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The government’s ambition is to have three million more apprentices by 2020. The newness of degree apprenticeships and insufficient data make it difficult to assess their relative importance in boosting the UK economy, meeting higher skills needs of employers, closing educational attainment gaps, increasing social mobility and supporting under-represented groups into professional employment. The purpose of this paper, led by the University of Winchester and delivered by a new collaboration of private and public sector partners, is to build a pipeline between those currently failing to progress to, or engage with, degree apprenticeships and employers seeking higher skills and a broader pool of applicants.

The paper provides an analysis of collaborative initiatives and related research in England as the context for university involvement in degree apprenticeships. The case study illustrates the benefits of collaboration in targeted outreach initiatives within the local region to address gaps in progression to degree apprenticeships.

This paper illustrates how establishing a regional picture of degree apprenticeship provision, access and participation can inform effective partnerships and build capacity locally to deliver the higher skills employers need, further demonstrating the potential benefits of university involvement in degree apprenticeship provision in contributing to local and national policy ambition. It also shows how effective targeted interventions can help under-achieving groups, including those in social care and women in digital enterprises.

The authors believe this paper is the only academic analysis of the impact of Degree Apprenticeship Development Fund activity in the region.

THERE appeared in the Library Association Record some months ago, an article—not very practical—on Accession Methods, and it is with this work that I intend to deal.

This paper aims to investigate processes of how RFID‐enabled systems affect consumers' trust and acceptance of u‐commerce, emphasizing a feedback loop where consumers' post‐transaction trust affects their initial trust.

A simulation model using system dynamics (SD) is developed to show the importance of trust issues involving RFID technology, decomposing complex processes of trust building in u‐commerce into a set of feedback loops with a causal‐loop diagram.

The results of simulation runs indicate that well‐established policies, especially for current privacy issues, should be in place to increase consumers' acceptance of u‐commerce.

The research provides insights into the development of RFID‐based consumers' trust in u‐commerce, and policies to increase consumers' trust in u‐commerce. The research model was developed and verified using SD.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

EVERYONE interested in the British library movement will learn with sorrow and regret that one of its greatest friends and strongest champions has passed away, in the person of Thomas Greenwood, the kind‐hearted and generous advocate of libraries, who won the respect and regard of every English libiarian. From one of his own periodicals the following particulars are abstracted:—

One of the nine thought provoking essays assembled by Peter Vergo in the recently published The New Museology (Reaktan Books, ISBN 0 948 462 035 hardback, ISBN 0 948 462 043 paperback) is “The Quality of Visitors' Experiences in Art Museums” in which Philip Wright discusses the lack of awareness among museum personnel of what exactly their institutions are doing, and indeed should do, in a period when “films, television, video and pop access photography have inevitably altered, if not actually undermined the hierarchy of images that museums aim to display”. Few curators have had professional surveys of their audience undertaken, some have dismissed colleagues' changes as pandering to commercialisation, and invest in sophisticated technology and displays in such a way as to distract from the integrity of the objects in their care.

Criticisms of the Library Association have no value which do not take account of all the circumstances. We are told that for some years past nothing constructive for librarianship or for its technique has been done. Our correspondent Callimachus makes this assertion by implication on another page. It must be remembered, however, that until quite recently the Library Association was a very small body which exercised an influence out of all proportion to its size and income. It has grown by direct membership and by affiliation in an extraordinary manner in the past year, a result which is due to goodwill on the part of librarians, but more immediately to the wise direction of Messrs. Jast and Savage and the untiring patience and tacful activity of Mr. Guy Keeling. Our readers know that Mr. Keeling has actually had to rest owing to the effects of overwork. This being so, it is quite clear that the demand for more must be tempered by a willingness to work on the part of the critics. The Association is only an embodiment of the membership; what the members want of the Association they must give to it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the utilization of the social network, Facebook, as an instrument of stakeholder engagement and dialogic accounting in American charitable foundations, specifically non-profit organizations that are dedicated to philanthropy.

The research motivation involves whether online interaction through Facebook could represent a channel of dialogic accounting that engages organizational stakeholders. This paper aims to understand if this dialogue is geared to generate a consensus necessary to deliberate over decisions that are shared between all stakeholders, or if a divergent and agonistic perspective, which highlights struggles and differences between actors, prevails. The present study employs a form of content analysis that takes into account the Facebook pages of the 100 largest American philanthropic foundations.

The primary goal of the analysis is to examine the discrepancies in terms of how (and how much) large organizations are using Facebook. The study wants to provide more details on which kind of information large organizations are willing to disclose and collect on Facebook, and to evaluate the level and type of interaction between foundations and users.

Further research could build on the present study by providing in-depth case studies and extending the analysis to other social media and other types of organizations.

Social media represent a powerful mechanism to engage stakeholders in a polylogic conversation. However, the scholarly literature confirms that further studies are necessary to understand how companies and organization can exploit this potential.