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Notes the increased emphasis on community care in the NHS and suggests that “informal welfare” models of delivering such care pose particular quality and quality assurance problems. Consumer satisfaction in the community context is taken to mean both user satisfaction and carer satisfaction. Presents results from a Northern Ireland study of carers. The carers interviewed drew a distinction between quality and quantity of services received. Individual services were rated highly but there was demand for more and anxiety about future needs. Personal costs of care in lost employment, relationship and financial opportunities were also indicated. Concludes that carers are a valid and useful source of quality feedback.

Explores the value of focus group methodology in a patient satisfaction initiative intended to identify quality improvement targets in a large general hospital. Analyses the transcripts from ten focus groups selected from hospital discharge lists, using simple cut‐and‐paste techniques. Finds that the focus group methodology was successful in amplifying feedback previously gleaned from surveys. Highlights patients’ tolerance of shortcomings and their appreciation of staff providing high quality care while under pressure. Concludes that patients regard the National Health Service as deteriorating generally.

This index accompanies the index that appeared in Reference Services Review 16:4 (1988). As noted in the introduction to that index, the articles in RSR that deal with specific reference titles can be grouped into two categories: those that review specific titles (to a maximum of three) and those that review titles pertinent to a specific subject or discipline. The index in RSR 16:4 covered the first category; it indexed, by title, all titles that had been reviewed in the “Reference Serials” and the “Landmarks of Reference” columns, as well as selected titles from the “Indexes and Indexers,” “Government Publications,” and “Special Feature” columns of the journal.

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are playing an increasingly important role in global financial reporting. As a result, colleges are incorporating the IFRS into their business curricula. This chapter presents an interactive team project that will help students become familiar with the IFRS by critically examining IFRS adoption in the United States. Examining adoption of the IFRS from different perspectives allows students to explore the views of the various participants in the regulatory process, including investors, auditors, public, and private companies. This project encourages active collaborative learning and develops fundamental skills, including critical thinking and information literacy.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.

Dynamic relationships between technologies and organizations are investigated through research on digital visualization technologies and their use in the construction sector. Theoretical work highlights mutual adaptation between technologies and organizations but does not explain instances of sustained, sudden, or increasing maladaptation. By focusing on the technological field, I draw attention to hierarchical structuring around inter-dependent levels of technology; technological priorities of diverse groups; power asymmetries and disjunctures between contexts of development and use. For complex technologies, such as digital technologies, I argue these field-level features explain why organizations peripheral to the field may experience difficulty using emerging technology.

This article suggests that Patrick Pearse’s thought and work was rooted in the child‐centred movement of the late nineteenth‐century, was informed by the tenets of progressivism and predated the work of later influential educational thinkers. It is further argued that Pearse developed a unique conceptualisation of schooling as a radical form of political and cultural dissent in pre‐1916 Ireland. Aspects of Pearse’s thought that are evidently problematic are highlighted and the article suggests that discussions of his work might benefit from moving to these more substantial and germane areas.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

The past may be a foreign country, according to L.P. Hartley, but marketers seem to have secured resident alien status. Retro products, services, advertisements and pricing policies are everywhere apparent, as are heritage centres, mega‐brand museums, festival shopping malls and retrorestaurants like Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Café or Dick Clarke’s American Bandstand Grill. This paper examines the retro‐marketing phenomenon, notes its characteristics, causes and consequences, and makes some sure‐to‐prove‐erroneous predictions about the future of the past.

This paper aims to explore how researchers in general, and field researchers in particular, might respond to systems of governance of the researchers' activity in ways that can support rather than distort the quality of the research.

We draw upon literature on serendipity to develop a framework for engaging with the positive and negative potentials of systems of governance. We ground our analysis in discussion of participation in the field comprising two parts: first, the examination of our own activities and second, the accounts of participation found in two career-autobiographical interviews with emeritus professors of management accounting from Japan.

We highlight the potential for a productive tension between two contrasting perspectives that researchers might take on governance of their activity. A contractual perspective sees the value of targets and detailed pre-planning. A reflexive perspective sees the value of exploring the unexpected and considering many alternatives. We offer a framework for considering serendipity and the conditions that facilitate serendipity to help researchers maintain a productive tension between these perspectives.

We build upon retrospective accounts of two successful individuals whose careers evolved in a specific context. The intention is not to set out what might be generally achievable in a research career, nor to propose specific lines of action or planning in relation to specific systems of governance, since these vary across countries and over time. Rather, the paper draws on these materials to illuminate the more general challenge of preparing for serendipity in a way that goes beyond simple opportunism.

We analyse how researchers' mindfulness of serendipity and the nature of contexts that facilitate serendipity can encourage a productive tension between contractual and reflexive perspectives on governance of academic activity.