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What would a library credit course look like if the syllabus and course content were based on the type of daily questions that undergraduate students regularly present to librarians at the reference desk? The scenario‐based approach to credit course instruction integrates such real‐life situations into its syllabus. Examples of such scenarios include determining if a library owns materials on a reading list or bibliography; using a subject‐specific database to find articles from peer‐reviewed journals; finding reviews of books on a reading list; “packaging” a list of citations and then sending it via e‐mail to a home account; and creating a personalized “library gateway” through a Web authoring exercise. This article includes the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, and student evaluations from such a course. A course Web page is available at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/subjguid/lib101/

In the literature of librarianship, the education of a reference librarian has, on the whole, meant two things. First, it has referred to the theoretical and/or practical training in reference services that a student receives in library school. Second, it has meant the training, or lack of it, the new librarian receives in making the transition from library school to the reference desk. What reference education has not meant, to judge by the literature, is the ongoing training or professional development a working reference librarian might receive on the job.

A recent thread in the DIG_REF listserv addressed the integration of text messaging into mainstream reference service. The purpose of this paper is to expand upon that discussion, pointing out the predominant software used by libraries to handle text message reference questions and the volume of reference traffic generated by text messaging queries.

The paper also addresses the ramifications on staffing of the added traffic in text messaging and how libraries might market text messaging reference services to their patrons.

The paper further discusses the unique nature of text messaging queries and how this affects the reference interview.

The paper is intended for the reference services manager looking to incorporate text messaging into a library's repertoire of reference services.

The competence of academic librarians promises to be a foremost issue for academic librarianship in the twenty‐first century. New subject specialties, unprecedented information technologies, and increasingly interdisciplinary university curricula and research mean ever‐faster outdating of the library science degree. Currently, within ten to 12 years of receiving their diplomas, academic librarians are estimated to be half as competent to meet professional demands as they were at graduation. Continuing education is, therefore, ever more vital in maintaining a staff of library professionals who are capable of providing continually relevant service to library users.

Gated communities, residential enclaves that offer upscale housing and a variety of recreational and communal facilities within a walled area with controlled entrances, are proliferating in many of India's large metropolitan cities. In this paper, we analyze the images of place and identity that are evoked in online advertisements for gated communities in the city of Bangalore in southern India. Since the 1990s, Bangalore has become known as India's premier information technology (IT) hub and a magnet for multinational corporations and high-skill personnel. The latter include Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who lived and worked abroad for several years and have returned to partake of new opportunities offered in the country. We explore the intersection of notions of identity, home and community in a globalised world through an examination of the graphic and textual images encoded in the advertisements of thirteen prominent developers in Bangalore whose upscale gated developments cater to NRIs. The advertisements depict high-end gated communities as places of luxury, exclusiveness, high security and convenience which also offer a range of recreational facilities for individuals and families. Additionally, those who live in the gated enclaves are portrayed as persons of distinction and class who are global and cosmopolitan in their outlook and identity.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

On April 2, 1987, IBM unveiled a series of long‐awaited new hardware and software products. The new computer line, dubbed the Personal Systems 30, 50, 60, and 80, seems destined to replace the XT and AT models that are the mainstay of the firm's current personal computer offerings. The numerous changes in hardware and software, while representing improvements on previous IBM technology, will require users purchasing additional computers to make difficult choices as to which of the two IBM architectures to adopt.

Last year we spoke to Alexander Plemnek of the St Petersburg State Technical University (http://www.unilib.neva.ru), Jennifer Treherne of the University of Surrey (http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Library/library.html) and Paul S. Ulrich of the Zentral‐ und Landesbibliothek Berlin (http://www.kulturbox.de/berlin/zlb/index‐e.htm) about the ways in which their libraries were networked and how they saw things were going. Alexander Plemnek is also heavily involved in RUSLANet, an advanced library information system in Russia that is an initiative of St Petersburg State Technical University.