the popularity of the daily news online, the linkage and recommendation with the libraries’ resources can increase the visibility of the libraries’ resources and eventually promote the information consuming in libraries.

The authors have confirmed, using three matrix factorization methods, that weighted matrix factorization used in the libraries’ records recommendation system, could achieve better performance than the other two. Based on the research, the libraries could incorporate the online news and libraries’ resources in practice.

To increase the visibility and promote information consuming of libraries, this study proposed a novel method to construct the linkage between library and up-to-date news. The results of data analysis indicate that recommendation of libraries resources through the daily news can achieve effective performance. Thus, it can be inferred that the research results of this study are representative and have practical values in real world practice.

Background: The ideas-informed society represents a desired situation in which: (1) citizens see value in staying up to date, and; (2) citizens regularly keep themselves up to date by actively, openly and critically engaging with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. As a result, it is hoped citizens become increasingly knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions, and better positioned to support new progressive norms and beliefs. Yet despite these potential benefits, a substantive proportion of the population do not value staying up to date, nor attempt to do so.

Methods: With this research project we seek to identify whether the theoretical lens of anomie can account for why “ideas refusers” do not engage with ideas, as well as provide clues as to how they might be encouraged to do so. To explore the possible impacts of anomie on ideas-engagement we conducted four online focus groups, interviewing a purposive sample of ten individuals who previously indicated they were ideas refusers.

Results: Our findings identify eleven themes which seemingly account for why ideas refusers do not currently engage with ideas. Of these, ten are related to anomie, including themes which encapsulate feelings of frustration, anxiety, confusion and powerlessness regarding the complexities of modern society.

Conclusions: We also identify three areas of future focus that might help the ongoing development of the ideas-informed society. These are: (1) the more positive and relevant reporting of ideas; (2) supporting “healthy” face-to-face engagement with ideas; and (3) supporting effective ideas engagement through social media.

Background: Ideas always have and always will change the world; with ideas-engagement enabling individuals to become more knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions and better positioned to re-align their values in response to new progressive norms and beliefs. Given these potential benefits, of primary interest is how citizens can be most effectively encouraged to engage with new ideas.

Methods: With this study we test the efficacy of two approaches designed to enhance citizen’s perceptions regarding the value of ideas-engagement. Specifically, we recontextualise a previously undertaken small-scale randomised control trial designed to stimulate states of either curiosity or pragmatic prospection amongst two randomly allocated groups of respondents. Our target variables involve the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date, as well as to four related attitudinal variables. Our target audience is the voting age population of England.

Results: 515 participants took part in the experiment, with 269 receiving the curiosity stimulating intervention and 246, the prospection intervention. Our findings suggest that, by the end of four weeks, only the intervention designed to promote pragmatic prospection had significantly impacted on the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date. It also positively impacted the value-scores for one of the secondary attitudinal variables (relating to the importance of supporting physical and mental-health).

Conclusions: While this study provides useful insight regarding ideas-engagement, further work is needed. In particular, future studies will require a larger sample, so as to ascertain the impact of these approaches on “ideas refusers”. Also required is the inclusion of a control group to provide a definitive counter factual. Furthermore, since positive changes in attitudes towards ideas-engagement also ideally leads to changes in behaviours, questions are also needed to examine the sources of ideas respondents subsequently engage with (or not) as a result of these interventions.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by Tony McSean, Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription to VINE is £10 per year and the subscription period runs from January to December.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by the Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the news and policies of the British Library. The subscription for VINE in 1981 will be £20 for UK subscribers and £23 for overseas subscribers — the subscription year runs from January to December and VINE is available in either paper or microfiche format.

Awareness of developments taking place in Africa is essential for non‐African economies, commercial interests, and investors; and also for governmental, diplomatic, and political interests. Reference librarians may find themselves faced with more and varied questions concerning African affairs and current events, and may be asked to supply more than just general answers about Africa. This article presents resources for developing an understanding of African affairs, and keeping up‐to‐date with African economics, governance, and development issues on a day‐to‐day basis.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.