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This case study describes the assignment of an academic health sciences librarian to another academic unit for a period of two years. This arrangement enabled the librarian to focus on work with an interdisciplinary team to assess the information needs and uses of public health workers in Washington State and to develop online resources to address those needs.

The assessment process employed semi‐structured discussions and interviews with segments of the workforce. “Information toolkits” – practitioner‐oriented and highly focused web pages that provided an overview of select notifiable diseases – were developed based on what was learned from the assessment.

This experience would not have been possible within the normal work environment and provided the librarian with knowledge, contacts, and opportunities not available otherwise.

An outcome of the assignment was increased knowledge of public health information needs among the community of health sciences librarians.

A light‐hearted “dictionary” of management styles is presented which encapsulates a modern, new, expanded, tell‐it‐like‐it‐is summary of management philosophies for the 1980s.

The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban action films throughout the 1980s. Susan Jeffords subsequently argued that Hollywood's ‘hard bodied’ male action heroes of the period were reflective of the social and political thematics that distinguished Ronald Reagan's tenure as America's President (1994, p. 22). But while Jeffords' arguments are convincing, they overlook contemporaneous films featuring female and ‘soft’ bodied urban action heroes.

The Angel trilogy (Angel, 1984; Avenging Angel, 1985; and Angel III: The Final Chapter, 1988) features three such understudied examples. Indeed, the films' diverse and atypical range of action heroes demand that they are interrogated in terms of their protagonists' gender, sexual orientation, lifestyle choices and age. Featuring narratives about the prostitutes and street folk who frequent Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard, the films' key characters are a teenage prostitute and her guardians: a transvestite prostitute, a lesbian hotelier and an elderly cowboy. All three films feature narratives that revolve around acts of vengeance and vigilantism.

This chapter will critically discuss the striking ways in which the films' ‘soft’ bodied and atypical protagonists are presented as convincing action heroes who subvert contemporaneous ‘hard’ bodied norms. It will also consider to what extent their subversive rewriting of typical urban action film narratives and character relations might be understood to critique and deconstruct the themes and concerns that usually characterized such films during the Reagan era.

In a recent RQ column, Sharon L. Baker reviewed the profession's literature in the area of readers' advisory services. She found that very little research existed in the area of readers' advisory services. The research that does exist is focused on “passive” readers' advisory strategies. Baker is a leader in this area and her articles on overload and browsing, the use of displays, and genre classification are essential to understanding the adult fiction reader and ways in which libraries can assist these individuals in locating new authors and titles of interest.

Purpose – This chapter explores the commercially successful and critically acclaimed motion picture The Dark Knight as a cultural artifact that both reflects and influences popular notions of crime and justice in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Design/methodology/approach – From a cultural criminological perspective, this chapter examines ideological messages pertaining to crime and justice presented in the film, including the framing of conflict as one between good and evil, justifications for extralegal violence, and reliance on absolute power as a means of social control. This chapter assesses reactions to the film as a “ritual moral exercise” in which viewers assuage their anxieties and insecurities in a post-9/11 world.

Findings – This chapter investigates representations of justice in the film, including the construction of the villain as “other,” the perception of constitutional procedures as impediments to justice, the embrace of vigilantism, and the willingness to sacrifice transparency of government authorities while accepting widespread surveillance in a time of crisis. Such themes resonated with some viewers who interpreted the film as offering explicit vindication for many of the questionable tactics used in the war on terror.

Originality/value – This chapter argues that popular media, specifically fictional entertainment media, play a role in reflecting and informing collective sentiments of justice. It offers an analysis of The Dark Knight as celebrating individualized, American-style retributive justice in a post-9/11 context.

This conceptual paper seeks to critically evaluate and illuminate the diverse autoethnographic methodologies that are pivotal for understanding the dynamics of contemporary workspaces. The objective is to contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate on the value of autoethnography in workplace research and explore how it can shed light on complex organizational phenomena.

The paper adopts a narrative literature review approach, focusing on four main forms of autoethnography: realist, impressionistic, expressionistic and conceptualistic autoethnographies. Each form is discussed and dissected, emphasizing their specific sub-forms and illustrating their application through representative examples. The paper engages in a critical debate on utilizing autoethnography in workplace research.

The findings illuminate how autoethnographic methods can be used to gain nuanced and complex understandings of personal experiences situated in workplace culture, as well as how broader social and cultural contexts shape these experiences. The study also highlights the potential of these methods to explore marginalized and silenced stories within workplaces and contribute to the knowledge on power dynamics, inequalities and injustices embedded in the organizational culture.

The following contribution discusses approaches for conducting autoethnographic explorations of selected work environments, offering researchers valuable insights into these methods' application. Through better comprehension and application of these methodologies, researchers can enhance their contribution toward cultivating more inclusive and equitable workplace environments.

The paper stands out in its extensive review and critical discussion of the autoethnographic methods as applied in workplace research. It expands upon individual autoethnographic studies by providing a comprehensive, multifaceted perspective, delving into the merits and limitations of these approaches in particular context of researching contemporary places of work.