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This article reviews the various e‐book reading experiences, including dedicated reading devices; PDA‐ and PC‐based readers, Web readers, and the related issues of print on demand. Questions of format, emerging standards, and rights management solutions are described in general terms, with an eye toward important areas of divergence. The size and potential of the e‐book market is considered, in light of traditional publisher initiatives, independent e‐publishing and digital distribution. Also, important new mediators deserve attention as they struggle to niche themselves in this emerging industry.

In this paper, ten standard business principles are considered in relation to library cataloging. These principles are intended to suggest methods that may decrease the time necessary for processing new library materials without adversely affecting access to the materials. This purely rational paradigm offers ideas about how to modify the cataloging philosophy and workflow, to reduce costs and improve patron service. By applying these basic principles, cataloging departments can accomplish traditional tasks more efficiently. Furthermore, the adoption of this approach will help to ensure the department's perceived value and relevance by freeing catalogers to focus more fully on the description and access of electronic resources.

The purpose of this paper is to bring awareness to all factors that impact on the cost of an integrated library system (ILS).

Using a total cost of ownership approach, a bigger view of all the factors impacting on cost is explored.

The paper finds that many libraries focus entirely on direct costs when selecting a new ILS, rather than factoring in staff time and other long‐term costs that will be associated with choosing a system.

When the direct and indirect costs are considered, systems that have higher initial costs may be cheaper to own through their entire lifespan than other, seemingly cheaper, products.

This article discusses the impact of electronic resources on the suite of services provided by serials agents.

The article describes the changing needs of academic libraries in this new environment, and the ways in which serials agents can repurpose themselves to remain a corner‐stone of serials management. A white paper by R2 Consulting is referenced for its insights into the expectations and requirements of academic libraries. Brief statements by two Otto Harrassowitz executives are included.

If agents are to take on these new responsibilities for e‐journals, libraries must expect to pay something beyond typical service fees. Many cash‐strapped libraries will find it difficult to pay higher fees to agents than they do presently, even for services that could save hundreds of hours per year in staff time. Consortia‐purchased collections and the proclivities of a handful of large publishers aside, it will no doubt become necessary for libraries to entrust all subscriptions to agents as the majority of subscriptions maintained by libraries migrate from print to electronic.

Outlines a role for serials agents in the new digital information world.

Like many other academic libraries, Joyner Library at East Carolina University has experienced pressure in recent years to convert stacks space to other uses. The rise of electronic collections coupled with the changing perception of libraries from book warehouses to service points forces librarians to rethink their collection management strategies, concomitantly reducing print collections. The purpose of this article is to recommend specific strategies that will assist librarians engaged in a large‐scale deselection project.

First, librarians, staff, and graduate assistants developed a workflow to examine print journals for which the library has online archival holdings in order to de‐duplicate the collection. Librarians also determined which titles might be stored based on some online availability and length of print run. Third, librarians led a subject‐based review to determine which titles should be retained in the general circulating collections.

Examination proved that most online journals archives, including publisher packages, are adequate replacements for print serials volumes. Many other journal titles can safely be sent to storage rather than retained in the general circulating collections.

Libraries must manage their print collections differently in light of space issues and the conversion of scholarship from print to electronic format.

This article establishes clear principles to guide libraries' decisions on deselecting, storing, and retaining print serials volumes.

The paper intends to enrich the set of national contexts used so far in studies about gift‐giving. It also intends to test the unique explanatory power of the dimensions of egalitarianism.

The study uses a survey methodology with an Israeli sample.

The results suggest that egalitarianism affects gift‐giving behaviors only for females and anniversary presents.

The research is not cross‐cultural per se. Thus, further research is needed in nations that are maximally different from the USA and Israel on their cultural dimensions.

Strong social norms about gift‐giving “protocol” may override the effect of egalitarianism attitudes on gift‐giving behavior. Thus, marketers can benefit greatly from creating, nurturing, and promoting ritualistic and structured gift‐giving situations.

The paper examines gift‐giving in Israel, a culturally different setting than the USA and other developed nations. It also extends the use of gender‐role attitudes, especially egalitarianism, as a predictor of gift‐giving behaviors.

Drawing on accounts from 22 lesbian couples with children conceived using donor insemination, this chapter explores how the respondents’ selection of parent terms, such as “momma” and “mommy,” influences day-to-day negotiation of parenthood. Term selection was affected by personal meanings respondents associated with terms as well as how they anticipated terms would be publicly received. Couples utilized personalized meanings associated with terms, such as terms used by families of origin or reflected in a parent’s cultural background, to help non-biological mothers feel comfortable and secure in their parenting identities. Some families also avoided terms that non-biological mothers associated too strongly with biological motherhood and felt uncomfortable using for themselves. Families also considered whether parent terms, and subsequently their relationships to their children, would be recognizable to strangers or cause undue scrutiny to their family. However, not all of the families selected terms that were easily decipherable by strangers and had to negotiate moments in which the personal meanings and public legibility of terms came into conflict. Overall, these accounts illustrate the importance of parent terms for lesbian-parent families, and other nontraditional families, as a family practice negotiating both deeply personal meanings surrounding parent–child relationships and how these terms, and the families, are normatively recognizable in public spaces.

Purpose: The present research draws from neomaterialist theories to investigate women’s erotic consumption in Brazil, analyzing several stages of the consumption cycle, from need detection to disposal.

Methodology/Approach: Fieldwork followed the Itinerary Method, with 35 in-depth interviews and participant observation.

Findings: In addition to providing thick description of two consumption cycle stages, the chapter analyzes assemblages of material objects and people that are part of erotic consumption. The dialectical process that transforms consumers through the agency of erotic products also transforms products through repurpose or personification – as lovers, butlers, or party crashers – which, in turn, highlights these objects’ agentic nature. Erotic products are understood as possessing social life and death.

Practical Implications: This research uncovered a series of transformations performed by the object on the consumer (i.e., objectification of the consumer) and vice versa (i.e., personification of the object). These processes help understand tensions inherent to networks and assemblages formed during erotic consumption. They also suggest, along the consumption cycle, unmet consumer needs that may be tended to by industry, like disposal issues.

Social Implications: This study broadly aims at helping women to more freely exercise their sexuality (with the mediation of erotic products if they so desire) in a Latin-American patriarchal society where double moral standards regarding men and women still prevail.

Originality/Value of Chapter: This is one of the first studies conducted within consumer culture theory that focuses specifically on sexuality related consumption.