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While the spotlight of the Great Debate rests mainly upon the education of our older children still at school, the question of what happens as they leave school and take their first steps into the post school world rates mention from time to time in the media and from public platform. We have heard recently a number of ringing declarations that ‘continued education’ or ‘universal day release’ for all young people up to the age of 18, a principle enshrined in successive education acts since 1918 but never implemented, should be accepted forthwith as Government policy.

This paper examines the corporate income tax compliance costs and their determinants by analyzing survey and financial statements data from firms operating in Greece. We find that corporate tax compliance costs are of considerable size and vary with several firm-specific characteristics, including the firm’s size, its age, the sector in which it operates, its location, and its legal form. The paper intends to raise awareness regarding the impact of tax compliance costs, especially for countries, such as Greece, that were significantly affected by the economic and financial crisis.

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

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether question and keyword‐format queries are more successfully processed by search engines encouraging answers to searching and keyword‐format querying, respectively. This study aims to investigate whether web user characteristics and choice of search engine affects the relevancy scores and precision of the results.

The results of two search engines, Google and AskJeeves, were compared for question and keyword‐format queries. It was observed that AskJeeves was slightly more successful in processing question‐format queries, but this finding was not statistically supported. However, Google provided results on keyword‐format queries and the entire set of queries, which were statistically superior to those of AskJeeves.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the age of web user is not as affective on the relevancy score and precision of results as other factors. Interactions of the main factors were also affective on the relevancy scores and precision, meaning that the different combinations of various factors cause a synergy in terms of relevancy scores and precision.

This was a preliminary work on the effect of user characteristics on comprehension and evaluation of search query results. Future work includes expanding this study to include more web user characteristics, more levels of the web user characteristics, and inclusion of more search engines.

The findings of this study provide statistical proof for the relationship between the characteristics of web users, choice of search engine and the relevancy scores and precision of search results.

To examine the utility of multiple reading speeds during rereadings toward enhancing comprehension and application of subsequently gained knowledge.

Representations of slow, mindful reading as well as analyses of eye training and speed reading techniques are described to serve as the theoretical foundation for the meta-strategy – read fast, read slow (RF/RS).

This meta-strategy encompasses aspects of rereading, eye training exercises, and speed reading; it is derived from a cognitive concept that a blueprint can be formed from reading at an increased speed from one’s normal speed. Further, the gaps along with that information which was not fully understood from the initial reading can be secured by following the initial fast read with a slower than normal reading of the text. The idea is to refine that which is important versus unimportant (main idea vs. details), and enhance the surface level of understanding into one that is critical and analytical after having been confronted against existing schematic notions.

Concepts of text structure, word reading automaticity, and content interest are natural by-products of using the RF/RS strategy. Together, these benefits allow for holistic growth and moreover, provide successful reading experiences. Successful reading prompts additional reading, as it has been widely established that better readers read more often and more widely.

IT is with peculiar pleasure that I find myself once more engaged in University Extension work under the presidency of Lord Goschen. Until your well‐remembered tenure of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer drew you from active service with us, my lord, you presided for many years over the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, and therefore, over myself as a humble member of the Council. I trust you have as pleasant memories of us, as obedient and diligent workers, as we have of you as an energetic and enthusiastic chairman. Many changes have come since then. The London Society is a thing of the past, absorbed into my own University, which itself has changed almost beyond recognition. One of the members in your time is now a Bishop, another rules South Africa, you, yourself, no longer sway the House of Commons. If we still existed and had now to hold a sub‐committee in the chamber of our colleague Milner, we should have to travel many hundreds of miles instead of walking round to Duke Street, St. James's, as you will remember we did in those old days.

THE beginning of a new volume is necessarily a time for reflection. Our journal is now forty‐four years old and has appeared without intermission, always with the purpose, enunciated by its founder, James Duff Brown—to furnish librarians of all kinds and ages with a thought‐exchange and a medium of expression independent of any other control than the editor's conviction that what was published was sincere in intention and likely to be of use to the profession. This does not mean, as our pages to‐day witness, that matters of controversy or even of severe criticism of those who lead the profession officially are excluded. On the contrary, we believe that the best spur to advance is a critical vigilance. Thus it has occurred occasionally that our writers have been at variance with some current policy of the Library Association, some phases of its examinations or its conference policy. Occasionally, too, there have been criticisms of library authorities which an official journal might hesitate to make because those authorities may be in membership of the Library Association. Such criticism was never more necessary than now. The library movement has to be kept alive under the greatest strain in history; indeed, it should progress.

This chapter briefly explores selected English and general education policy documents, curricula, and textbooks within the context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and examines how they have changed pre- and post-21st century. First, a policy document related to education in KSA in general (pre-21st century) is analyzed along with an English language teaching (ELT) policy document of the same period. Next, two general policy documents post-21st century are explored, followed by one related to ELT policy. Finally, one post-21st century document related to higher education is discussed. The “network of practices” within which these documents are situated are first detailed, as well as the structural order of the discourse, and some linguistic analysis of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures (Meyer, 2001). Issues which might be problematic to the learning and teaching identities of the students and teachers interpreting these documents are also highlighted. Finally, we consider whether the network of practices at this institution and KSA in general “needs” the problems identified in the analysis and critically reflect on the analysis.

THE central question of librarianship now and in the past is that which occupies some of our pages this month. Reading with purpose and with system, Matthew Arnold declared, was the last service to be rendered to education; and in various manner librarians and their committees have been endeavouring to do this for many years; it has indeed been a guiding principle of the best libraries that they presented to the community only good book's. Lately, however, more generous (or lax, according to the standpoint) ideas have been allowed to condition the admission of books; there are not wanting those who object to any exercise of judgment on the part of the librarian; if people want certain books they must be served, as they pay for them. This argument was exploded long ago, but its revival is justified if the librarians are unequal to their pretentions as guides to readers. And to be guides requires ever‐increasing knowledge, not only of all work done in bibliographies and reference books, but, as our writers indicate, of people and their manifold relations and reactions to books. This is enormously difficult in any community but is manifestly so in large cities. As a small illustration we may point to a librarian who, when a branch librarian was appointed to his staff, gave him a month of freedom from library work proper in which he was to walk every street of his branch area, interview the clergy, teachers, leading traders, and the secretaries and committees of local societies. He thus came to his work with at least an elementary notion of the community he had to serve. Such study must have its effect on book‐service; and this is the sort of study that must be pursued in the manner Dr. Waples has advocated and practiced (or some such manner) if we are to arrive at a science of book‐selection applicable to the areas a library serves.

We open a new volume of The Library World in circumstances combining hope and difficulty. The hope rests upon the knowledge that library authorities are free when and as they choose to give Great Britain libraries equalling those of the United. States and Canada. The difficulty is in the immediate financial crisis facing the country, a crisis which is partly real, partly a political stunt, and is certainly potent enough to impede any great progress for the moment. There will be real struggle in many cases and hardship perhaps in a few, and the need for mutual consultation and advice, such as this magazine provides, was never greater. Nor must it be supposed that, because we seem to refer more particularly to municipal libraries here, every other form of library, public or private, will not directly or indirectly be affected by the same influences, and be equally in need of such a medium as this. Wo have never declared any cast‐iron policy in regard to The Library World—its very freedom from fixed views has been one of its chief recommendations—but at the beginning of an editorial year a few words on our aims are not inappropriate.