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At the end of 1972 a circular letter was sent to all NLL borrowers. This was partly to give information about the new procedures to be used in the loan/photocopy service but information was also requested about the NLL's serial collection. Paragraph 2 of this letter included the following section:

The arrangement of the existing monograph stock at the BLLD is outlined, and the investigation to determine the optimum system for the BLLD's requirements described. From this, several models emerged from which one, involving alphabetical arrangement of recently acquired books and numerical arrangement of the rest, was chosen. The effects of implementing this decision are then discussed, with special attention to the large, uncatalogued collection from the NLLST.

The British Library Lending Division came into being in 1973 when the National Central Library was integrated with the stock and services of the National Lending Library for Science and Technology at Boston Spa. The original buildings have been added to by specially designed accommodation. The loan/photocopy service, based on the use of a pre‐paid three‐part request form, has been supplemented by computer requesting, links through database operators such as DIALOG, and the telephone for urgent requests. Road/rail transport links with many parts of the country have been introduced and now account for over half of all items dispatched. A rapid growth in demand in the first seven years was followed by a decline and then a levelling off in 1982/83. The proportion of demand accounted for by International Services increased from 9% in 1973/74 to 21% in 1982/83. The Division has developed close connections with IFLA and the European Communities. As a result of a British Library Ad hoc Working Party on Union Catalogues, which reported in 1982, the Division's stock records and union catalogues are being automated. The British Union Catalogue of Periodicals ceased to be issued and its bibliographic function was replaced by Serials in the British Library, issued by the Bibliographic Services Division from 1981. Certain libraries with large or important stocks were designated to serve as backup collections; from 1979 more requests went to backups than were provided with locations. The British Library Reference Division has not only supplied photocopies as a backup but begun to lend items held in the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books and the Science Reference Library. Close relations have been maintained with users and with relevant organizations. The acquisitions policy established in 1973 has changed little, though music scores were added in 1974, and rationalization of resources with Reference Division has resulted in a small drop in the number of serials acquired. The British National Book Centre activities of the NCL were merged with the donations activities of the NLLST to form the Gift and Exchange Section. Until 1982 the service was free but economies on staff and resources led to a restricted and priced service. Courses in the use of the scientific literature were extended to other subjects but had to be terminated as an economy measure in 1980. For similar reasons the ad hoc translating service was discontinued at the end of 1981. The cover‐to‐cover translations of (mainly Russian) scientific and technical journals sponsored by the NLLST have continued as part of the Division's extensive publication programme, which now recovers all its costs. Cost recovery increased from a quarter to a half of all expenditure over the period. The Division has kept up with relevant developments in automation and electronic publishing.

The number, size and cost of current serials, and changes in these since 1960, are examined from the point of view of a UK library. Both the number of current serials and the average UK subscription cost have increased exponentially, while the average thickness appears now to be roughly constant. An estimate of the cost of ‘information’, measured by the cost per metre of shelf space of serials relative to the Retail Price Index shows a substantial but irregular increase.

The British Library has recently reviewed its role in the provision of short courses. Courses that the Library currently provides are described and future plans discussed. It will concentrate on two types of course a) user education and b) disseminating its special library/information knowledge and experience to others in the library/information field. Little is known about the need for user education amongst different classes and level of user. The Library will therefore develop initially a programme of courses which extends its experience and aims to discover the needs of a range of different users.

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of socially distributed leadership in Denmark and the USA, specifically teacher and staff leadership practices distributed in schools.

This study used a confirmatory factor analysis and a second-order factor analysis to examine elementary USA and 0–9 Danish school educators’ responses to the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning.

Findings from this analysis of leadership practice demonstrate (1) different approaches to teacher and staff leadership in Denmark and the USA; (2) the importance of a collaborative approach to developing and maintaining professional learning communities in schools in both contexts; and (3) different patterns of leadership practice that broadly reflect the local structure and approach to school leadership while responding to external policy demands.

Drawing on the globalization scholarship, which acknowledges the connection between global policy development and local spaces of implementation, this comparative international study allowed us to examine how policy ideas are parlayed into practice through the use of a shared assessment of leadership practice. The results of this study suggest that while the work of teacher and staff leadership is important and something that educators in Denmark and the USA are engaging in to advance the overall instructional mission of their schools, the approaches taken in each context are different and reflect a local-level negotiation between contextual cultural norms and policy expectations.

Depressive disorders are a focus of growing social and economic concern. While antidepressant medications are widely accepted, they are ineffective for nearly 40% of users, and cause numerous adverse drug reactions. The pharmacogenomics of depression attempts to better understand the role of genetic variation in antidepressant metabolism in the hope of improving drug efficacy and tolerability. However, the development and delivery of genome‐based antidepressants face many hurdles. In this paper we provide an overview of the potential impact of the pharmacogenomics of depression on public mental health care by focusing on the social and ethical issues at stake. These include questions about genetic testing, informed consent, drug access, and market fragmentation. We end the paper with a brief discussion of the wider context and how the pharmacogenomics of depression relates to broader trends in psychiatry and biomedicine.

The contracting process is fraught with difficulties. While successful completion of a contract is the goal, problems and challenges often arise. This requires skills in negotiation or mediation. Dealing with these problems, even if it means recommending contract termination, is part of the job of the contract representatives who oversee the specific projects. Data from the Contracting Officer Representatives survey conducted by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (2005) is used. An index of perceived outcomes (deliverables or services were timely, of high quality, complete, contributed to the agency mission, fair and reasonable, and of good value) was constructed. Roughly, half the respondents indicated that they had had to deal with a problem or challenge. Problem-solving actions (discussions with contactors and other governmental officials, the submission of official documentations, and the recommendation of non-payment or termination sanctions) were submitted to a regression analysis (R² = .19). From a dozen options, only discussion of the problem with contractors and with their own supervisors along with the recommendation of contract termination registered some meaningful importance (Standardized Betas .1 to .2).

This paper sets out to discuss the results of a specific part of a Europe‐wide Delphi study that considers issues of absorptive capacity in European manufacturing. Owing to the importance to competitiveness of increasing innovative capabilities in manufacturing it is highly relevant to explore how a wide community of manufacturing experts experience the phenomenon of absorptive capacity and sense future developments.

A two round Delphi method was designed in which more than 3,000 experts from 22 European countries assessed 101 statements. This paper discusses eight statements focused on the issue of absorptive capacity.

The results show a general consensus about the influence of different inter‐firm relationships in acquiring external knowledge and a diversified knowledge structure for assimilating the acquired knowledge. The study also indicates some potential challenges and contradictions in managing inter‐firm relationships and knowledge diversity as well as perceived barriers for future developments of absorptive capacity.

Delphi survey is an empirical method subject to the limitation of testing or inductively building theoretical concepts.

The results of the Delphi study are predominantly centred on policy implication and on informing strategic decision‐making at manufacturing firms.

This paper discusses one of the biggest Delphi surveys ever conducted in Europe. Its comprehensiveness increases the value of the results.