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The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Picture System is a reliable and face valid measure of internal working models of attachment in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

The AAPs of 20 adults with ID were coded blind by two reliable judges and classified into one of four groups: secure, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using κ. Six participants repeated the assessment for test-retest reliability. Two independent experts rated ten cases on the links between the AAP analysis and the clinical history.

There was significant agreement between AAP judges, κ=0.677, p<0.001. Five out of six participants showed stability in their classifications over time. The majority of expert ratings were “good” or “excellent”. There was a significant inter-class correlation between raters suggesting good agreement between them r=0.51 (p<0.05). The raters’ feedback suggested that the AAP had good clinical utility.

The inter-rater reliability, stability, face validity, and clinical utility of the AAP in this population is promising. Further examination of these findings with a larger sample of individuals with ID is needed.

This is the first study attempting to investigate the reliability and validity of the AAP in this population.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) as a measure of attachment state of mind in adults with intellectual disabilities. The AAP is a free response picture system method of assessing patterns of adult attachment with established validity and reliability in community and clinical samples.

The paper reports on five cases of adults with intellectual disabilities who were administered the AAP as part of routine clinical work. The AAP administration procedure was modified to take account of the participants’ intellectual disabilities.

It was possible to code and classify each AAP using the established coding and classification system. The authors coded four cases blind to each other ' s classification; they agreed on classifications for three cases and reached consensus on the fourth. The AAP analysis showed strong correspondence with case history material.

The AAP demonstrates the potential to assess attachment state of mind in adults with intellectual disabilities and is the first developmental measure of attachment status that has shown potential in this population. The paper discusses clinical application of the AAP and directions for future research.

Many organisations, including a number of those in the public sector, have adopted the EFQM excellence model as a means of improving performance. Supported, and in some cases driven, by central government’s “best value” agenda, some local authorities have adopted the model as a means of improving services and demonstrating continuous improvement. For many organisations there can be problems getting employees to “buy in” to the model’s approach and this can adversely affect the benefits that could be gained from implementation. This paper reports on a unique approach to implementation that managed to get all employees involved in the process and thus allowed the organisation to reap the necessary benefits and advance to the next stage in the improvement process.

A survey of 890 appointment committee members undertaken in South Thames (West) Regional Health Authority showed that women doctors are less likely to apply for posts in hospital medicine, although if they do apply they stand a better chance of getting appointed. Male respondents perceived role conflict in combining professional and family demands, child‐care arrangements and career breaks to be the main barriers facing female hospital doctors. In contrast female doctors considered organizational culture, career structure and working practices to be the main barriers. Candidates, particularly female candidates, are still being asked questions about their plans to have a family and ability to combine family and professional demands. There is a need to ensure the culture, attitudes and organizational practices within the medical profession are changed if there is to be equity of opportunity and effective use of resources in the future.

The aim of this pilot audit study is to develop and test a model to examine existing adult patient database (APD) data quality.

A database was created to audit 50 records per site to determine accuracy. The audited records were randomly selected from the calendar year 2004 and four sites participated in the pilot audit study. A total of 41 data elements were assessed for data quality – those elements required for APACHE II scoring system.

Results showed that the audit was feasible; missing audit data were an unplanned problem; analysis was complicated owing to the way the APACHE calculations are performed and 50 records per site was too time‐consuming.

This is the first audit study of intensive care data within the ANZICS APD and demonstrates how to determine data quality in a large database containing individual patient records.

Notable Social Studies Trade Book (NSSTB) lists include books selected annually by the Book Review Committee of the National Council for the Social Studies in conjunction with the Children’s Book Council. These lists are excellent resources for teachers who use children’s literature to support social studies instruction in their classrooms. We report our analysis of award-winning titles for primary grades published from 2001-2011. Biographies and books that address topics about families are featured as a starting place for primary grades teachers to begin incorporating NSSTB into their social studies instruction. We conclude by suggesting ways for primary grade teachers to utilize the book lists each year.

“Where HAS that book been reviewed?” This question seemed to arise daily during my work as Adult Services Consultant for an upstate New York library system. Since I was responsible for the selection of new titles for the system pool collection as well as preparing buying lists for member libraries, I felt the need to have some way of “pulling together” all the reviews for new titles as they appeared in the book review media. It seemed to me that the book review indexes currently being published were inadequate in several ways, especially in the timely listing of current reviews and in the fact that you usually had to know the author's name in order to find citations to the reviews. How did I progress from perceiving a need for a more current listing of citations to book reviews and actually publishing my own index, Title Index of Current Reviews? Initially, several seemingly unrelated events led me in the direction I was eventually to take.

IT is very appropriate that this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD should be devoted to the subject of cataloguing. This has become current in a special degree owing to the activity of the A.L.A. and the L.A. committees on both sides of the Atlantic, who are engaged in reviewing the Anglo‐American Code of Cataloguing Rules. Cataloguing is a subject that figures more in the minds of candidates for examinations than it does in the average conversations of librarians, but there is no more important subject in the librarian's life and no more significant activity. Our readers may not accept the implications of the somewhat vigorous “Letters on Our Affairs” which appear in this number, but it could be urged that there are many things to consider in cataloguing which have immediate importance. The matter was a simple one in former days. Forty years ago every library in this country of any size found it possible to issue a printed catalogue of some sort or other. The objections to these printed catalogues are commonplace to‐day; they were expensive, their cost was not recovered by sales, and they were incomplete from the beginning. The point is that libraries somehow managed to publish them, and those libraries were, as our correspondent suggests, of as good service to literature in its best sense as are present libraries.

The times have come down to us as the “Good Old Days”, of Edwardian elegance and grace, peace and plenty, which conceal the poverty, squalor and disease. There seemed less resentment from those who suffered the rigours of the times than from those of today who only know of them by repute. Life was indeed cruel to the submerged tenth of society and the homeless waifs and strays were all too real and true.