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The aim of this paper is to detail the innovative campaign co‐developed by Words&Pictures and Specsavers to raise the caliber of Specsavers' profile in the optics profession among university optometry graduates, to produce a continuous flow of talent within the company, and to give customers the best service.

Adopting a collaborative approach, Specsavers' canvassed the opinions of its employees and joint venture partners to develop a new HR strategy to attract and nurture outstanding talent. In order to implement the new strategy, Specsavers turned to Words&Pictures, which created a high‐end internal brand, INsight, to showcase the new five‐part recruitment and development program.

Organizations that face similar recruitment challenges would do well to re‐assess the needs of the business, including the inter‐personal and communication skills required by their employees.

Working together, Specsavers and Words&Pictures combined their unique strengths to create a visually stunning, professional, practical, aspirational and fun suite of training materials for pre‐registration optometrists. This has helped to elevate Specsavers' pre‐registration optometrists' program above its competitors and positioned the company as unrivalled in its attitude towards employee acquisition, development and retention.

‘Why,’ asks Tom Howarth, High Master of St. Paul's, ‘is it considered an almost unspeakable human defect to have élitist tendencies?’ Either Mr Howarth is unobservant or he observes selectively.

It seems fitting, in this particular issue of Technical Education at the present time, for a former editor of an educational monthly — New Education — whose magazine changed ownership last December in somewhat dramatically sudden circumstances, to seize a second chance of looking forward to try to make out future trends. Is the Black Paper an off beat isolated phenomenon, soon to fizzle out of the second lease of life which Ted Short gave it at Easter? Or is it the first of a series of attacks on the steady reform of educational institutions and curriculum which has been going on over the last twenty five years? Is Tom Howarth, with his new views on culture and anarchy, a second Matthew Arnold, come to pluck English Education from the slough of despond into which it has been steadily sinking for years? Or is his book the last gasp from a fading corner of the educational scene, which has only lasted so long because class attitudes and institutions are so deeply ingrained into English society? It may be still too early to say. But it looks as though this sort of debate — or one very like it — will go on in the educational world into the forseeable future.

Although the healthy organisation has attracted the attention of researchers over the last decade and beyond, the concept remains poorly defined. Nonetheless, there would appear to be an underlying acceptance that health is a desirable state, and is one which is likely to enable the organisation to cope effectively with the challenges presented by its environment. Using financial measures as one index of the economically healthy organisation, this paper explores organisational health within two financially healthy and two financially unhealthy clothing companies in Northern Ireland. Statistical analyses reveal that each of the organisations was unhealthy for different reasons and in different ways. Furthermore, the findings suggest that “wealth” does not necessarily mean “health”, and it may in fact be indicative of organisational myopia rather than Utopia.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

The overall aim of this research is to interpret Ikenga and Ofo creativity as it is revered in Igbo societies. Igbo creativity, especially interpreted through material culture, suffers the threat of extinction resulting from the forces of modernity. Forces of modernisation, which appear in the personae of Christianity, education, urbanisation and industrialisation, denigrated indigenous creativity, brandishing them as devious, fetish and primitive. Ironically, in most cases, the drivers of such narratives keep these “fetish” items in their museums and will give a lot to preserve them.

This study centred mostly on several communities in the Nsukka area of Igboland, Nigeria. It relied on both primary and secondary sources of historical enquiry. This qualitative research discussed the nuances of the subject matter as it relates to Igbo cosmos. These approaches involved visiting the study area and conducting personal interviews.

Archaeologists do often rely on material culture to study, periodise and date past human societies. In this study, it is found that material culture, an expression of indigenous creativity, best interprets how society survived or related with their environment. This paper examined two Igbo sculpted artefacts – Ikenga and Ofo – while unearthing the intricacies in Igbo cosmology as regards creativity, spirituality and society.

The shapes, motifs, patterns and designs depict an imaginary history, the intellectualism of the past and even the present. This serves as an objective alternative to the twisted colonial narrative on Igbo material culture and consequently contribute to ongoing efforts to preserve, protect and promote cultural heritage resources in this part of the world.

Describes and critiques a report published by the UK’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport in 2003 which sets out a structure whereby public libraries will provide socially inclusive services and how this will be achieved. The report indicates that the modern mission of public libraries should be based on evolution, public value, distinctiveness and local interpretations of national programmes. New roles should emerge from traditional core skills, and focus on areas where public intervention will deliver large benefits for society.

There are many encyclopedias available but finding out how good they are for use by particular sets of people is by no means easy. So there certainly is room for this guide which examines the wide range on offer in the USA and Canada and some elsewhere, describes the form and content of the volumes and attempts to evaluate them in comparison with each other. It is an entirely new work, current to 1 March 1986 and has title and subject indexes. There is even a bibliography of selected other books and articles on the evaluation and use of encyclopedias. Surprisingly it is quite readable and interesting to dip into in spite of the density of bibliographical details contained. Of course it deals mostly with North American publications but sometimes these are “the best” anywhere and librarians should know about more than their own country's publications.