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The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the possibilities for strategically and politically repositioning a library, despite economic hardships, for stronger relations with administration, local government, and user communities.

The paper presents a case study of Murray State University Libraries' efforts to seize the current recession to conduct capital construction planning, donor development, and political positioning for a new library facility. Additionally, the case study details some of the activities undertaken during the recession to implement a pay‐per‐view journal article process and value‐added reference services.

This case study finds that strategically repositioning a library with administration, local government, or the user community can be undertaken on either larger or smaller scales, depending on the particular circumstances in which a library operates.

While the literature is rife with papers urging libraries and librarians to undertake strategic and political repositioning efforts during economic recessions, this paper provides a holistic case study of a library successfully doing just that.

The purpose of this paper is to review the strategic gains available to a library director under budget stress, using a combination of partnerships and service innovations.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and recommendation.

Some see a glass half full; others see a glass half empty. This case study shows how to seize strategic advantage from a depleted budget, and win friends at the same time. It seems impossible to contemplate funding the building of a new library, but at Murray State University (MSU) this was done. The planning of a “learning commons” included all the stakeholders. A marketing campaign accompanied by strategically important alliances swayed the Regents. These alliances firmly fix the library at the center of MSU's strategy.

The review highlights the specific actions and strategic moves that a librarian can initiate to transform the library's strategic position.

Library users will benefit from better service levels and wider accessibility using remote access and other new features.

This review reveals in a few sentences exactly what Murray achieved, and how it was done, so the busy manager can decide its relevance

The purpose of this paper is to present an emergent conceptual framework for examining virtual communities.

Established theories and models of community, social networks, information exchange, and information sharing behaviours are explored with the goal of determining their usefulness in conceptualising virtual communities.

Explored theories and models are inter‐related and expanded to form a tiered conceptual framework for examining virtual communities. This framework also acknowledges the affective contexts in which virtual communities operate.

The presented conceptual framework may inform information professionals tasked with creating, maintaining, and improving corporate, educational, research, and other information systems. It may also be of use to researchers who seek to build theory that attempts to explain phenomena observable in virtual communities.

In contrast to models and frameworks which focus on analysing individual components and attributes of virtual communities, the presented framework provides a holistic starting point for understanding inter‐related structural, cognitive, behavioural and affective dimensions of online communities

Previous studies have shown a link between mental health functioning and involvement in HIV risk practices. The present research examines how well one specific group of men who have sex with other men (MSM) fare in terms of their mental health functioning, and then focuses on how mental health functioning relates to HIV risk practices in this population. The study was based on a national random sample of 332 MSM who use the Internet to seek men with whom they can engage in unprotected sex. Data collection was conducted via telephone interviews between January 2008 and May 2009. Depression is more common among men in this population than in the adult male population-at-large. All other measures of mental health functioning that were examined (self-esteem, impulsivity, current life satisfaction, optimism about the future) indicated low rates of mental health problem. Contrary to expectations, in nearly all instances, mental health functioning was not related to HIV risk practices.

More work needs to be done to understand the causes of depression among these men, and to assess how, if at all, depression relates to risk practices in this population. These findings suggest that factors other than mental health problems must be considered if one wishes to understand HIV risk taking in this population.

THE regular search for the good book for the child will continue so long as there are children's libraries. A recent report on an enquiry has reached us from Bethnal Green and follows the familiar lines of getting the children to vote on what they like; with the result that the “William” books, which should be making all concerned in their production a fortune, head the list, and the simple “small”‐child books, the Milly‐Molly, Mandy series, come next. The field surveyed was small, for “William” polled only 34 votes; only 800 of the 6,000 children registered as borrowers participated. It is questionable if such enquiries, however much they interest us as librarians, can effectively help to improve child reading, unless some method of finding and providing high literature in the type the youngsters prefer can be devised. Mr. George F. Vale prefaces his brief list of books chosen with a really interesting discussion on the subject, but a quotation from it indicates part of the problem. He writes, speaking of Tom Sawyer, Alice and The Wafer Babies, “What elements go to make a permanent children's book is one of the mysteries of literature, but evidently these books possess some quality which overrides all the chances and changes of time. It is not merely the appeal of a good story; there are many better stories than The Water Babies. The secret seems to be some mysterious rapport between the author's mind and that of the readers, an ability to see and to think upon the level of the child mind.” All this is true, but it is more than that, we think; it is the power of recording what is, has been or may be, within the child's own range of experience; that is, it is true in that it realises the conditions of the world of childhood. It is curious, and possibly significant, that a book for children in these enquiries means a story. An enquiry is overdue into the type and quality of non‐fiction read by them, the sort of child who reads and in what circumstances: Real information here might reveal gaps and surpluses in book provision that are not now widely recognized!

This paper responds to Keith Tribe's provocative Journal of Economic Literature article, “Adam Smith: Critical Theorist?” There Tribe argued that most people most of the time grossly misread Smith, due, among other things, to their quite inadequate appreciation of Smith's linguistic, social, moral, and theological context. Against Tribe, the paper argues that Smith can profitably be read as both an eighteenth-century moralist and a twenty-first century critic. Smith can be a source of inspiration, wisdom and profundity for contemporary economists. Moreover, Smith can be successfully employed by modern economists to change, deepen, and broaden contemporary economic theory.

The purpose of this paper is to approach the issue of taxation of robotic process automation (RPA) through an interpretive lens provided by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Both scholars have affected the understanding and attitudes of generations of economists, and their ideas have considerable influenced modern economic policy. It will be argued that Smith and Marx have much to offer to help contemporary economists understand the taxation of RPA, and their writings on machines, automation, and their impact on the human labor force will be discussed from their primary texts.

The paper interprets the works of Marx and Smith in relation to contemporary debates on automation, particularly, proposals to tax technological innovations to offset the social costs of automation’s displacement effects.

In the case of Adam Smith, there is not enough evidence to suggest that he would support a specific taxation of RPA; however, he very well might agree with a modest taxation of capital goods. Marx would very likely support a taxation in the short-run, however, would be inclined to caution that the ownership of robots should in the long run be transferred to society.

This paper uses primary texts from the discipline of history of economic thought to spark a discussion about compensating the externalities of technological innovation.

Recognising the potential of social media as an integral driver of communication that can create engaged communities through dialogic or two-way conversations, this study aims to identify and describe the use of social media in creating participants’ engagement in various social marketing programmes conducted worldwide between 2005 and 2017.

A total of 29 social marketing programmes were identified using systematic literature review procedures.

The majority of the identified programmes used Facebook, and social media were mostly used to share content-based information in an attempt to connect with target audiences, raise awareness and reach less accessible populations with programme messages. Social media served as an extended channel to traditional media efforts, and very few programmes used social media to create mechanisms for supporting their target audiences’ ability to revisit their social media communications and encourage them to act as advocates for the programmes’ activities.

The analysis presented in this paper is limited by the information provided in the identified studies.

Despite the growing popularity and significance of social media as a channel for consumer engagement, little has been done to synthesise how social marketers are incorporating the use of social media in their social marketing programmes. This research fills this gap by providing systematic understanding of the use of social media in social marketing programmes to date.

While the architect members of the Adam family have been subjected to considerable scrutiny over the years, architectural historians seem to have overlooked the information to be gleaned from the 1883 catalogue of the Blair Adam library, a copy of which is held in the National Library of Scotland. Of course a catalogue printed almost a hundred years after the death of the last of the architects in the family is hardly a totally reliable guide. Nevertheless, if used with care and in association with other surviving evidence, it can shed additional light on a number of aspects of Adam biography.