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WHhat records do we keep for business purposes? In my opinion, far too many. If we re‐phrase the question, what records should we keep for business purposes, I am confident that the answer is, or should be, as few as possible. Alas, this precept is not generally followed in industry, with the result that a great deal of space which could be more productively employed is wasted, and much unnecessary labour is expended on the maintenance of records which are not essential to business.

The Fortieth Annual Report of the National Central Library once again records a year of great activity in the various departments of the Library and continued expansion of the resources available by the addition of new names to the list of ‘outlier libraries’ and by wider international contacts.

At a time when a greatly expanded volume of research is giving rise to a mounting flood of publications, and scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the difficulty of keeping informed of all the work that may possibly be of interest to them, it is only natural that the literature on the problems and techniques of information work should itself grow rapidly. Not only is there an ever‐growing number of publications of library and documentation organizations, but as more and more scientists are faced with information problems and try to find solutions to them, relevant articles appear in the scientific and technical Press. The same set of conditions causes many people engaged in industry or research, with no training or experience in library or information work, to find themselves made responsible for the organization of information services at various levels, often in localities where there is no more experienced person to whom they can turn for advice. Such people can benefit greatly from the experience of others as recorded in the literature, but they often have difficulty in finding the papers that would be most helpful among the mass of other material, some of it irrelevant to their particular conditions, much of it too advanced or theoretical, quite a lot of it pure polemics, and some just bad. It is to meet the needs of these people that this series of reviews, now in its seventh year, has been designed. It attempts to pick out each year those items likely to be of direct practical help in running a small library or information service, especially for an untrained person. Advanced research work and theoretical discussions, however important, are ignored, as also are descriptions of practice in large libraries, unless they are capable of easy application in smaller organizations. Important bibliographies and works of reference are covered, including some of the more expensive ones which the librarian of a small organization may wish to know about and consult in other libraries, although he would not add them to his own stock. Items are not confined strictly to the publications of a particular year, though most of those chosen will have been received in British libraries during 1958. Those who have followed this series over the years will not fail to have noticed that the number of references included has increased. Even so, selection has become more and more difficult, and the final decisions as to what must be rejected are inevitably personal ones. Some injustice has possibly been done, but it is hoped that all the items included will prove of value to some of those for whom they are intended.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

We have heard from the two previous speakers about the records which should be kept for business purposes and for the historian. I should now like to say a few words about the approach of an O and M Department in a large business to the problem of preserving current records in general.

The purpose of this paper is to provide academic researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of the current Ivey Purchasing Managers Index (IPMI), with alternative IPMIs, and with their appropriateness as an indicator of the performance of the Canadian economy.

The paper makes use of principal component analysis to investigate the choice of principal variables for computing new IPMIs based on monthly data for five Ivey indexes for the period from December 2000 to May 2006. Statistical tests were made for the validity of the existing and new IPMIs using two major indicators of Canadian business and economic activities.

The results suggest that a new composite purchasing managers index for Canada similar to its US counterparts be computed based on four identified Ivey indexes. For constructing a simpler and parsimonious IPMI, the results support Ivey's current practice of using only one Ivey index, namely, the Purchases index.

There was a limited amount of data used for the analysis (i.e. monthly data for less than six years). Also there are issues on data comparability between the Ivey data and the US data (i.e. the Ivey does not collect separate data for the manufacturing sector or the non‐manufacturing sector).

Using a composite index akin to the PMI, business organizations and policymakers will have an accurate sense of what is happening in the Canadian economy. Furthermore, enhancing the power and accuracy of such an index will benefit supply professionals, economic forecasters, and policy experts.

The present study offers additional insights to both practitioners and academics. It helps supply chain managers and practitioners come up with a more reliable business strategy by providing them with a weighted composite index for the Canadian economy. It also makes contributions to the academic community in the area of statistical theory applied to supply management as it has introduced the principal components variable selection analysis in the construction of a new IPMI.

Outpatient care delivery is one of the key revenue sources of a hospital which plays a salient role in timely care delivery. The key purpose of the study is to propose a multi-objective simulation-based decision support model that considers the cost of care delivery and patient dissatisfaction as its two key conflicting objectives. Patient dissatisfaction considers service fairness. Patient idiosyncrasies such as no-show, unpunctuality and balking have been considered in the model involving multiple classes of patients.

A model has been designed using data collected from field investigations. In the first stage, queuing theory based discrete event simulation model has been developed. Genetic algorithm has been used to solve the scalarized problem and obtain actionable insights. In the second stage, non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) has been involved to achieve the Pareto optimal fronts considering equal priority of the two objectives.

The computational results considering various parameter settings can help in efficient resource planning while ensuring better care delivery. The model proposed in the study provides structural insights on the business strategy of healthcare service providers on optimizing the dual goals of care delivery cost and service fairness.

The study is one of the early works that helps to improve the care delivery process by taking into consideration the environmental factors as well as service fairness. The study demonstrates the usage of simulation-based multi-objective optimization to provide a more sustainable patient centric care delivery.

The purpose of this paper is to present exciting and innovative research questions in service operations that are aligned with eight key themes and related topics determined by the Journal of Service Management (JOSM) Service Operations Expert Research Panel. By offering a good number of such research questions, this paper provides a broad range of ideas to spur conceptual and empirical research related to service operations and encourage the continued creation of deep knowledge within the field, as well as collaborative research across disciplines that develops and incorporates insights from service operations.

Based on a Delphi study, described in the companion article, “Service Operations: What Have We Learned?,” the panel identified eight key research themes in service operations where leading-edge research is being done or has yet to be done (Victorino et al., 2018). In this paper, three or four topics within each theme are selected and multiple questions for each topic are proposed to guide research efforts. The topics and questions, while wide-ranging, are only representative of the many ongoing research opportunities related to service operations.

The field of service operations has many interesting research topics and questions that are largely unexplored. Furthermore, these research areas are not only increasingly integrative across multiple themes within operations but often transcend functional disciplines. This creates opportunities for ever more impactful research with a greater reach throughout the service system and suggests that service researchers, regardless of functional affiliation, can contribute to the ongoing conversation on the role of service operations in value creation.

Leveraging the collective knowledge of the JOSM Service Operations Expert Research Panel to expand on the research themes generated from the Delphi study, novel questions for future study are put forward. Recognizing that the number of potential research questions is virtually unlimited, summary questions by theme and topic are also provided. These questions represent a synopsis of the individual questions and can serve as a quick reference guide for researchers interested in pursuing new directions in conceptual and empirical research in service operations. This summary also serves as a framework to facilitate the formulation of additional research topics and questions.