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While “generic” community teams for adults with learning disabilities (CTs) are well-established in the UK, very little recent evidence is available about any aspect of their work. As part of a larger project about the role, structure and functioning of CTs, the purpose of this paper is to provide data about referrals.

Over three months, the authors obtained data about 270 consecutive new referrals to five CTs in a countywide integrated health (NHS) and care management (local authority) service.

The 270 referrals related to 255 individuals, mainly already service users, with almost a third (30 per cent, n=204) described as people with severe or profound disabilities. Consistent with the reported living arrangements (residential accommodation or with one or more family members (87 per cent, n=270)), referrals were most often made by social care staff, General Practitioners or carers. The referrals related to a wide range of issues including mental health and/or behavioural needs, physical health and skills, and independence. The major group, however, were requests about a person’s entitlement to specialist learning disability services and/or reviews of an existing social care package.

The focus on new referrals and the exclusion of intra-team referrals mean that the data are not representative of a CT’s caseload and cannot be used as a basis for resourcing. Nevertheless, the findings emphasise the heterogeneity of the population, and the long-term and varied nature of their needs, meaning that CTs require access to a range of expertise and, often, an inter-agency approach. The implications for service design are considered.

This is the first empirical study of referrals to specialist integrated (health and care management) community learning disabilities teams in England.

Hosting events can attract visitors to an area and provide an opportunity for local businesses in the host community to benefit economically. Restaurants, in particular, have an opportunity to benefit as food is a necessary expenditure. However, previous research suggests that the intentional attraction of event visitors by local businesses has been minimal. The purpose of this paper is to explore perspectives of event leveraging held by restaurant owners/managers and a destination marketing organization (DMO).

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with owners/managers of 16 local restaurants and from three DMO executives in one medium-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Data were analyzed using initial and axial coding.

Findings indicate that restaurants did not engage in event leveraging. Three common reasons emerged to explain their lack of engagement in leveraging, including: a lack of a belief in benefits from leveraging, inconvenient proximity to event venue, and not being prepared for event leveraging opportunities. The DMO had a desire to assist local business in leveraging, but their ability to do so was negatively impacted by a lack of awareness of events being hosted, disengagement by local businesses, and limited resources.

Findings suggest that there is a need for DMOs and local businesses to create stronger and more supportive working relationships that address financial and human resources constraints preventing the adoption and success of event leveraging. As part of this approach there is a need for cities to make stronger financial investments in supportive agencies such as a DMO.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

This paper seeks to analyse trade unions’ approaches to equal opportunities in Scotland, focusing on issues of: recruitment of membership from different groups; promoting diversity in post‐holding; and the role of “key equalities issues” in collective bargaining.

The paper draws on in‐depth interviews with equalities officers of 26 unions in Scotland. The analysis takes as its starting point the three models of equality policies identified by Rees: the “sameness”, “difference” and “transformation” models.

The paper argues that, although some equalities officers demonstrated a thorough understanding of the issues, union approaches to equalities in practice reflect the “sameness”, and to some extent “difference”, models: attacking direct discrimination and insisting that members should be treated the same, establishing some limited mechanisms to reflect on the different needs of groups, but being less able to tackle the underlying structural causes of inequality. It is suggested that unions need to develop a more sophisticated analysis of equal opportunities which fully reflects the differences between the experiences of groups of workers and which challenges the fundamental, structural inequalities within (and therefore seeks to transform) organisations and labour markets. A key element of this agenda must be the mainstreaming of equal opportunities within collective bargaining.

Further research is required on how unions are beginning to deal with the issues raised in the paper. The paper is also limited to the views of individual equalities officers – further research on local practice is required.

The findings will be of interest to organisations engaged in equalities work and unions seeking to develop policy and practice in this area.

The paper will add to the literature on unions’ approaches to equalities. It applies the Rees model to extensive new data, and is the first major piece of research to address these issues within the Scottish policy context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the key issues involved in situations within the workplace when an employee goes through gender reassignment, in order to consider how such situations might be managed more effectively.

It analyses a case study from a national public sector organisation in the UK where a transsexual person went through male to female gender reassignment. The case was compiled via participant observation and one to one interviews with the key players in the process (managers, human resource staff and colleagues as well as the individual).

Key issues discussed include the effects on trust and relationships at work, harassment, the role of trade unions, training, and other support. It explores the difficulty of gaining acceptance for a transsexual, and links this to literature on managing diversity and change management.

The case study is in the public sector in the UK, but implications are valid for other organisations.

Makes suggestions for managing transsexual issues for management and for trade unions, whilst being cautious about the extent of acceptance that can be achieved.

Existing literature tends to focus on the transsexual individual's own viewpoint, and guidelines from transgender support groups. This study includes the roles and reactions of all the key people involved within a real organisational case, and offers insights into the issues involved when managing transsexual cases in the workplace.

The paper aims to discern, document, and analyze current staffing trends in college and university libraries.

The author gathered information from the literatures of library and information science and higher education.

The paper details six trends across public and technical services affecting librarians, non‐MLS professionals, and paraprofessionals. The presentation of trends is followed by a discussion of three concerns the author has about these trends.

The paper covers trends in college and university libraries but does not specifically address community college libraries. Community colleges may have similar issues, as well as unique trends; further research is encouraged.

Library managers will be able to compare developments in their libraries to the profession‐wide trends. They will also be able to link to a large body of literature on the topic.

This kind of comprehensive look at academic library staffing does not seem to have been published recently.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and illustrate the potential relationships between doctoral students’ life histories and educational experiences and their methodological understanding and assumptions.

The qualitative research design consisted of life-history interviews with nine doctoral researchers in the UK in disciplines relating to the social sciences.

The study indicated that the students’ methodological assumptions may be understood as a socially constructed product of their life histories and academic experiences. Experiences of postgraduate research training were presented as having the potential to unlock the methodological consciousness required to re-frame these experiences, improve understanding and resolve methodological conflict.

This paper provides an insight into the complex nature of the development of methodological understanding and a provocation for considering methodological becoming through the lens of socialisation. This may have utility for both doctoral students and educators.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy (IL). It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications organized thematically and detailing study populations, results and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for academic library practitioners, library science students and researchers wishing to learn about IL in other contexts.

This paper annotates 374 English-language periodical articles, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and IL published in 2023. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Elsevier SCOPUS and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Sources selected were published in 2023 and included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction” or “information fluency” in the title, subject terms or author-supplied keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations were made summarizing the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was then thematically categorized and organized for academic librarians to be able to skim and use the annotated bibliography adeptly.

The paper provides a brief description of 374 sources from 159 unique publications and highlights publications that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions. Further analysis of the sources and authorship are provided such as country affiliation and institutional Carnegie classification.

The information is primarily of use to academic librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a convenient and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and IL published within 2023.