OUR readers may be amused this month by the microfilm imaginings of our correspondent in “Letters on Our Affairs,” but there is undoubtedly a more marked disposition now than…
Abstract
OUR readers may be amused this month by the microfilm imaginings of our correspondent in “Letters on Our Affairs,” but there is undoubtedly a more marked disposition now than formerly to reduce to a mechanism many of the usual routines of libraries. We suppose routine is always mechanical, is repetitive and, for the enterprising ambitious library worker, a matter of boredom. How far the “electronic brain” and other more recent developments of science can be adapted to our simple processes remains to be seen, but all experiment is good even if it does not survive the initial stage. What is to be most feared in any profession is the standardizing inflexibly of its techniques ; that way lies its old age, perhaps its petrification. It is for this reason that we welcome such things as those we have already discussed at times in our pages—the central cataloguing experiment of Harrods, the punched‐card vouchers and other records sponsored (so far as libraries are concerned) by Mr. T. E. Callender, the highly mechanised method of classing propounded by Dr. Ranganathan, the placing of D.C. numbers on the title pages of the books they publish by Jonathan Cape and Harrap, the visible fines receiving box and many more such things. No one uses them all. They free librarians, it is urged, for more specifically library service. We hope that they do. We have always before us the undoubted truth that the good man scraps methods that are obsolescent and the librarian (if one now exists) who is not a business man—especially if he is charged with a large library—is a somewhat pathetic person.
ONLY one or two topics of the Scarborough Conference will remain firmly in the minds of most of us. Most firmly, and more clearly than before, will be that of the National Lending…
Abstract
ONLY one or two topics of the Scarborough Conference will remain firmly in the minds of most of us. Most firmly, and more clearly than before, will be that of the National Lending Library and Dr. Urquhart's exposition of it or what it is intended to be. It may give no comfort, so far as librarianship is concerned, to existing librarians, but there is little that the public librarian has to fear from it. The second impression that remains is the acute awareness now prevalent of the need for science and technical training in school and college for many more men and women and our relation to that fact. The third was the so often expressed nervousness about the status of the librarian. Fourthly, was the local collection in the light of the ever‐changing character and habits of the people. The President's address was a dignified and grave statement of ideals, in the definition of libraries and librarianship, in book acquirement, reader‐service and in appreciation of the personalities who have made librarianship. It did not produce the press so fine an utterance demanded. What are we to say of the heading a great London paper gave to its two‐inch paragraph devoted to the first day of our Conference: “Librarians are told to be courteous”? To our regret we were unable to hear Mr. O'Leary's paper; judging from the summary in the Programme it was a fine exercise in robust commonsense. We content ourselves in this Editorial with further remarks on one or two of the matters we have mentioned above.
Valery J. Frants, Jacob Shapiro and Vladimir G. Voiskunskii
BY February most of the parties, which are a gracious feature of modern libraries, are over. They arise from Staff Guilds, which now in most libraries associate the workers, and…
Abstract
BY February most of the parties, which are a gracious feature of modern libraries, are over. They arise from Staff Guilds, which now in most libraries associate the workers, and some of them are on a large scale. We have been represented at only a few of these but there seems to be a great fund of friendliness upon which the modern librarian can draw nowadays. An interesting one was that of the National Central Library Staff which, by a neighbourly arrangement, was held at Chaucer House. A reunion has been held of old and new members of the Croydon Staff Guild and no doubt there were many others. One New Year party was a small but notable dinner at Charing Cross Hotel where the 100th issue of The Library Review was toasted eloquently by the President of the Library Association and amongst the guests were Mr. C. O. G. Douie who was secretary of the Kenyon Committee of the 1927 Library Report and well‐known librarians and journalists. To us it was notable for the assertion by Mr. R. D. Macleod that amongst the young writers were too many who wrote glibly but without that research which good professional writing demanded; but he was sure that where intelligent industry was shown any article resulting would find a place in library journals.
Mahesh Babu Mariappan, Kanniga Devi, Yegnanarayanan Venkataraman and Samuel Fosso Wamba
The purpose of this study is to present a large-scale real-world comparative study using pre-COVID lockdown data versus post-COVID lockdown data on predicting shipment times of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to present a large-scale real-world comparative study using pre-COVID lockdown data versus post-COVID lockdown data on predicting shipment times of therapeutic supplies in e-pharmacy supply chains and show that our proposed methodology is robust to lockdown effects.
Design/methodology/approach
The researchers used organic data of over 5.9 million records of therapeutic shipments, with 2.87 million records collected pre-COVID lockdown and 3.03 million records collected post-COVID lockdown. The researchers built various Machine Learning (ML) classifier models on the two datasets, namely, Random Forest (RF), Extra Trees (XRT), Decision Tree (DT), Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), XGBoost (XGB), CatBoost (CB), Linear Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) and the Linear Naïve Bayes (NB). Then, the researchers stacked these base models and built meta models on top of them. Further, the researchers performed a detailed comparison of the performances of ML models on pre-COVID lockdown and post-COVID lockdown datasets.
Findings
The proposed approach attains performance of 93.5% on real-world post-COVID lockdown data and 91.35% on real-world pre-COVID lockdown data. In contrast, the turn-around times (TAT) provided by therapeutic supply logistics providers are 62.91% accurate compared to reality in post-COVID lockdown times and 73.68% accurate compared to reality pre-COVID lockdown times. Hence, it is clear that while the TAT provided by logistics providers has deteriorated in the post-pandemic business climate, the proposed method is robust to handle pandemic lockdown effects on e-pharmacy supply chains.
Research limitations/implications
The implication of the study provides a novel ML-based framework for predicting the shipment times of therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines, and it is robust to COVID-19 lockdown effects.
Practical implications
E-pharmacy companies can readily adopt the proposed approach to enhance their supply chain management (SCM) capabilities and build resilience during COVID lockdown times.
Originality/value
The present study is one of the first to perform a large-scale real-world comparative analysis on predicting therapeutic supply shipment times in the e-pharmacy supply chain with novel ML ensemble stacking, obtaining robust results in these COVID lockdown times.
Details
Keywords
HASTINGS is now a memory of a conference in which the members of the L.A. heard papers of singular merit and one or two addresses of marked distinction. If we were to select the…
Abstract
HASTINGS is now a memory of a conference in which the members of the L.A. heard papers of singular merit and one or two addresses of marked distinction. If we were to select the Presidential Address of Mr. C. B. Oldman, the beautiful Annual Lecture by Mr. Bowen Thomas and the quite remarkable performance in English of Mr. Bengt Hjelmqvist, on the organization of his native Swedish libraries, as the highlights of the general sessions, and Nigel Balchin's model after‐dinner speech as another, we are not the less aware of the excellence of nearly all the papers submitted at every session; indeed, there was not really a bad paper throughout, although some were much too long. They averaged forty‐five minutes. Possibly the Conference Committee set this length; if so, we suggest respectfully that however long the written paper may be the time should be reduced by at least one third for which the audience is required to listen. One felt in several cases that even the authors of the papers grew weary, or were under a sense of hurry, before they reached the end. This was occasionally caused by extempore insertions, a most difficult performance in which few succeed. Fortunate is the reader who addresses a morning session; he escapes the afternoon somnolence.
“The organisation of any library depends on the men and women who work there. They have a very important job. They are the indispensable middle‐men of culture and science, and in…
Abstract
“The organisation of any library depends on the men and women who work there. They have a very important job. They are the indispensable middle‐men of culture and science, and in opening this library we ought to remember that its success will depend on them as much as on what is in it.”—The Duke of Edinburgh, opening the Scottish Central Library on November 5th, 1953.
PALAEOGRAPHY as a discipline in itself is the choice of a few, but as a hand‐maiden to Clio is pursued by many whose real object is the favour of her mistress. As an ancillary…
Abstract
PALAEOGRAPHY as a discipline in itself is the choice of a few, but as a hand‐maiden to Clio is pursued by many whose real object is the favour of her mistress. As an ancillary study, the lore of which is mainly carried in the learned heads of its protagonists, its bibliography has received somewhat sporadic treatment and many of the most useful bibliographical resources are buried in unlikely places, while many of the more obvious bibliographies are not what they seem. The object of this article is to guide the student within a limited field in which the bibliographical controls are confusing and relatively poor.
This paper was originally read to the Johnson Club on 8 October, 1954. At that time I had compiled the index to my edition of the Diary of John Evelyn (1955), but the printer had…
Abstract
This paper was originally read to the Johnson Club on 8 October, 1954. At that time I had compiled the index to my edition of the Diary of John Evelyn (1955), but the printer had not yet started setting it up (I have also compiled two or three short indexes, for volumes of the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research and so on). The paper is not a defence of, or apology for, or commendation of, courses adopted in the Evelyn index; my object was to discuss, as impartially as I could, aspects of indexing that interested me. I have not tried to compose a systematic treatise on the subject and, were I to recommend any particular courses in indexing, it would be as a user, not a maker, of indexes; my preferences, however, must emerge in the course of the paper and are embodied in the Evelyn index.
A relative new‐comer to international society in the era denominated by the late Alfred E. Smith of New York as ‘alphabet soup’ is the ICA—International Council on Archives or…
Abstract
A relative new‐comer to international society in the era denominated by the late Alfred E. Smith of New York as ‘alphabet soup’ is the ICA—International Council on Archives or CIA—Conseil International des Archives.