Search results

Examines how to successfully apply one theoretical model of organizational development (OD) and organizational culture, the cognitive model, through theoretically consistent, i.e. cognitive, interventions to solve the organizational problem of downsizing. Reports a case study on use of a variety of such interventions. Summarizes what can be gained from such an approach. The cognitive model of OD as schemata change found to be a viable and useful approach to organizational downsizing.

Stress‐management training benefits individual participants and their employer organisations in terms of improved health, higher productivity, reduced absenteeism, and fewer accidents. However, employee reluctance to enroll in stress‐management training programmes is common. An easy‐to‐complete, self‐administered diagnostic inventory can lower resistance of potential trainees. High stress scores and confidentiality often motivate employees to seek counselling, training, or both. The Personal Stress Assessment Inventory, which is self‐scoring and comprehensive, was found to be an appropriate instrument ‐‐ with a high level of internal consistency and external validity.

David L. Altheide, Ph.D., is Emeritus Regents’ Professor of the Faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, where he taught for 36 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. His most recent books are Qualitative media analysis (2nd ed., Sage, 2012) and Terror post 9/11 and the media (Lang, 2009). Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction: In 2007 for Terrorism and the politics of fear (2006); in 2004 for Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis (2002); and in 1986 for Media power (1985). Altheide received the 2005 George Herbert Mead Award for lifetime contributions from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and the society’s Mentor Achievement Award in 2007.

PLR now has a long history. If our ‘Prologue’ were to recall A P Herbert, John Brophy and the Scandinavian pioneers, then in ‘Act 1’ PLR became a policy with all party support. Through the 1970s PLR was repeatedly on the parliamentary agenda: lobbying was persistent—and the interests of writers, publishers, librarians and literature were frequently in discord. Finally, PLR became a legal right of intellectual property; most inportantly—to the man in the street the idea of PLR came to seem fair and natural.

In recent years, the number of journals focusing on a single literary figure has increased substantially. No longer are only a few select authors the sole focus of a journal or newsletter. With the proliferation of single‐author periodicals, implications for their use in locating literary criticism increases the importance of identifying such publications and recommending them to users. The importance of the effective use of journals devoted to a single author is highlighted by the fact that many such titles are not indexed in MLA International Bibliography, long deemed the most complete of the traditional sources for locating literary criticism. Perhaps the greatest strength of the relatively recent American Humanities Index lies is its coverage of single‐author titles. Humanities Index and Abstracts for English Studies also provide access to such journals. Arts and Humanities Citation Index does include a number of the titles too, but it is relatively difficult to use because of its subject approach.

ONE MUST BEGIN with Dickens. A chapter by Christopher Hibbert in Charles Dickens, 1812–1870: centenary volume, edited by E. W. F. Tomlin, and The London of Charles Dickens, published by London Transport with aid from the Dickens Fellowship, make a similar study here superfluous; both are illustrated, the latter giving instructions for reaching surviving Dickensian buildings. Neither warns the reader of Dickens's conscious and unconscious imaginative distortion, considered in Humphrey House's The Dickens World. Dickens himself imagined Captain Cuttle hiding in Switzerland and Paul Dombey's wild waves saying ‘Paris’; ‘the association between the writing and the place of writing is so curiously strong in my mind.’ Author and character may be in two places at once. ‘I could not listen at my fireside, for five minutes to the outer noises, but it was borne into my ears that I was dead.’ (Our Mutual Friend)

Rarely are we invited to know the where of a writer’s writing; not the stance or angle or point of view they take on their narrative, but rather, the physical space and time they occupy as they write. This, of course, is an integral facet of the writer’s craft – and perhaps art. Writers (or in this case, ethnographers) may write “winter wonderland” tales in summer, or pieces exploring the inner workings of mind while on an impressive, event-packed holiday. They may write with calm and ease while flying at 11,277 meters above the Tasman Sea in a jostling, raucous ride that tests the resolve of all who fly. They may end up taking notes at their chosen “site,” transcribing in cramped student quarters, and writing in between early-morning feedings. Does place (and, come to it, time) affect what they have to say? What they choose to write? How they – or we – interpret what “facts” or “data” or “evidences” they call to bear on their individual take of the “truth”?

ON April 23rd this year, when all countries in the world will be celebrating the Quater‐centenary of Shakespeare's birthday, the Shakespeare Memorial Library in Birmingham will have attained a majority of one hundred years. Although founded in 1864 the scope of the library was first envisaged by George Dawson, President of the local Shakespeare club in a letter to Aris's Birmingham Gazette of 1861.

EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment of heaven is called down upon the fiction reader, and the library authorities are condemned as a set of ignorant and inefficient office‐holders, who pander to a depraved public taste. The last assailant of this sort whom we had the pleasure of setting right was Mr. J. Churton Collins, who used the Nineteenth Century and After, as the medium for conveying his accusations. Now comes Mr. W. H. Harwood, who fills six‐and‐a‐half pages of the Westminster Review for February, 1906, with a quantum of twaddle about libraries, which differs from most recent articles of the same sort only in its dulness. In his use of this journalistic cliché, Mr. Harwood displays the customary ignorance of the Public Libraries Acts, by styling his paper “Free Libraries and Fiction,” and by his failure to prove even one of his statements by reference to a single concrete fact. Briefly, Mr. Harwood's position is this:—

OUR issue devotes special attention this month to the subject of the library for children. There is a common inclination to regard this subject as the most over‐written in all branches of library literature. It certainly is the part of our work which leads to much sentimental verbiage. These are dangers against which we are on our guard; they may be inevitable, but we do not think they are. As a matter of fact there has been a great deal of talk about this matter by people who have ideas and ideals, but who have had no real experience in applying them. The paper by Mr. Berwick Savers, written for the Library Association Conference, points out very cogently what has been wanting in library work in this country. This question of the children's librarian has not been faced anywhere in what may be called the ultimate manner; that is, as a distinct, specialist branch of library work, requiring high qualifications and deserving good payment. There will be no really successful library work of the kind in Great Britain until this is done.