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The European Union (EU) has provided significant financial support and motivation in creating links among Europe's major libraries and in enabling the region's poorer countries to develop needed technical infrastructures needed by their libraries. EU Parliament authorized the Libraries, Networking, and Telematics section to support “Collaboration between libraries in the field of data processing.” From 1990 to 1994, 51 projects were funded and in 1996 an additional 21 received support. Two recent activities are of particular interest. The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics brings together computer scientists and other information specialists from the national laboratories of 13 European countries. ERCIM's scientists possess substantial expertise relevant to digital library development, and they have submitted a proposal to the EU directorate to create a pan‐European digital library that initially will enable exchange of their own technical reports. A second activity, called INFO2000, was initiated by the EU in May 1996. This program is intended to “stimulate the development of the European content industry and to encourage use of multimedia in the emerging information society.”

This study examines one social studies teacher’s experience developing and implementing an Experiential Education-based (EE) curriculum and her reflection on the experience of putting theory and research into practice. Using a qualitative case study research strategy, we focused on the single case of the teacher’s experience. We identified four categories related to the implementation of EE elements into her classes: (a) teacher’s values, (b) students’ values, (c) teacher directedness versus student directedness, and (d) accountability. We used the teacher’s values as the central category for our discussion to explore how these values conflicted and coordinated with manifestations of the other categories. Through this study, we learned more about the importance of teachers as researchers and the value of university and school collaboration. However, the critical result was the disconnect between what is valued by the teacher and what is assessed and the need for a continued examination of this issue.

The need to maintain up-to-date technological skills despite an aging workforce makes it imperative that organizations increasingly focus on retraining older employees. This article develops an adult career model based on the acquisition of technological skills and gradual skill obsolescence. The model suggests the importance of retraining and provides practical implications to the development of retraining programs. Suggestions for future research are also offered.

With a record of human occupancy for over 10,000 years, the Indian Wells Valley where Ridgecrest is located has long had much to offer casual and experienced desert visitors alike. Ghost‐towns from earlier active gold mining days, fossilised waterfalls, sculptured rock formations, desert tortoises, hiking trails against a High Sierra backdrop feature among the attractions of the area.

This article assesses the impact of a specially designed management development course on the lives and careers of women working in universities as academics and administrators. The programme was designed and run by the authors and emerged from a combination of their research interests and their experience and recognition of the problems faced by women in a university setting. The course extends over two days and provides an opportunity for women to consider a variety of work‐related and personal issues, including the barriers they face and the ways in which these barriers might be overcome. These issues are considered in terms of their own personal development and of the responsibility they must take for this development. The course was assessed by both an immediate evaluation and a follow‐up questionnaire.

This article evaluates the role of drama in management education and development programmes. The drama workshops utilise the methodology developed by Augusto Boal and focus on the issue of empowerment. Participants are engaged in the dramatic process through a series of exercises and role plays. The workshops have been incorporated into three very different programmes: a masters in human resource strategies, a management certificate and a management development programme for women academics. The impact on each of these programmes is described and evaluated and the outcomes of this type of learning experience for management education and development programmes are discussed.

Improving the competence of frontline services to support people who challenge has long been recognised as a key service objective. Exactly how this objective should be achieved has been unclear, however. This article describes how web‐based e‐learning technology is being used to achieve widespread dissemination of knowledge and skill about positive behavioural support. The drivers for this development are described, together with an account of the historical development of the programme. The advantages of using this medium are outlined, and the benefits of a whole‐organisation approach to learning are identified.

As online education proliferates, little attention has been given to understanding non-cognitive success factors, such as wellness, in online graduate student success. To begin to address this gap in understanding, this paper aims to explore the experiences of doctoral student wellness within the context of online distance education. Doctoral students, and their instructor, in an advanced qualitative research course sought to use collective autoethnography to address the following questions: How do the authors perceive the wellness as doctoral students engaged in distance education, and how do the authors understand the influence of the doctoral program cultures on the perceptions of the own wellness?

This paper emerged from a 12 week advanced qualitative research course where students opted to engage in a poetic arts-based collective autoethnography to reflect on and analyze their experience of wellness as doctoral students taking online courses. Data collection included the use of reflective journaling, creation of “My Wellness Is” poetry, and weekly group debriefing. Journals and poems were analyzed individually, then collectively. First and second cycle coding techniques were used, with the first cycle including process and descriptive coding and second round coding involving pattern coding.

Through first and second round coding, three primary themes emerged: positionality as an element of wellness, the role of community in maintaining wellness and awareness and action regarding wellness.

Due to the inherent nature of qualitative research, and specifically autoethnographic methods, the findings of this study may be difficult to generalize to the broader online graduate student population. Future research on this topic may use the experiences explored in this study as a basis for the development of future quantitative studies to measure the extent of these findings in the broader population.

This paper includes implications for the development of interventions that may support wellness in graduate students in online environments including support interventions from faculty advisors, leveraging academic curriculum to promote wellness, and suggestions for building community among online graduate students.

As technology advances, online education is quickly becoming a leading mechanism for obtaining a graduate education. Scholarship in this discipline has primarily focused on academic outcomes of online students and has largely focused on undergraduate populations. This paper broadens the conversation about online education by illustrating a non-cognitive dimension of the student experience, i.e. wellness, through the perspective of graduate students.

This paper addresses a gap in the current understanding of online graduate student experiences and outcomes using methods that provide vivid illustrations of the nuanced experience of online doctoral students.

There are certain accepted points that influence ethnographic work, even though they do not condition or fully determine it. They include the notion that in order to develop theories about human life, an ethnographer must study human activities and the way people interpret their realities in their every-day context and must also identify and then synthesise the conditions of the field, the perspectives of the participants, the latent meanings of the context and the researcher's own ideas for the grounding, generation and expansion of propositions about what is actually going on in the events and places researched. In this process, foreshadowed problems are accepted to frame the initial focus, but producing and analysing materials from multiple sources and perspectives are also important in order to prevent over-steering from private ideas and concepts. Once formed, ethnographic propositions, descriptions or theories are explored and tested in terms of their general scope against further data. Ethnographic field-notes are one of the most important foundations in this activity.

A system of evidence‐based periodic service review (PSR) was implemented in specialist health services for people with challenging behaviour, to support the adoption of a positive behavioural approach. The extent and accuracy of PSR implementation, its impact on staff knowledge and attitudes, and its value as a practice leadership tool were assessed. The results indicated that PSR was implemented regularly, scoring was based accurately on tangible evidence, and increased scores over time indicated service improvement in line with PSR principles. Staff generally welcomed PSR as a quality monitoring tool, and greater knowledge of the rationale and process for PSR was associated with more positive attitudes. Managers regarded PSR as a valuable aid to practice leadership and had used innovative implementation methods to maximise its acceptance by staff teams. The style of management and need for support from the wider organisational structure are discussed as critical factors in successful implementation.