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Describes the use of multidisciplinary project teams in audit planning, process and outcome. Discusses the motivation and need for reward in personal/professional settings and patient satisfaction surveys in the contractual arena into which they have been drawn.

The large scale and far reaching functions of local government in the United Kingdom today are eloquent proofs of the universal demand for local services of high quality and wide coverage extending into almost every sector of life from literally the cradle to the grave. In the cities of Britain local government is often found to employ more people than any other single organisation. There are some 25,400 councillors in Britain and around 2,500,000 employees. The total expenditure of local authorities in England and Wales for 1984–85 was estimated at £24,323,000,000.1 The services provided include departments for development and planning, art galleries, libraries, museums, engineers, building surveyors, environmental health, architects, estate surveyors, housing, leisure and recreation, social services, economic development, education, transport, highways, trading standards, fire brigade, and police. In addition each local authority has departments mainly concerned with services to the other departments: the chief executive or secretary, personnel and management, solicitor, treasurer, and central purchasing services. Each of these departments has several important subdivisions, and clearly all require a constant inflow of information, and increasingly it is recognised local authorities generate large quantities of important information which can be used more widely with benefit within the authority, as well as outside.

Following the tradition of scholarship showing that elites institutionalize their tastes via cultural philanthropy, this chapter investigates patronage of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Drawing on content analysis of museum press releases and other documents, I conceptually elaborate and empirically illustrate different patterns of Asian art patronage among Asian and white patrons as well as among Asian patrons from different ethnic groups. Engaging theory asserting that elites legitimate art tied to their ethnoracial heritage through supporting it at cultural organizations, I elaborate how Asian elites are especially committed to supporting Asian art at the museum. In addition, I illustrate how, compared with each other, Asian elites particularly champion art from their respective ethnic groups – for example, Chinese elites support Chinese art at higher levels than Asian elites who are not Chinese, and Indian elites support Indian art at higher levels than Asian elites who are not Indian. This chapter advances theory about elites and cultural legitimation, elites and organizational contributions, and progressiveness within the elite.

Mothers play important roles in their families' lives. When they are high performance athletes, they need specific supports that will enable them to excel in their roles as mother athletes. The feminist qualitative research in this chapter is based on data from two studies drawn from semi-structured interviews with elite female distance runners: 14 in 2013–2014 and 11 in 2021. We address two questions: (1) what are the considerations that elite female distance runners make around planning their pregnancy(ies) and family lives? and (2) how have experiences shifted between athlete interviews in 2013–2014 and a new cohort of athletes in 2021? In order to address these questions, we drew on three complementary theoretical approaches: liberal feminism, radical feminism, and strategic essentialism. Further, we then used thematic analysis and generated three broader themes about elite female distance runners that aligned with both cohorts of athletes. First, athletes are forced to plan/strategize their pregnancies around finances, competitions, contracts, and spousal supports due to the lack of support from athletic governing bodies or corporate sponsors. Second, female athletes who choose to have children experience stress and uncertainty in their athletic careers that their male counterparts do not. Third, elite female athletes are demanding that further change occur to address these inequalities, and participants offered a number of potential solutions to improve supports for these athletes. Although solid progress has been noted in the timeframes of our two cohorts, further commitment from athletic governing bodies and corporate sponsors is needed to work toward gender equity in athletics.

Computers and computer‐assisted instruction are being used with increasing frequency in the area of health science student education, yet students’ attitudes towards the use of e‐learning technology and computer‐assisted instruction have received limited attention to date. The purpose of this study was to investigate the significant predictors of health science students’ attitudes towards e‐learning and computer‐assisted instruction. All students enrolled in health science programmes (n=2885) at a large multi‐campus Australian university in 2006‐2007, were asked to complete a questionnaire. This included the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES), the Computer Attitude Survey (CAS), and the Attitude Toward Computer‐Assisted Instruction Semantic Differential Scale (ATCAISDS). A multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine the significant predictors of health science students’ attitudes to e‐learning. The Attitude Toward Computers in General (CASg) and the Attitude Toward Computers in Education (CASe) subscales from the CAS were the dependent (criterion) variables for the regression analysis. A total of 822 usable questionnaires were returned, accounting for a 29.5 per cent response rate. Three significant predictors of CASg and five significant predictors of CASe were found. Respondents’ age and OLES Equity were found to be predictors on both CAS scales. Health science educators need to take the age of students and the extent to which students perceive that they are treated equally by a teacher/tutor/instructor (equity) into consideration when looking at determinants of students’ attitudes towards e‐learning and technology.

I would like to begin by taking a general look at the official publications of local authorities, not only at what they are, but also at who uses them and what they are actually used for. In addition, I would like to try to make a rough assessment of the recent attempts to increase access to them, particularly emphasising the positive improvements that have taken place over recent years — and also to try to identify the shortcomings that remain. In examining the changing patterns of the publication of information recently, we should not only look at developments such as the Access to Information Act and the abolition of the Metropolitan County Councils, but also take a wider view, examining, for instance, whether increasing emphasis on value for money techniques in individual local authorities and the aim for objective decision making has altered the information and documentary requirements of local government and the value placed on them. Finally, and most centrally, I would like to look at the existing role played by local government information services in this area, and perhaps speculate on what can be achieved in the future. I would like to approach this by making a number of key points and then, hopefully, we can discuss those you feel of most value. My contribution has the broad title ‘Local government information services’. David Mort of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies will take a look at the information services provided by outside organisations for local authorities. The distinction between our contributions is, I hope, fairly clear and I will attempt to restrict myself to discussing the information services provided by individual local authorities while David will look at the wider scene. There is, of course, a grey area of information services which do not fall exactly within the boundaries of this definition and I will very briefly mention a number of these later, but first it might be useful to begin by having a very brief word about our sponsors. This seminar is a joint venture by the Aslib Planning Environment and Transport Information Group (PETIG) and the Standing Committee on Official Publications (SCOOP). SCOOP was formally set up at the beginning of 1983 and is a direct descendant of the Library Association/HMSO Services Working Party which was established in 1971. It might be helpful if I briefly summarise a number of the formal arrangements under which SCOOP operates in order to set the context for my contribution. The Committee's principal aims relate to UK national and local government official publications and these are to improve access and availability to such documents, to identify and propose solutions to problems of access and to provide mechanisms for the exchange of views between members of the library community on matters of common interest concerning UK official publications.

This paper seeks to provide a commentary on the previous paper in this issue “Does he have sugar in his tea? Communication between people with learning disabilities, their carers and hospital staff”.

This commentary outlines some “reasonable adjustments” for people with learning disabilities in primary and secondary care.

The paper finds that there is a potential for Hospital Passport‐type documents to provide a better link between individuals and primary and secondary healthcare services.

The paper suggests that one way of helping to improve outcomes for people with learning disabilities would be to work more creatively across traditional boundaries.