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The Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011, implemented in January 2013, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. This case study aims to examine the implementation of the Act. The Act was born out of the “Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children’s Homes in Scotland 1950–1995”, published in 2007. This review identified problems for care leavers and abuse survivors attempting to trace records about themselves, family members or medical issues. It demonstrated an urgent need to take action to preserve historical records and protect the information rights of Scottish citizens, particularly those of the most vulnerable. Scottish Ministers wanted the Act not just to regulate recordkeeping but to change the culture of recordkeeping. Is it doing this?

The Act’s guiding principle is continuous improvement. It does not presume records management perfection from public authorities but requires that they assess their arrangements, identify gaps in provision and deliver a commitment to close these gaps over time. This case study draws on the Keeper of the Records of Scotland’s strategy of affecting change through compliance, engagement and advocacy. We can evidence the impact of the legislation through the various tools created to support its administration: scrutiny mechanisms and statutory penalty embedded in the Act; evidence-based compliance under a “Records Management Plan” (RMP); stakeholder surgeries and conferences that address challenges, examine failings, learn from and share successes and explore development opportunities; Progress Update Review mechanism: a self-assessment tool from which we draw evidence of progress or lapses; and webinars and surveys to remain alert to stakeholder issues. Our engagement provides the qualitative and quantitative data required to accurately update Scottish Ministers.

Undeniably, the Act is making a difference. It has transformed the recordkeeping landscape in Scotland over the past decade. The legislation has given the Keeper of the Records of Scotland influence and has acted as a national lever for change. For example, an authority employing a records manager and establishing a support unit as a consequence of our address to its Board; and the NHS Scotland Records Management Group, established as a consequence of the Act, now advises NHS senior management.

There is no doubt about progress on the ground. However, because of the fiscal problems of the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, COVID and the current cost-of-living crisis, public authority finances are extremely strained. What does this mean for Scottish Ministers’ ambition to change the culture of recordkeeping? What are the challenges for the next decade? Good recordkeeping is not only about efficiencies but about accountable, trustworthy and transparent government. Can the Act meet these challenges?

Purpose – This chapter explores the use of music and celebrity endorsements in political campaigns of the United States. It focuses on two aspects: (1) the legality of a political campaign’s use of music at rallies and in advertisements without authorization from the owner of the musical work and (2) a review of the literature on the potential effect of the use of music in political campaigns on voter behavior.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief history of the use of music in political campaigns precedes an examination of the expansion of copyright law protection for music and the legal claims musicians may raise against the unauthorized use of music by political campaigns. The chapter then reviews the potential effect of political campaigns’ use of music and celebrity endorsements on voter behavior.

Findings – A musician’s primary legal protection falls under copyright law, but the courts disagree on whether the unauthorized use of music at political rallies and in political campaign advertisements results in copyright infringement. Social research suggests music and celebrity endorsements affect voter behavior with a likely greater effect on first-time voters.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter introduces the complicated application of copyright law to the unauthorized use of musical works by political campaigns. Additionally, it notes the limited research on the effect of music and celebrity endorsements on voter behavior even as political campaigns increasingly target niche demographics with specific music selections to motivate voters to vote.

Application of the numerical method to the art of Medicine was regarded not as a “trivial ingenuity” but “an important stage in its development”; thus proclaimed Professor Bradford Hill, accepted as the father of medical statistics, a study still largely unintelligible to the mass of medical practitioners. The need for Statistics is the elucidation of the effects of multiple causes; this represents the essence of the statistical method and is most commendable. Conclusions reached empirically under statistical scrutiny have mistakes and fallacies exposed. Numerical methods of analysis, the mathematical approach, reveals data relating to factors in an investigation, which might be missed in empirical observation, and by means of a figure states their significance in the whole. A simplified example is the numerical analysis of food poisoning, which alone determines the commonest causative organisms, the commonest food vehicles and the organisms which affect different foods, as well as changes in the pattern, e.g., the rising incidence of S. agona and the increase of turkey (and the occasions on which it is served, such as Christmas parties), as a food poisoning vehicle. The information data enables preventive measures to be taken. The ever‐widening fields of Medicine literally teem with such situations, where complexities are unravelled and the true significance of the many factors are established. Almost every sphere of human activity can be similarly measured. Apart from errors of sampling, problems seem fewer and controversy less with technical methods of analysis then on the presentation and interpretation of figures, or as Bradford Hill states “on the application of common sense and on elementary rules of logic”.