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The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity-related work experiences of women in leadership in the US automotive industry. Drawing upon the communication theory of identity’s four identity frames, this study analyzes women’s narratives to better understand their self-concepts, work relationships and activities within larger corporate automotive contexts.

A qualitative methodology consisting of 16 in-depth interviews with women in leadership in automotive organizations was adopted. Interviews examined women’s perceptions and identities at work, including their daily behaviors, relationships with others and their perceptions of the larger automotive community.

Findings demonstrate that women in leadership in the automotive industry experience contradictory feelings, messages and interactions that impact their identity perceptions and expectations for performance and achievement in their work settings.

The experiences of women in leadership in US automotive organizations could provide examples of identity-related topics valuable to practitioner fields where women seek relevant, gender-specific, guidance, resources and strategies to advance in their careers.

The findings in this study raise awareness about some of the social issues women in leadership face in automotive corporations, including complex identity-related challenges present in their workplaces.

This paper is the first of its type to examine the narratives of women’s career life in leadership in automotive organizations through a communication theory of identity lens. It extends knowledge about female leaders as they navigate the dissonant worlds of achieving higher positions whilst holding membership in a marginalized group.

In April 1988, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC) (see sidebar) published “AIDS: Law, Ethics and Public Policy.” As part of the NRC's Scope Note Series, the paper offered a current overview of issues and viewpoints related to AIDS and ethics. Not meant to be a comprehensive review of all AIDS literature, it contained selected citations referring to facts, opinion, and legal precedents, as well as a discussion of different ethical aspects surrounding AIDS. Updating the earlier work, this bibliography provides ethical citations from literature published from 1988 to the present.

This paper will challenge normative disaster studies and practice by arguing that thriving communities require the pursuit of imperfection and solidarity. The authors use Lewis Carroll’s Looking-Glass World as a lens to critique both how disasters are understood, and how disaster researchers and practitioners operate, within a climate-change affected world where cultural, political and historical constructs are constantly shifting.

The paper will undertake an analysis of both disasters and disaster studies, using this unique (and satirical) critical lens, looking at the unfolding of systemic mistakes, oppressions and mal-development that are revealed in contemporary disasters, that were once the critiques of Lewis Carroll’s Victorian-era England. It shows how disaster “resilience-building” can actually be a mechanism for continuing the status quo, and how persistent colonizing institutions and systems can be in reproducing themselves.

The authors argue the liberation of disaster studies as a process of challenging the doctrines and paradigms that have been created and given meaning by those in power – particularly white, Western/Northern/Eurocentric, male power. They suggest how researchers and practitioners might view disasters – and their own praxis – Through the Looking Glass in an effort to better understand the power, domination and violence of the status quo, but also as a means of creating a vision for something better, arguing that liberation is possible through community-led action grounded in love, solidarity, difference and interconnection.

The paper uses a novel conceptual lens as a way to challenge researchers and practitioners to avoid the utopic trap that wishes to achieve homogenized perfection and instead find an “imperfect” and complex adaptation that moves toward justice. Considering this idea through satire and literary criticism will lend support to empirical research that makes a similar case using data.

The effect that a computer can have on your daily life as a library worker can be, if you're lucky, as little or as much as you like. Or so you'd like to think. How many senior managers in public and academic libraries have a computer terminal or personal computer in their offices? How many have it on their desks? Would somebody at the next meeting of the Society of County Librarians, Metropolitan Librarians, University Librarians or whatever please ask for a show of hands — which of you personally use a computer at work? My guess is less than half. Perhaps. On the other hand, how many readers' advisers, reference librarians, subject specialists, administrative officers, circulation desk or Saturday casual staff use one every day of their working lives? No doubt a majority where issues, orders and the catalogue are controlled by a computer. As far as the bread and butter is concerned, their view of information technology is likely to be coloured as much by its reliability as by what it can do. In a profession dedicated to information skills, why then do the benefits of office automation — communications, data, information and the organisation of knowledge — seem so thinly spread? Do the libraries and their parent organisations lack the funds, the vision or the will to grasp the new technologies in order to improve the way libraries are managed and therefore presumably enhance the services they offer? One information systems manager I know speaks of introducing office automation in order to get managers to speak to each other! Librarians I'd have thought would have been quite good at that and would welcome another, electronic way of doing it. Or is the implication of a decision support system, that decisions based on facts might actually have to be made, too difficult a concept for our library leaders? As an editorial in Computer Weekly said: “in exploring executive's information needs, you are exploring their mental model of the business. The result can be to challenge long held assumptions and provoke radical change”. Perhaps the information professional can have a key organisational role in the development, regulation and promotion of information systems technology, through applying his/her skills in information handling and the organisation of knowledge; and if this be the case, what evidence do you see at work of planning for this role? A terminal on every chief's desk might be a start.

“Scholarly Communication” is a frequent topic of both the professional and research literature of Library and Information Science (LIS). Despite efforts by individuals (e.g. Borgman, 1989) and organizations such as the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to define the term, multiple understandings of it remain. Discussions of scholarly communication infrequently offer a definition or explanation of its parameters, making it difficult for readers to form a comprehensive understanding of scholarly communication and associated phenomena.

This project uses the evolutionary concept analysis (ECA) method developed by nursing scholar, Beth L. Rodgers, to explore “Scholarly Communication” as employed in the literature of LIS. As the purpose of ECA is not to arrive at “the” definition of a term but rather exploring its utilization within a specific context, it is an ideal approach to expand our understanding of SC as used in LIS research.

“Scholarly Communication” as employed in the LIS literature does not refer to a single phenomenon or idea, but rather is a concept with several dimensions and sub-dimensions with distinct, but overlapping, significance.

The concept analysis (CA) method calls for review of a named concept, i.e. verbatim. Therefore, the items included in the data set must include the phrase “scholarly communication”. Items using alternate terminology were excluded from analysis.

The model of scholarly communication presented in this paper provides language to operationalize the concept.

LIS lacks a nuanced understanding of “scholarly communication” as used in the LIS literature. This paper offers a model to further the field's collective understanding of the term and support operationalization for future research projects.

We examined the role gender plays in managerial stereotypes and changes that have occurred in the US for executive women in the workforce. We also investigated factors and personality traits that affect advancement into upper management for all executives and those that affect women in particular. Despite increased organisational sensitivity, public policies, and equal rights legislation, women continue to be underrepresented in corporate America. Pay increases and promotions for females have not kept pace with those for men. Study results also indicate that managerial womenwho juggle jobs and family life benefit from these multiple roles, but women who put off marriage and family to build top‐level careers suffer in later years from greatly reduced chances of finding spouses and having children. Further adaptation of organisational culture in the new economy, weakening of the glass ceiling phenomenon, and family friendly work policies may alleviate some of the difficulties experienced by women who want it all.

EVEN if library work with the young is the most written, and over‐written, subject in librarianship as is sometimes alleged, it still is the foundation of all library activity and must therefore come under continuous review. To some the subject is as dull as the essay questions set in the Entrance Examinations were alleged to be by a writer in The Library Assistant. To which we reply that all things have a certain dullness to those without sufficient imagination to look at them in other than the most conventional darkness. A Chesterton discourses entrancingly on a piece of chalk and brown paper, an empty train, a piece of string. So with our subject. We therefore make no other apology than this for a number of THE LIBRARY WORLD in which it is our main interest. Our children's libraries are, as yet, far from perfect; they issue too many drivelling books written by authors whose first essays in writing are children's books because they think them to be the easiest to write. The difference between a Ransome and—well, a thousand slush children's books—is as great as the difference between The Vicar of Wakefield and worst railway bookstall novelette. There is a great field being examined here by the more progressive children's librarians. There are many other questions, administrative and personal that have been and are under discussion. The writer of Letters on Our Affairs this month deals with some of these although, we may at once say, his views are not wholly those of THE LIBRARY WORLD.

The articles in this Special Issue of the IJSSP, entitled ‘Sociology of Emotions’, were, with two exceptions, presented at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association held in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., from August 19–23, 1995. These outstanding papers do much to develop the theoretical grounding of two closely related fields of inquiry ‐ the social psychology of emotions and the sociology of emotions. No social relations are carried out in the absence of either thought or emotion. It immediately follows that the sociology of emotions is not so much a nascent, exotic sub‐discipline of sociology as it is a level of analysis that must be carried out if meaning is to be found in any social system, in any social process, or in any social relationship of the everyday world.

ANYBODY whoses daily work involves the planning and spending of money must at all times be concerned by efforts to ensure that value is being obtained for the money spent. Those of us who, as librarians, are spending the money of fellow tax‐payers, are naturally doubly concerned about this problem. In addition, the very phrase “value for money” to a Yorkshireman is a continual challenge, and a point on which he instinctively feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has some secret inborn knowledge.

This paper highlights the need for researchers to work across disciplinary boundaries in order to capture the complexity that care practitioners have to engage with everyday in care home settings. Drawing on findings from a literature review on the complexity of loss in continuing care institutions for older people, the case is made for less victim blaming and more appreciative approaches to research. The way this thinking informed the development of a further literature review on quality of life in care homes (My Home Life) is discussed. Findings from this second study are shared by illustrating key messages with quotes from older residents, relatives and staff living, visiting and working in care homes. These best practice messages focus on: transition into a care home; working to help residents maintain their identity; creating community within care homes; shared decision‐making; health and health services; end‐of‐life care; keeping the workforce fit for purpose, and promoting positive culture. The importance of collaborative working in both research and practice is discussed. The paper is likely to be of interest to all those concerned with improving and developing evidence‐based practice in the care home sector, including users and service providers, managers, commissioners and inspectors, policy‐makers, researchers and teachers.