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This article reviews the development of the British Library’s OPAC services leading up to the launch of OPAC 97, offering access to nine million bibliographic records. The article attempts to show the value of a user‐centred approach in the project management involved in developing such a service as recommended by Human Computer Interaction (HCI) studies. Evaluation studies of the Online Catalogue, the Network OPAC, a web prototype interface and of OPAC 97 are reviewed briefly and the results discussed in relation to the OPAC 97 project. Although the OPAC 97 interface made use of various HCI recommendations, user feedback sometimes contradicted these in specific instances, revealing the value of detailed user evaluation in developing services. room with its own catalogue only available for consultation in that one reading room in London. The British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books with bibliographic records for acquisitions up to 1975 was converted from catalogue slips and published in printed form which could now be available for use by other libraries more easily, but this did not assist users who wished to make subject enquiries. Blaise, the Library’s priced online information retrieval service, was available from 1975 but this was developed for information professionals, offering bulk catalogue record downloading and bibliographic checking. Any reference enquiries had to be carried out by trained library staff on behalf of users. What the Library has attempted to do from 1993 is to offer the Library users themselves access to the collections, especially remote users who cannot visit the reading rooms each day.

The British Library is currently progressing several projects involving Z39.50 and SR standards. The Network OPAC trial service is being extended for a further year and the user base broadened. Future applications of Z39.50 currently being investigated include access from Z39.50 clients developed by other suppliers; a ‘virtual’ database to cover all the Library's diverse catalogues; a national distributed bibliographic database.

The 26th annual seminar of the European Library Automation Group (ELAG) was held in Rome in April 2002. This report provides an overview of the papers presented, including those describing relevant developments in Italy (such as the Italian Digital Library), those covering the theme of the seminar (semantic Web and libraries), as well as papers on functional requirements for bibliographic records and others. Workshops are a key feature of the ELAG seminars and a brief mention is made of these.

WHERE are we going? The aim is to double our standard of living in the next 25 years and, as Sir Alexander Fleck, K.B.E., Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd., so aptly staled recently, ‘The man who knows where he is going is the one who is most likely to arrive.’ One might venture to expand this statement by adding that he is still more likely to arrive if the cluttering debris of inefficient methods and movements are cleared away.

Copyright Clouds Multimedia Prospects. Imagine a computer program that gives a fire department an edge in dealing with hazardous spills, toxic materials threatening life and property — where a quick and accurate response literally has consequences for thousands. This program stores information on thousands of chemicals from manuals and technical treatises. By selecting an icon of a map, an entire city comes up on the screen with details on the locations of schools, hospitals, and businesses. With another click of a mouse, the program calculates the direction of the plume from a leak and provides clues to arrest the accident and move citizens out of harm's way.

This study seeks to examine the links between employee agreeableness, group performance, and peers' perceptions of threat of retaliation, through relationship conflict.

In a laboratory setting, 42 groups of undergraduate students (N = 182) from a Pakistani university were assigned to group projects to be completed within four months. Data collected from three different questionnaires at four different times and actual scores awarded by the course instructor to each group were used for the analyses. Based on r_WG(J) and ICC(1), level 1 (182 students') data were aggregated to level 2 (groups), and then analysed using regression analysis followed by Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping procedure.

Results suggest that high agreeableness predicts group performance positively and peers' perceptions of threat of retaliation negatively. Moreover, relationship conflict among group members significantly mediates the agreeableness-group performance relationship. The above relationships may be sensitive to national culture.

In this study, groups were formed for a few months, whereas in real organizational life, workgroups are formed for different durations. Therefore, the range of situations to which these findings generalize remains an open question.

Agreeableness of group members can be constructive for performance of the group. Managers may utilize this insight while forming groups, and rating performance.

There is dearth of research illuminating how employee's personality traits affect group performance and appraisal ratings. The study tests the effects of employee agreeableness on: (1) group performance, as rated by supervisors; (2) the threat of retaliation, as perceived by peer raters; and (3) the mediating effect of relationship conflict.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.

AT the last meeting of the London Branch of the Library Association Mr. James D. Stewart dealt in a suggestive manner with the problems of co‐operation as they affect the metropolitan area. There is some hope that the Council of the Branch may now give definite attention to the one thing in modern library administration that really calls for it. The problem is by no means limited to London, but London ought to be able to show the way. For twenty‐five years at least the subject of co‐operation has been discussed, but rather fitfully, and never with sufficient force to convince librarians generally. To take one instance only: there always has been a fear that if we have a co‐operative catalogue some library assistant somewhere or other will find his occupation gone. This is typical of the bogeys that have hindered progress. The London area can promote co‐operation on lines which have all the advantages, and none of the disadvantages, of central control. Central control stifles almost every form of local initiative, especially such control as we are wont to get in this country.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Employee Relations is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Design of work; Performance, productivity and motivation; Patterns of work; Pay, incentives and pensions; Career/manpower planning, recruitment; Industrial relations and participation; Health and safety.