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This paper covers the ALS (Automated Library Systems Ltd) system used at Rotterdam City Library in the Netherlands. The requirements for the circulation and cataloguing systems are given and then the ways these have been realised using ALS equipment and software are described. This new ALS system is an extension of previous systems as it includes cataloguing modules and an enhanced record structure. The use of ALS's touch terminal, known as the Browser, at Rotterdam, is also described.

There is currently a great deal of attention in psychometric and statistical methods on ensuring measurement invariance when examining measures across time or populations. When measurement invariance is established, changes in scores over time or across groups can be attributed to changes in the construct rather than changes in reaction to or interpretation of the measurement instrument. When measurement in not invariant, it is possible that measured differences are due to the measurement instrument itself and not to the underlying phenomenon of interest. This chapter discusses the importance of establishing measurement invariance specifically in postsecondary settings, where it is anticipated that individuals' perspectives will change over time as a function of their higher education experiences. Using examples from several measures commonly used in higher education research, the concepts and processes underlying tests of measurement invariance are explained and analyses are interpreted using data from a US-based longitudinal study on bioscience PhD students. These measures include sense of belonging over time and across groups, mental well-being over time, and perceived mentorship quality over time. The chapter ends with a discussion about the implications of longitudinal and group measurement invariance as an important conceptual property for moving forward equitable, reproducible, and generalizable quantitative research in higher education. Invariance methods may further be relevant for addressing criticisms about quantitative analyses being biased toward majority populations that have been discussed by critical theorists engaging quantitative research strategies.

Academic outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remain poor, especially in the area of reading, in particular, reading comprehension. In recent years, researchers have begun to investigate subcomponent skills of reading comprehension for children with ASD in order to better understand its development and potential interventions to enhance outcomes. This chapter highlights the current knowledge in the field in regards to the key cognitive and language skills associated with reading development for individuals with ASD. These include emergent-literacy skills, word-reading and decoding, reading fluency, oral language, and social cognition. Additionally, the chapter makes suggestions for future research in this area, in particular the need to conduct research to establish evidence-based practices to better support the syndrome-specific reading needs for this population.

Despite much rhetoric about the need to be strategic, HR professionals have often had difficulty in establishing themselves as credible contributors to organizational performances, facing a legitimacy issue in their relationship with line managers. Adopting a social cognitive theory framework, the present study explores the HR professionals’ perceptions and expectations of the changing roles that HR professionals and line managers could play in a near future scenario where a set of smart technologies will be applied to HRM.

The research design is based on a two-wave survey: it involves 53 HR professionals belonging to the HR department of the Italian branch of one of the biggest international consulting companies which is about to implement a wide digital transformation.

Preliminary findings prompt reflections into the role of digital practices in reshaping the relationship between the HR department and line managers, especially in consideration of the role of HR professionals’ technology readiness and tenure. They suggest that HR devolution is not a matter of “all or nothing,” but it requires different solutions, which also depend on the nature of the specific HR practice. From a managerial perspective, the chapter suggests the paramount importance of sustaining the digital mindset of the HR professionals and their professional image.

This diary study tested some propositions to determine the effect of discrete emotions on three dimensions of emotional labor and their consequent effect on leaders and follower’s perception about leaders’ authenticity.

The data were collected from a cohort of city traffic police consisting 69 police officials at four different time points between their two shifts using experience sampling method. The data were analyzed using the latest technique known as latent growth curve modeling.

The statistical results demonstrated that negative emotions were negatively associated with deep-acting and three forms of emotional labor did not significantly affect followers’ perception about leaders’ authenticity. This study also demonstrated that surface-acting is not significantly associated with leaders’ self-perceived authenticity, but genuine-acting and deep-acting were negatively associated with leaders’ self-perceived authenticity.

This study also offers certain implications for policing officials for improve authentic behavior through daily emotional displays in policing organizations.

This study offers some practical implications for policing officials about emotion regulation strategies during policing practices with respect to the authentic sense of the leaders as well as the followers.

This study offers an insight about how emotional labor affects the perceptions of policing officers about the authenticity of their leaders in the context of traffic police.