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This study aimed to assess the rural libraries and information services for rural development in Delta State, Nigeria.

The study adopted both descriptive and exploratory research designs. Questionnaire, observation and structured interview guide were the major instruments for data collection. Total enumeration was used to gather data from respondents in 16 functional rural libraries in Delta State.

The study revealed the challenges that surround the rural people in accessing information in rural libraries. It showed that only 16 rural libraries were established and functional in 16 communities within the 25 local government areas. Findings also showed that the rural libraries were not able to fulfil their roles. It was evident that the information needs of the rural people which made them to access the library were not adequately met because of some hindrances such as inadequate up-to-date information materials, lack of awareness, illiteracy, language barrier, inadequate skilled personnel and inadequate infrastructure and facilities.

The important finding in this study is that rural libraries are the most relevant institution to disseminate information about government policies, inculcating reading habits and developing skill and knowledge of people. Therefore, underdevelopment of rural libraries and inadequate information sources and facilities will hinder access to information and development of the people who need them.

This research is the first of its kind to assess rural libraries and information services for the development of rural people in the 16 rural libraries in Delta State of Nigeria.

“Corporate planning” is the term which, perhaps more than any other, epitomises the adoption of business management techniques by the public sector. In Britain, with massive local government reorganisation in 1974, many librarians were forced to come to terms with such techniques whether they liked it or not. Of course, in its purest sense corporate planning applies to the combined operation of an entire organisation be it local authority, university, government department or industrial firm. However, in this paper I do not intend discussing “the grand design” whereby the library is merely a component part of a greater body. Rather, it is my intention to view the library as the corporate body. It is a perfectly possible and very useful exercise to apply the principles of corporate planning, and the management techniques involved, to the running of a library or group of libraries. Indeed, many librarians have already done this either independently or as their part in the corporate plan of their parent organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a methodological approach to analyse the strategic outliers and the multiple motivations in a contingent valuation used for a real policy case study.

The used approach rationalises the cross comparison of the overall different information levels obtained by the survey to outline a qualitative‐quantitative pattern of the relations between the rationale and other motivations of preference behaviours.

The paper found that no assumption or investigation tool used alone was sufficient to explain the respondents elicited preferences. The results confirm that those who are willing to pay also hold significant motives other than the rationale ones influencing their decisions.

The approach allows to reasonably rule the sharing‐out of true zero values from “protest zeros” avoiding the risk of arbitrarily excluding valid data from the CV analyses.

The approach may overpass the reasons behind the provision point mechanism; hence, the authors suggest to extend this procedure to divergent environmental contexts to verify the generality of the methodology.

The adopted procedure shows that the use of monetary estimates of ecological services to support sustainable decision processes can be acceptable if coupled with the multiple motivations that hold them.

Higher education in the Republic of Georgia has experienced a massive isomorphic transformation since the Rose Revolution of 2003 and continues to transform with aspirations toward Euro-Atlantic integration, compliance with the Bologna Process and as a reflection of the Europeanization of its higher education sector.

This literature review documents and analyzes literature published between 1991 and 2019 on the development of higher education in the Republic of Georgia from 2003 to 2019.

The findings reflect the evolving political landscape and aspiration for Euro-Atlantic integration against the backdrop of one of the most impoverished education systems in the world, as measured by percentage of gross domestic product spending. More explicitly, what findings have been reported in the international literature on Georgian higher education from 2003 to 2019?

The choice to review only English publications was deliberate and done after consultation with a leading Georgian scholar, who noted that the Georgian language publishing market is small and of varied quality; leading Georgian scholars most often seek to publish in English journals and books, and all technical and policy reports produced by the Minister of Education, NGOs and large international organizations (e.g. World Bank) are available in English.

This literature review documents and analyzes literature on the development of higher education in the Republic of Georgia from 2003 to 2019 as a reflection of the evolving political landscape and aspiration for Euro-Atlantic integration against the backdrop of one of the most impoverished education systems in the world, as measured by percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) spending. This unique political and economic history makes higher education in Georgia worthy of review.