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Today’s graduate education should provide students with technical specialization and professional skills to holistically prepare them as genuine leaders, ready to address today’s complex and ethical dilemmas in the workplace. Inclusion of professional development complements their technical specialty by providing opportunities to develop successful, self-aware, authentic leadership within their fields. One way to develop these skills is through an interdisciplinary, online leadership development course. This study examines the effectiveness of an online leadership course in building authentic leadership skills over five academic semesters. Scores on the authentic leadership measure show statistical significance between the pre- and post-tests, with positive effect sizes in transparency and self-awareness. Results suggest that this online course, focused on personal and professional development, improves students’ understanding of themselves and the world around them and capacity to gain the trust of their followers.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) was established in 1998 as a central part of the Labour government's radical programme of youth justice reform. Yet while it has had a central role in directing the culture, organisation and activities of youth justice in England and Wales, it is poorly understood. As its future hangs in the balance, this paper seeks to draw on a unique empirical study of the operation of the YJB to explore what it is, what it does and why it is so difficult to describe.

The research involved 18 months' ethnographic fieldwork. For one calendar year (2006‐2007), research focused on the internal operation of the YJB including observations of meetings, depth interviews and documentary analysis. A second strand of research explored the regional operation of the YJB. This involved observations of regional monitors and assessment processes and interviews and focus groups with Youth Offending Teams staff.

The research shows that the YJB is an inherently ambiguous organisation. This ambiguity has made it simultaneously highly insecure and extremely productive, enabling it to extend its influence and activities beyond those initially envisaged in New Labour's reforms. However, the difficulty in defining the YJB also suggests the full effect of its activities will only become clear once it has gone.

While there has been much academic interest in the YJB, this research is the only empirical study of it. It, therefore gives a unique insight into the organisation and culture of the English and Welsh youth justice system.

OCCASIONALLY some writer is inspired to make the declaration that reference work as understood in America does not exist in Great Britain, or, even more definitely, is not known there. We rejoice at any advance our American friends make, but our enthusiasts for American methods must not undervalue the homeland. In the pages that follow some aspects of reference work receive attention, and the inference to be drawn may be that, if we have not specialized this department of work to the extent that transatlantic libraries have done, if in some smaller places it hardly exists “as the community's study, archive department and bureau of information,” yet in our larger cities and in many lesser places much work is done.

THE IFLA Conference—or to be more precise—the 34th Session of the General Council of IFLA—met at Frankfurt am Main from the 18th to the 24th of August, 1968. Note the dates, for they include the 21st of August, the day when the delegates heard, as did the rest of the world, of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Until then the Conference had been proceeding happily, and with the smoothness inborn of German organisation. During and after that date, a blight was cast over the proceedings, and although the Conference carried out its formal and informal programmes as planned, concentrations were disturbed as delegates sometimes gathered round transistor radios, their thoughts on Eastern Europe.

The quantity and scope of the information that has materialized so far on the subject of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) has increased significantly since the first case of the syndrome in the United States was diagnosed in 1981. Initially, information could be found only in a few articles in the medical periodical literature or in a few newspapers. Gradually, more information appeared in health care, allied health, and other professional journals and periodicals. As the incidence of the syndrome increased, more newspapers and the mass market magazines and the electronic media began covering the syndrome, and both health care professionals and the general public found themselves presented with a steady stream of information, research, and education on the subject of AIDS.

ALTHOUGH the first Public Libraries (Scotland) Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1853, it was not until 1899 that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow was empowered to establish and maintain public libraries throughout the city. Between 1876 and 1897 four attempts were made to secure public approval for the adoption of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Acts, but when all these efforts proved unsuccessful, the Corporation decided in June, 1888 to include in a Local Bill for submission to Parliament, certain clauses conferring upon themselves the power to become a library authority. Promoted in 1899, the Bill became known as the Glasgow Corporation (Tramways, Libraries, etc.) Act 1899, and the library clauses passed through Parliament without opposition and received Royal Assent on 1st August, 1899. The powers conferred by this Local Act empowered the Corporation:

ANDREW Carnegie stands apart from all other library benefactors. No other man has given so much, or given so widely, in the cause of library progress. Although the United Kingdom was not the main recipient of his bounty, it received from him, personally, about £12 million, and considerable sums, in addition, from the Trust which he founded. It might well be expected, therefore, that his name would always be in our minds and that we would remember him more kindly than any other library benefactor. But it is not so.