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This article describes the fundamental principles of an electronic digital computer with special reference to a simple serial machine which is taken for illustration. Short descriptions are given of a mercury delay line memory, the binary number system, circuits for performing arithmetical operations and a simple computer together with its input and output equipment. A simple example is considered and the coding and method of solution in the computer are described. Finally, the requirements for a full scale computer are discussed. A bibliography is given.

This study aims to establish that the relationship between the risky indebtedness behavior (RIB) of consumers and their attitude toward adopting buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) is not immediate but is mediated through impulse buying. Moreover, it explores how perceived risk moderates the association between the attitude to adopt BNPL and its adoption intention.

This study used the existing theoretical and empirical evidence to propose a model and validated it using the data collected from 339 young shoppers in India. Analysis of data is conducted using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The study results show that consumers’ RIB is not directly related to their attitude toward BNPL. However, impulse buying fully mediates this relationship, influencing the attitude toward BNPL. Impulse buying and attitude serially mediate the relationship between RIB and BNPL adoption intention. Further, in the context of BNPL, perceived risk strengthens the attitude-intention gap.

This study advises policymakers and BNPL providers to carefully assess users’ creditworthiness to prevent those already in debt from entering into a detrimental loop.

This study provides novel perspectives on consumer’s RIB and BNPL within the Indian context. The study additionally identifies the mediating influence of impulse buying and the moderating effect of perceived risk on BNPL adoption intention.

In manual order picking systems, temporary workers are often employed to handle demand peaks. While this increases flexibility, it may hamper productivity, as they are usually unfamiliar with the processes and may have little experience. It is important for managers to understand how quickly inexperienced workers arrive at full productivity and which factors support workers in improving their productivity. This paper aims to investigate how learning improves the performance of order pickers, and how their regulatory focus (RF) and monetary incentives, as management actions, influence learning.

Data was collected in two case studies in controlled field-lab experiments and statistically analysed. This allowed evaluating the validity of hypotheses through an ANOVA, the calculation of correlation coefficients and the application of regression models.

A monetary incentive based on total order picking time and pick errors has a positive influence on order picking time, but not on pick quality. The incentive influences initial productivity, but not the learning rate. A dominant promotion-oriented RF increases the effect of the incentive on initial productivity, but it does not impact worker learning.

This study contributes to behavioral and human-focused order picking management and supports managers in setting up work plans and developing incentive systems for learning and productivity enhancement, considering worker RF.

This work is among the few to empirically investigate the effect of monetary incentives on learning in interaction with RF. It is the first study to investigate these concepts in an order picking scenario.

THIS is the month when librarians and library workers everywhere, their holidays over, turn to their winter plans. There are, however, some interesting events to take place before the darker and more active months come. The first is the meeting at Oxford on September 21st and subsequent days of the Federation International de Documentation. This will be followed by and merge into the ASLIB Conference, and there is in prospect an attendance of over three hundred. Our readers know that this organization produces and advocates the International Decimal Classification. It is not primarily a “library” society but rather one of abstractors and indexers of material, but it is closely akin, and we hope that English librarianship will be well represented. Then there is a quite important joint‐conference at Lincoln of the Northern Branches of the Library Association on September 30th— October 3rd, which we see is to be opened by the President of the Library Association. Finally the London and Home Counties Branch are to confer at Folkestone from October 14th to 16th, and here, the programme includes Messrs. Jast, Savage, McColvin, Wilks, Carter, and the President will also attend. There are other meetings, and if the question is asked: do not librarians have too many meetings ? we suppose the answer to be that the Association is now so large that local conferences become desirable. One suggestion, that has frequently been made, we repeat. The Library Association should delegate a certain definite problem to each of its branches, asking for a report. These reports should form the basis of the Annual Conference. It is worthy of more consideration.

[In view of the approaching Conference of the Library Association at Perth, the following note on the Leighton Library may not be inopportune. Dunblane is within an hour's railway journey from Perth and has a magnificent cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, which is well worthy of a visit.]

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

THE Library Association has begun the Centenary of the Public Libraries Acts' celebrations with an attractive booklet which, we suppose, is now in the hands of many, if not most, of our readers. We are to have, we understand, an official, documented history which should be worthy of the occasion; that may come later. The booklet, however, A Century of Public Library Service, should be made available in every library. To be effective it should go into every household—a manifest impossibility on any means at the command of the Library Association, since the booklet itself puts the registered borrowers alone at twelve millions, and if there are five people to a household, nearly two and a half million copies would be required. If it goes to every service point that will involve 23,000. These figures illustrate the difficulties of our publicity. The machine is too vast for all its parts to be reached. We suppose it will go to every librarian and every member of a library committee—about 6,000 copies—and that may be a good plan, although that would be sending it to those who are, we hope, converted. As for the book itself, it follows the lines of the paper read by Mr. L. R. McColvin at Eastbourne last year; it tells our history; shows by graph and figure the vast increase in supply to meet demand; deals successively with the various parts of the service; and surveys the future. Its value is as an assessment of book stock, staff and relative success and failure and the relation of these to the resources, financial and otherwise, of libraries. In 1949 we are spending £1,650,000 on books, if our calculation at 2s. 9d. per borrower is correct. This, for the whole population—say 45 millions—is not lavish. These and many other useful points are indicated. The work is for domestic consumption, to serve as a basis for self‐examination. On the physical side it is attractive, is printed on plate paper, which brings out brightly the twenty‐five illustrations and a graph, which show pleasant samples of libraries and readers. As a curious point we find no sign in any of the pictures that there are men librarians in public libraries.

What is the Purpose of the Library? The question is exercising not only the English librarian but his American colleague, and we notice that one of our contemporaries there has given some space to this fundamental question. The simple reply to the question would seem to be “To provide the community with the books it needs.” Such a reply, however, is likely to be regarded as an over‐simplification. Nevertheless, we may adhere to it because the operative word in our definition is “needs” and not “wants.” To discover the needs of a community, which are as manifold as there are people in it, is in itself a formidable task; to supply the books which are likely to satisfy them is a life‐work worthy of the ablest of men. These considerations should never be lost sight of in the attempts which occur from time to time to define a programme of library work. We are the last to believe that our province should be a limited one and we deprecate any attempt to thwart the enthusiasm of any librarian, young or old, who has something constructive to contribute. Our definition, however, is indisputable. The addition to it that the librarian makes was defined years ago in Brown's Manual, which declared his work to be the exploiting of books. A programme then, if there is to be one, is merely of the best methods of exploitation by good technique, tactful advertisement, and a personal service which radiates willingness. The librarian must always beware of the many attempts that are made to harness the library to particular movements, shibboleths or partisan‐ships: the so‐called programmes which endeavour to define a purpose for the library will often be found to be influenced by one of these three evils. The matter thus stated seems trite enough, but it would seem that there is necessity for its fequent re‐statement.

This paper discusses the lives and contributions of five key members of the Management History Division: Arthur G. Bedeian; Alfred A. Bolton; James C. Worthy (now deceased); Charles D. Wrege; and Daniel A. Wren. Each has proved himself a teacher and intellectual leader in matters of fundamental concern to management history.