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The Centre for Reviews and Dissemination was commissioned to conduct a systmatic review of clinical audits undertaken to assess the implementation and effectiveness of the National Health Service (NHS) two‐week waiting time policy for cancer referrals in England and Wales. This paper highlights the logistical difficulties experienced by the review team in trying to obtain information from the NHS, and discusses what needs to be done in order to improve the reporting and usefulness of clinical audit reports.

A total of 650 key individuals within NHS Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities were contacted for copies of relevant audits. Other key individuals and organisations across the NHS were also contacted, web sites of key organisations searched, requests for audits on relevant e‐mail discussion lists posted and electronic databases and conference proceedings searched.

Finds that many trusts do not appear to hold a centralised record of what clinical audits have been performed within the trust. In many instances several follow‐up contacts were necessary. The majority of included audits were poorly reported, with fewer than half providing sufficient detail on methodological aspects for the audit to be reproducible.

There should be a system of recording ongoing and completed audits conducted within the NHS, to ensure that audit reports are produced and accessible. The NHS needs to make sure that not only are appropriate audit methods used but that audit reports are written up in sufficient detail to allow the reader to ascertain how the audit was conducted and to assess the validity of the results. Documentary evidence of action plans would make it easier for those not directly involved in the audit to assess if, and in what ways, the audit findings are being acted upon to improve existing practices and procedures.

This paper discusses what needs to be done in order to improve the reporting and usefulness of clinical audit reports.

The impact of innovative web portals on users, from access to application, is gaining interest as the global call for increased data availability gains momentum. This study reports on the perceptions of portal end users about usage and access to digital data across a range of fields of practice.

Data were collected and analysed from interviews (n = 132) and email feedback (n = 235) from end users of interoperable spatial knowledge web portals.

Data reveal that users attribute importance to ease of access and applicability, and to confidence and trust in data. The acquisition of data assists with reducing knowledge silos, facilitates knowledge sharing and decision-making. Digital data portals enable the building of stronger collaborations between different groups of individuals and communities leading to improved outcomes and more positive developments across varied discipline and practice areas.

Recommendations for developing online portals to optimise knowledge transfer and associated benefits, for users, are offered.

By collecting extensive qualitative data drawn from the experiences of end users of digital data portals, this paper provides new insights, thereby addressing a knowledge gap in the published literature about the use of technology uptake and the application of online data for practice and industry benefit.

The purpose of this article is to improve the use of evidence-based practice and research utilization in the offender profiling process. The use of offender profiling has been met with increasing resistance given its exaggerated accuracy. The “Investigative Journalist/Expert Field Micro Task Force” model, a collaborative method that incorporates offender profiling and is designed to address unresolved serial homicides, is introduced and evaluated alongside recommendations on attaining adherence.

The model was field tested in 17 instances. The measures used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gauge the usefulness of their case consultations, whether their input helped catch the offender, offer new leads, move the case forward, provide new avenues or give new ideas, were used to evaluate the model.

The model established likely patterns of serial murder activity among strangulations of women in Chicago, Cleveland, and Panama and resulted in convictions of suspects in Louisiana and Kansas City. This model is valuable when used to parse modern-day offenders from those who committed unresolved homicides as the latter display different behaviors that can make investigations difficult endeavors. Results from the field tests mirror those from the literature in that profiling alone did not result in the capture of serial killers. Instead, profiling was used in conjunction with other efforts and mainly as a means to keep the investigation moving forward.

Unresolved homicides are at a point of crisis and represent a significant but largely unaddressed societal problem. The success of this model may compel law enforcement to restore faith in offender profiling.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Some twenty years ago, however, the realisation came that the economy of the animal body calls for the activities of substances with functions apparently akin, in many respects at least, to those of the hormones, which the body itself is nevertheless unable to produce, and therefore must receive them in its food. The indispensable functions of these, like those of the hormones, are adequately fulfilled by extraordinarily small amounts of each one. These food constituents yield therefore no appreciable supply of energy, nor do they serve in any ordinary sense as structural materials. Their presence like that of the hormones is necessary rather for the normal progress of active events. They have dynamic functions. I am alluding, of course, to the vitamins.

WHAT WITH the new LA Record apparently determined at least to set off down the runway—layouts and plans are due to be unveiled at SPEX 75, the day after this issue of NLW appears—we thought we'd better stir ourselves from summer somnolence and do a little gentle tinkering with NLW to reawaken your interest, and to show the LA that we, too, can move with the times, ha‐ha, even if not very far.

The following new Board appointments have been announced by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics. Mr A. S. Wheate, C.A., joins the company as Financial Director; Dr H. Fuchs, B.Sc., C.Eng., F.R.Ae.S., M.A.I.A.A., F.B.I.S., is appointed Director and Divisional Manager, Guided Weapons; Mr P. R. Franks, B.Sc., M.Sc, A.M.I.E.E., is appointed Technical Director (Electronics), and Mr E. D. Dettmer, D.F.C., is appointed Marketing Director. In addition, two new Deputy Managing Directors have been appointed. They are Dr G. H. Hough, C.B.E., and Mr M. G. Ash, M.B.E., F.C.A.

This paper examines the role of curiosity in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) work contexts.

This conceptual article relied upon an examination of literature about curiosity, VUCA and soft skills.

Curiosity, when encouraged and supported within the workforce, may aid organizations in closing soft skill gaps and better navigating ambiguity, perpetually changing business landscapes, and rapidly advancing technology.

Empirical research is needed to validate, confirm and further explicate the specific mechanisms and value of curiosity within VUCA environments.

Organizations need to move beyond espousing a value of curiosity to deliberately and effectively cultivating and supporting it within their employees.

Although ample research and literature has examined curiosity, soft skills and VUCA environments independently, the body of literature on the specific role of curiosity in such environments is limited.

MID‐OCTOBER sees all library activities in process. The autumn and winter prospects are interesting and, in some senses, may be exciting. The autumn conferences have been held, except that of the London and Home Counties Branch, which is at Southend for the week‐end October 17th to 20th, and is the third sectional conference to be held this month in addition to seven other meetings. These gatherings, at Torquay, Greenwich, Felixstowe, London (three), Tunbridge Wells and Leicester, show a fairly wide coverage of the lower part of Great Britain. The northerners had their go, so to speak, last month, in Durham and elsewhere, as we have previously recorded. The Programme of Meetings, 1952–53, arranged by organisations in the London and Home Counties Branch area, is a most convenient leaflet listing 33 meetings in the area. Every interest seems to be served, with two exceptions, and every L. A. member of whatever section may attend any or all of the meetings. The exceptions are the meetings of ASLIB and the Bibliographical Society. Any list of meetings for librarians would be improved if it noted all that interest them and these would be a useful, not extravagant, addition. London Library Intelligence, the editorship of which has been handed over by Mr. F. J. Hoy, who did it extremely well, to Mr. R. W. Rouse, Borough Librarian, Finsbury, E.C.1, does provide the required information we understand. It is perhaps too much to expect a list of all gatherings throughout these islands; or is it? There are 12,000 of us and, if only 50 attended a meeting once a year—a satisfactory number for discussion— there would be room for 240 meetings.

In their study of reciprocity in investigative interviews, Matsumoto and Hwang (2018) found that offering interviewees water prior to the interview enhanced observer-rated rapport and positively affected information provision. This paper aims to examine whether tailoring the item towards an interviewee’s needs would further enhance information provision. This paper hypothesised that interviewees given a relevant item prior to the interview would disclose more information than interviewees given an irrelevant item or no item.

Participants (n = 85) ate pretzels to induce thirst, engaged in a cheating task with a confederate and were interviewed about their actions after receiving either no item, an irrelevant item to their induced thirst (pen and paper) or a relevant item (water).

This paper found that receiving a relevant item had a significant impact on information provision, with participants who received water providing the most details, and significantly more than participants that received no item.

The findings have implications for obtaining information during investigative interviews and demonstrate a need for research on the nuances of social reciprocity in investigative interviewing.

The findings have implications for obtaining information during investigative interviews and demonstrate a need for research on the nuances of social reciprocity in investigative interviewing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to experimentally test the effect of different item types upon information provision in investigative interviews.