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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions created a range of potential additional stressors for families, particularly for parents living with children. This study aims to explore whether there were any differences in the mental health and emotional experiences of those living with children, and those who were not, during the pandemic and related lockdowns; and whether there were any specific risk factors associated with these mental health outcomes and emotional experiences.

Regression analyses of ten-wave repeated cross-sectional surveys between May 2020 and November 2021 on a total sample of 42,529 UK adults, which measured mental health with a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotional experiences. The interaction effects of living with children and age as well as marital status were tested.

During the pandemic, individuals who were living with children were more likely to feel hopeful (OR: 1.1) and grateful (OR: 1.163), less likely to feel hopeless (OR: 0.918) and lonely (OR: 0.799), while more likely to feel guilty (OR: 1.185), unprepared (OR: 1.195) and pressurised (OR: 1.14), than those not living with children. More nuanced findings and diverse emotional experiences were also found in people of different age groups and marital statuses.

This study has highlighted that being parents and living with children could be important factors of emotional distress, especially during the special circumstances of the pandemic and lockdowns, drawing on the large-scale national data.

Cross-national research on cultural differences can help understand what drives, in differing contexts, mentors' commitment to school-based mentoring programs. This comparative study aims to explore whether adult volunteers, from Scotland and Italy, experience being mentors of vulnerable youth differently.

Data from interviews (n = 20) and questionnaires (n = 114) were used to test hypotheses concerning volunteer mentors' perceptions of their role and abilities, as well as motives for participation. According to cross-cultural theories, Scottish mentors should be more likely to identify mentoring with establishing friendly relationships with mentees and promoting youth self-empowerment. They should also be more self-confident and value-driven as volunteers.

Despite the mixed support for the assumptions concerning how the mentor role is conceived, Scottish mentors were less likely than Italians to doubt their abilities and more driven by other-focused and generative concerns.

The study reveals significant variations in how volunteers from countries featuring different welfare regimes and cultural orientations experience mentoring. The research advances the understanding of how culturally sensitive approaches can foster mentors' engagement.

We leverage Lachmann's insight on elite conflict to explain the politics surrounding industry regulation in contemporary America and argue that conflicts between political elites create both constraints on industry players and opportunities for them to shape regulation. The widening urban-rural polarization of American society, in particular, has made urban political elites more liberal than those in state politics. The greater the political polarization of a state, the more local restrictions the nascent US hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry – generally regarded as conservative – face in that state. Players in the industry thus seek interventions by conservative elites at the state government level. The dominance of conservative state legislators and the presence of affiliates of the right-leaning American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are bound to strengthen the industry's lobbying efforts in that state. These, in turn, increase the likelihood of the enactment of state preemption laws that nullify local restrictions. We discuss the implications of this on the study of elite conflict, the politics of industry regulation, and the industry's political strategy.

Not many weeks back, according to newspaper reports, three members of the library staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London were dismissed. All had refused to carry out issue desk duty. All, according to the newspaper account, were members of ASTMS. None, according to the Library Association yearbook, was a member of the appropriate professional organisation for librarians in Great Britain.

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

Many years ago a thrifty house‐wife presided over a men's boardinghouse near the campus of a well‐known American university. Often while planning daily menus, the hard pressed matron would appeal to her houseboy, “What shall we serve for dessert?” He persistently recommended, “Ice cream and cake,” but she invariably rejected this extravagant proposal, derisively reminding him, “The boys don't like ice cream and cake.” Then, with painstaking concern, she would judiciously select tapioca, chocolate pudding, or some other gelatinous concoc‐tion. Since all the young college students had ravenous appetites and greedily consumed anything set before them, they always confirmed the sagacious selections of the frugal dame. When anyone asked her what college boys liked most for dessert, she had her time‐proven answer, “Tapioca”. She knew that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

This is a comprehensive list of books, some pamphlets, and a few sound recordings about or by Ronald (and Nancy) Reagan. Collections of photographs and cartoons as well as biographies, political commentary, speeches, quotations and even recipes are represented. Omitted are books in which there is only brief mention of him. The bibliography was compiled in connection with a major exhibit on Ronald Reagan at the Colorado State University Library. It is the author's intention to continue to collect Reagan materials.

National Library Week was first launched in America in the spring of 1958 with the slogan “Wake Up and Read”. It is now an established, continuing, year‐round programme to help build a reading nation and to spur the use and improvement of libraries of all kinds. The sponsors seek the achievement of these objectives because they are the means of serving social and individual purposes that are immeasurably larger.

NATIONAL Library Week was first launched in America in the spring of 1958 with the slogan “Wake Up and Read”. It is now an established, continuing, year‐round programme to help build a reading nation and to spur the use and improvement of libraries of all kinds. The sponsors seek the achievement of these objectives because they are the means of serving social and individual purposes that are immeasurably larger.

AS A RESULT of present economic problems in Britain and attendant cuts in spending, there is a need to achieve maximum cost‐effectiveness in all sectors of public spending including libraries. This article examines a simple method by which economies could be made in buying multiple copies of books. It is assumed that unless librarians have freedom to buy a single copy of any book they choose, they will not achieve the breadth and depth required of first‐class libraries, be they in the public sector or in academic institutions. Perhaps second copies need cause little concern, but a pilot survey of a polytechnic library revealed cases where as many as four, six or even eight copies of the same edition had been bought on one occasion before the effectiveness of a lesser purchase could have been evaluated.