Search results

Argues that people have very different views on what constitutes “quality” in higher education, but that current debate in universities about the declining unit of resource, the increased numbers of students, the structure of qualifications and academic audit and assessment, makes radical rethinking about policy for high quality teaching, learning and assessment a professional imperative for decision makers at all levels of provision. Suggests that the Warnock Report (1990) has valuable contributions to make for policy and practice, and sketches what they might be; but argues that the perception of “reality gap” between policy formulation and implementation is down to a lack of clear communication with those who matter most: the teachers and learners.

A “state-driven” approach suggests that colonists use census categories to rule. However, a “society-driven” approach suggests that this state-driven perspective confers too much power upon states. A third approach views census-taking and official categorization as a product of state–society interaction that depends upon: (a) the population's lay categories, (b) information intellectuals' ability to take up and transform these lay categories, and (c) the balance of power between social and state actors. We evaluate the above positions by analyzing official records, key texts, travelogues, and statistical memoirs from three key periods in India: Indus Valley civilization through classical Gupta rule (ca. 3300 BCE–700 CE), the “medieval” period (ca. 700–1700 CE), and East India Company (EIC) rule (1757–1857 CE), using historical narrative. We show that information gathering early in the first period was society driven; however, over time, a strong interactive pattern emerged. Scribes (information intellectuals) increased their social status and power (thus, shifting the balance of power) by drawing on caste categories (lay categories) and incorporating them into official information gathering. This intensification of interactive information gathering allowed the Mughals, the EIC, and finally British direct rule officials to collect large quantities of information. Our evidence thus suggests that the intensification of state–society interactions over time laid the groundwork for the success of the direct rule British censuses. It also suggests that any transformative effect of these censuses lay in this interactive pattern, not in the strength of the British colonial state.

Discusses the different forms of external enquiry into the operations of HEIs that constitute existing quality control, assurance and assessment processes and procedures. Proposes that external scrutiny of operations should adopt an approach that ensures accountability, enhances quality, is practical, efficient, effective and offers a degree of autonomy. Asserts that putting continuous quality improvement into practice in higher education requires the implementation of key principles of procedure and practical team approaches which are currently far from endemic across institutions. Describes and explains how the identification of specific roles and responsibilities within academic teams can provide one way of successfully establishing the link between quality control, assurance and assessment and the process of continuous quality improvement in the provision of higher education.

THE BBC's television services have a longer history than is generally realised. Experiments were going on in 1925 and 1926, broadcasts were being put out as early as 1933 or 1934, and on 2nd November, 1936 the BBC gave Great Britain the world's first regular television service, operating on the 405‐line standard in the Very High Frequency channels.

“GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him,” is an aphorism which has been accepted for many years. But, like many other household words, it is not always true. Even if it were, the dog to be operated upon would probably prefer a gala day at his Tyburn Tree to being executed in an obscure back yard.

The debate concerning the convergence or divergence of human resource management (HRM) and industrial relations has grown in parallel with the importance of multinational companies (MNCs) in OECD countries. The “country-of-origin effect” and “host-country effect” are two obvious poles of this debate (Ferner & Quintanilla, 1998). The country-of-origin effect claims the ability of MNCs to shape industrial relations and HRM practices in their subsidiaries abroad, frequently in accordance with industrial relations practices and institutions in their country of origin. Conversely, the host-country effect stresses the resilience of industrial relations institutions at both the national (Whitley, 1999; Hall & Soskice, 2001; Katz & Darbishire, 2000) and the regional or local levels (Belanger, Berggren, Björkman, & Köhler, 1999; Ortiz, 2002). Yet, the possibility that each one of these effects could prevail under different circumstances has hardly been considered. Moreover, the roles of politics and structure within the organization (Edwards, Almond, Clark, Colling, & Ferner, 2005), as well as the role of local culture, have often been ignored.

This monograph contains abstracts from the 2005 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, 6‐7th September 2005

The terms are not synonymous; their differences are mainly of function and areas of administration. Community Health is used in national health service law; environmental health to describe the residuum of health functions remaining with local authorities after the first NHS/Local Government reorganization of 1974. Previously, they were all embraced in the term public health, known for a century or more, with little attention to divisions and in the field of administration, all local authority between county and district councils. In the dichotomy created by the reorganization, the personal health services, including the ambulance service, may have dove‐tailed into the national health service, but for the remaining functions, there was a situation of unreality, which has persisted. It is difficult to know where community health and environmental health begin and end. From the outside, the unreality may be more apparent than real. The Royal Commission on the NHS in their Report of last year state that leaving environmental health services with local authorities “does not seem to have caused any problems”—and this, despite the disparity in status of the area health authority and the bottom tier, local councils.

The artists' book is a hybrid art form: it has no home, no shelf upon which to comfortably reside. Nor is its readership easily described or accounted for. It is a book art form that is in transition; it is still evolving. This paper maps attempts to define the artists' book and explains why definitions fall short and what the slipperiness of the form might imply for library collections.

This article has been informed by a literature search, the examination of special collections of artists' books in libraries in Europe, the UK, North America and Australia as well as negotiations with librarians to acquire books.

The artists' book as a minor genre within both art and literature is also an interdisciplinary practice: as such is difficult to manage and display within the conventional library system.

This article suggests an approach to the inclusion of the artists' book in special library collections.

After great Wars, the years that follow are always times of disquiet and uncertainty; the country is shabby and exhausted, but beneath it, there is hope, expectancy, nay! certainty, that better times are coming. Perhaps the golden promise of the fifties and sixties failed to mature, but we entered the seventies with most people confident that the country would turn the corner; it did but unfortunately not the right one! Not inappropriate they have been dubbed the “striking seventies”. The process was not one of recovery but of slow, relentless deterioration. One way of knowing how your country is going is to visit others. At first, prices were cheaper that at home; the £ went farther and was readily acceptabble, but year by year, it seemed that prices were rising, but it was in truth the £ falling in value; no longer so easily changed. Most thinking Continentals had only a sneer for “decadent England”. Kinsmen from overseas wanted to think well of us but simply could not understand what was happening.