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There is a widespread belief that the global land‐mine problem can be solved using a combination of advanced robotics, sophisticated sensors and powerful computing devices. Recent research results suggest that this confidence is misplaced. There is little likelihood of sensing improvements in the short‐term and all the proposed robotic solutions are too expensive to be practical for humanitarian demining operations in countries like Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia. However, simple equipment improvements and low‐cost robotic devices might provide some useful improvements in safety and cost‐effectiveness in the short‐ to medium‐term. Reviews contributions in robotics and sensing technology, and proposes some practical directions for future work.

The history of the publishing firm of Longman is discussed. Particular attention is paid to its publication of the historical works of Lord Macaulay in the nineteenth century and of G.M. Trevelyan in the twentieth century. The firm’s successful development against competiton in the nineteenth century and developments in the twentieth century is considered and the nature of its periodical Longman’s Magazine indicated.

The enormous growth in publishing in Victorian England is surveyed from its origins in the eighteenth century to the demise, or survival, of principal publishing houses in the twentieth century. The major publishers ‐ Longman, Murray, Smith Elder, Chapman and Hall, Colburn, Bentley, Heinemann, Methuen and Macmillan ‐ are discussed in relation to their authors and publishing successes and failures. The relation between the full‐length book and the major literary journals is discussed and the capitalist, risk taking nature of publishing as a commercial enterprise is emphasised.

OUR readers will, we trust, appreciate our double souvenir number issued in connection with the Library Association Conference at Glasgow. Special features are the articles on the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 1874–1924, by a member of the staff, Mr. J. Dunlop, and one on the Burns Country, by Mr. J. M. Leighton, of Greenock Public Library. We printed the provisional programme in our July issue and as we go to press have little to add to the particulars there given, except to compliment the Library Association and the Local Reception Committee on the excellent programme arranged for the occasion, from both the professional and social point of view.

This is a brief study of the character, and the professional career, of one of the most spectacular and prolific of all the huge medley of book‐publishers in Victorian London. George Smith is perhaps today somewhat overshadowed by other famous names. Nevertheless, in 1944, the Cambridge historian, G.M. Trevelyan, singled him from the rest: as the publisher of the monumental Dictionary of National Biography. As the nineteenth century’s cult of printed books inevitably now recedes in favour of information technology, perhaps the time is ripe for this succinct evaluation of an extraordinary publisher from Victorian times who promoted not only works by Leslie Stephen, Thackeray, and many other literary men but particularly works by women‐novelists, such as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, despite the fact that he was far from being a “feminist”, in our own contemporary sense.

This chapter seeks to reassess the film GoldenEye (Campbell, 1995), and its highly successful (Impellizeri, 2010) videogame adaptation GoldenEye 007 (Rare, 1997), in light of the concept of the Hegemony of Play (Fron, Fullerton, Morie, & Pearce, 2007), which seeks to critique the dominance of the hypermasculine ‘gamer’ identity in videogame culture (a persona GoldenEye anticipates in its problematic character Boris Grishenko).

Since the gamer is bound up in the very technological materiality of videogames as a medium and an industry (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009), central to this discussion is the significant yet highly ambivalent role technology continues to play in the Bond films, both extending and threatening (Leach, 2015; Nitins, 2010) Bond’s natural male skill and intuition (McGowan, 2010). Indeed, GoldenEye is a particularly salient study since many suggest Brosnan to be the most technologically adept (or dependent) of the Bonds (Rositzka, 2015; Willis, 2003), and I will argue that the film and game together explore just what happens when Bond’s implacable force meets the immutable technological object, providing a fascinating lens through which to read the larger technocultural shifts embodied in the transition to the immaterial economies of cognitive capitalism (Hardt & Negri, 2001) and their potential to disrupt traditional, patriarchal gender configurations (Haraway, 1991; Hayles, 2005; Plant, 1998; Wajcman, 2004).

Core to this is a critical reading of the game’s popular multiplayer mode, where exploration of whether technology can be understood to potentially level the gender playing field (Jones, 2015) or whether the fact that such technology is always already encoded as masculine (Chess, 2017) ultimately undercuts this ambition.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why Singapore has succeeded in curbing the problem of police corruption and to identify the six lessons which other Asian countries can learn from Singapore's experience.

The paper analyzes the causes of police corruption in Singapore during the British colonial period and describes the measures adopted by the People's Action Party government after assuming office in June 1959 to curb police corruption. The effectiveness of these measures is assessed by referring to Singapore's perceived extent of corruption according to three international indicators and the reported cases of police corruption from 1965 to 2011.

The Singapore Police Force has succeeded in minimizing police corruption by improving salaries and working conditions, cooperating with the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, enhancing its recruitment and selection procedures, providing training and values education for its members, and adopting administrative measures to reduce the opportunities for corruption. Other Asian countries afflicted with rampant police corruption can learn six lessons from Singapore's success.

This paper will be of interest to those policy makers, scholars, and anti-corruption practitioners, who are interested in learning how Singapore has succeeded in curbing police corruption.

The history of Southport Public Library from its foundation in 1875 is outlined. The achievements of its Librarian from 1934 to 1964, B.T.W. Stevenson, are discussed and major issues during his tenure noted. Notable local personalities are noted in relation to the Library, in particular the work of local historians and of F.H. Cheetham especially. The development of local history and of the range of enquiries received in the Library are discussed in reference to the Library’s surviving archives.

Patriotism is often described as the “love of country” that individuals display in the acclamation of their national community. Despite the prominence of this sentiment in various societies around the world, organizational research on patriotism is largely absent. This omission is surprising because entrepreneurs, human resource (HR) divisions, and firms frequently embrace both patriotism and patriotic organizational practices. These procedures include (among other interventions) national symbol embracing, HR practices targeted toward military members and first responders, the adulation of patriots and celebration of patriotic events, and patriotic-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR). Here, the authors argue that research on HR management and organization studies will likely be further enhanced with a deeper understanding of the national obligation that can spur employee productivity and loyalty. In an attempt to jumpstart the collective understanding of this phenomenon, the authors explore the antecedents of patriotic organizational practices, namely, the effects of founder orientation, employee dispersion, and firm strategy. It is suggested that HR practices such as these lead to a patriotic organizational image, which in turn impacts investor, customer, and employee responses. Notably, the effect of a patriotic organizational image on firm-related outcomes is largely contingent on how it fits with the patriotic views of other stakeholders, such as investors, customers, and employees. After outlining this model, the authors then present a thought experiment of how this model may appear in action. The authors then discuss ways the field can move forward in studying patriotism in HR management and organizational contexts by outlining several future directions that span multiple levels (i.e., micro and macro). Taken together, in this chapter, the authors introduce a conversation of something quite prevalent and largely unheeded – the patriotic organization.