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This paper seeks to highlight the findings from a research project on improving treatment engagement for clients with personality difficulties.

The authors provide an overview of the studies conducted to date. These are a systematic review of the literature examining non‐completion of psychosocial treatment by people with personality disorder, a systematic review of assessments to measure treatment engagement, and a Delphi survey of both staff and patients' views on factors that impact on engagement in psychosocial treatment for this client group.

Poor engagement with psychosocial treatment is an issue for clients with personality disorder and rates of non‐completion are high. Discontinuation of treatment is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. Although a number of assessments exist for measuring engagement, none can be described as comprehensive and few are adequately validated. Engagement factors identified from the survey were broadly in keeping with previous work, but additional factors specific to this client group were identified. A treatment readiness model for people with personality difficulties is described.

Research outputs from the project are a set of specifications for good practice in facilitating engagement, and a web‐based training package aimed at helping staff improve their understanding of their clients' engagement issues.

The findings will be useful to service managers as well as clinicians working directly with people with personality difficulties. Improving client engagement will improve clinical outcomes and service cost‐efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the transforming effect of pursuing person centered ethnography using contemporary reflexive methods and a cultural traditions model on a researcher in late life. It attempts to show the usefulness of life history research as a lens through which to examine the complex ways people age. It adds to literature dealing with ethnographic studies of aging women and demonstrates personal narrative as a way to convey information. Lastly it demonstrates the value of studies pursued by researchers in old age, and illuminates aspects of ethnographic work when women interview women.

Using a journey format, the paper uses personal narrative as a way to achieve its goals. The personal account is complemented by noting other ethnographic studies that have contributed to age studies literature, and it draws attention to the value of reflexivity in good ethnographic work as proposed by anthropologists Barbara Myerhoff and John Caughey.

The paper points toward research institutions who study aging valuing ethnographic findings and making use of researchers in old age to engage in ethnographic studies. It points to the possibility that elders engaged in such research may strengthen their sense of self and empower them as they make a contribution to age studies.

This paper deals with the transformative power of engaging in reflexive life history research, especially as it is done by an ethnographer in late life. This freeing from customary cultural ways of thinking may be as beneficial to the researcher as life review or reminiscence. This should be explored further.

The paper points to the idea, implicit not explicit, that an elder who engages in reflexive life history research that involves doing a self-ethnography, can benefit in ways similar to having engaged in life review or reminiscence. This is original.

The Millfields unit is one of three medium secure hospital services on the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway, for the assessment and treatment of high-risk offenders who are likely to meet criteria for this diagnosis. This study has designed an audit to examine influencers of patient engagement within Millfields, whose treatment approach is that of an adapted therapeutic community (TC). The purpose of this study was to explore themes raised by patients in relation to engagement, drivers for and barriers to engagement and to make recommendations for improvement.

The first author engaged in ward and group observations, a review of each patient’s medical records, unstructured discussions with staff and semi-structured interviews with each patient exploring their experiences of therapy, relationships with staff, understanding of and engagement with the treatment model, attitudes towards peers and aspirations for the future. Themes were generated from the transcription of interviews and subsequent mind mapping.

In total, 12 of the 13 patients engaged in the semi-structured interviews. Six main themes were identified as being important influencers of engagement: the ward atmosphere, authenticity of engagement, perception of staff investment in the treatment, preferential treatment of senior residents, responses to boundary crosses and violations and the level of understanding a patient had of his treatment.

Research into engagement with psychosocial therapies in patients who have personality disorders has recently been published by Tetley et al. (2012) and Jinks et al. (2012). This study specifically focusses on TC engagement and male offenders with personality disorders.

This chapter introduces the role that libraries play in promoting and fostering human rights and social justice within the communities they serve. In describing this role, it highlights the different ways in which information intersects with human rights and social justice.

This chapter offers a brief review of the existing body of literature related to human rights and social justice in the field of library and information science (LIS). After articulating the need for this edited volume, we introduce the four sections in this book: Conceptualizing Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice; Library Services to Marginalized Populations; Human Rights and Social Justice Issues in LIS Professions; and Human Rights and Social Justice Issues in LIS Education.

The social roles and responsibilities of libraries have expanded greatly in recent years. These roles and responsibilities, however, are not often framed within the discourse of human rights or social justice. Together, the chapters in this book—written by researchers, educators, and professionals—paint a comprehensive picture of the broad range of roles and contributions of libraries in human rights and social justice.

This chapter introduces a book that explores the current efforts of libraries to meet a wide range of community needs (including education, employment, social services, civic participation, and digital inclusion) through the lenses of human rights and social justice.

ALL THE WHILE that the Carnegie Free Public Library brought culture and information and just plain entertainment to the residents of my home town, The Other Library there also provided the inhabitants with information and entertainment. This latter institution was far more powerful, all‐knowing, and, if the truth be told, more popular with its patrons, for all its sometimes shoddiness, than ‘Mister Carnegie's Lib'ary’. It never shut down, not even on holidays or Sundays, and its operations were as busy before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. as the Public Library was during that twelve‐hour stretch of community service. It had no librarian to keep it in order and cost no money at all to maintain, nor did folk have to mind their p's and q's to reap its benefits. The Other Library was Smalltown Gossip.

OCCASIONALLY some writer is inspired to make the declaration that reference work as understood in America does not exist in Great Britain, or, even more definitely, is not known there. We rejoice at any advance our American friends make, but our enthusiasts for American methods must not undervalue the homeland. In the pages that follow some aspects of reference work receive attention, and the inference to be drawn may be that, if we have not specialized this department of work to the extent that transatlantic libraries have done, if in some smaller places it hardly exists “as the community's study, archive department and bureau of information,” yet in our larger cities and in many lesser places much work is done.

CONFERENCES are becoming difficult. Recently the chairman of the Ray Committee remarked that there were too many of them, and added that if they were held in Wigan rather than Bournemouth or such places they would not be well attended. The assumption is that we attend them for our pleasure only. We do find pleasure in them, but any delegate who goes through a Library Association Conference has done a week's work more strenuous than most men do in their busiest business weeks. In fact he is worked much too hard. Sir William Ray is too experienced a public man not to know why an assembly of several thousands of persons cannot descend on places which are without accommodation. In any case the Library Association has met in recent years in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, which have their amenities but are not exactly pleasure resorts.

A large body of literature focuses on ways that learning experiences in colleges of education can combat racist stereotypes while promoting cultural competence. However, because limited research investigates how student research projects (e.g., master's theses and doctoral dissertations) can accomplish these same purposes, additional studies are needed. For this reason, the current exploratory mixed methods study addressed the following research question: “How does the racial identity development of doctoral students from colleges of education align with their experiences of conducting dissertation studies focusing on racial and/or ethnic dynamics in schools, universities, or human service agencies?” The research team used well-established scales to measure the racial identity development of Black and White participants. The team also conducted a series of three interviews with each participant to learn about how racial identity statuses contributed to and responded to the experience of conducting dissertation research with a focus on racial and/or ethnic dynamics. Analysis of interview data pointed to the salience of “advocacy” in the experiences of participants. Advocacy connected to doctoral research by affording opportunities for personal advancement and by affording opportunities to promote social change. Further interpretation revealed differences in the importance of the two types of advocacy for White and Black participants, especially in consideration of their racial identity statuses. Despite such nuances, the experience of conducting dissertation research reinforced all participants’ previous commitments to social justice and advocacy, but it did not help them develop more wide-ranging and systematic strategies for working as advocates of social justice.

THE monumental History of Criticism by Professor Saintsbury, and Mr. Hall Caine's lighter series of studies would be sufficient to put anyone on their guard against accepting as final many of the critical decisions of the important literary reviews. Mr. Caine's book particularly is a revelation of error and spite such as makes one wonder that anonymous literary criticism should be received with toleration by bookmen.

We give more space than usual to the Conference of the Library Association, but, even so, our correspondent has attempted impressions rather than factual accounts of the papers read. Good as those papers were, the main effect of our conferences is to provide for every type of librarian a sense of community and of unity with librarianship in general. This was achieved in a large measure at Edinburgh. Moreover, as our correspondent suggests, there was interest in problems that do not affect, at least at present, many who participated. Nearly every session, general or special, was so well attended, that we can infer that the vitality of interest in library matters is as great as it ever has been; indeed, it is possibly greater.