Search results

Warehousing is “transportation at zero kilometres per hour”; distribution moves goods from source to end‐user in a nearly continuous flow. The article outlines the changes in methods, procedures and management systems that can change a warehouse into a distribution centre without any major investment. These include new arrangements for product slotting, stock location, scheduling replenishment, documentation and inventory review.

It is argued that added value is poised to develop into a major success factor in the future, based on what customers need. The logistics function will play an important part in this, and will be helped by progress in the field of electronic information management.

Reviews the emergence of knowledge‐based engineering tools and assesses the benefits of KBE. Describes how Jaguar Cars uses KBE to reduce vehicle development times. Discusses low‐cost KBE and its application to the small and medium‐sized company.

With a focus on Canada, but framed by similar and shared concerns emerging in the United States, this chapter examines the current status of what constitutes and defines academic freedom for academic librarians and the rights and the protections individual, professional academic librarians have with respect to the freedom of speech and expression of their views in speech and writing within and outside of their institutions. It reviews the historical background of academic freedom and librarianship in Canada, academic freedom language in collective agreements, rights legislation in Canada versus the United States as it pertains to academic librarianship, and rights statements supported by Canadian associations in the library field and associations representing members in postsecondary institutions. The implications of academic librarians using the new communication technologies and social media platforms, such as blogs and networking sites, with respect to academic freedom are examined, as well as, an overview of recent attacks on the academic freedom of academic librarians in the United States and Canada. Included in this analysis are the results of a survey of Canadian academic librarians, which examined attitudes about academic freedom, the external and internal factors which have an impact on academic freedom, and the professional use of new communication technologies and social media platforms.

This chapter examines the history and process of research participants producing and working with data. The experience of working with researcher-produced and/or analysed data shows how social research is a set of practices which can be shared with research participants, and which in key ways draw on everyday habits and performances. Participant-produced data has come to the fore with the popularity of crowdsourced, citizen science research and Games with a Purpose. These address practical problems and potentially open up the research process to large scale democratic involvement. However at the same time the process can become fragmented and proletarianised. Mass research has a long history, an exemplar of which is the Mass Observation studies. Our research involved participants collecting video data on their intoxication practices. We discuss how their experience altered their own subject position in relation to these regular social activities, and explore how our understanding of their data collection converged and differed from theirs. Crowdsourced research raises a challenge to the research binary as the work is done by participants rather than the research team; however it also reaffirms it, unless further work is done to involve participants in commenting and reflecting on the research process itself.

Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. This remains as true to‐day as when the expression was first coined by Euripides circa 400 BC. And it certainly applies in respect of the attitude of successive British Socialist and Tory Governments towards the provision of places in public sector centres of higher education for overseas students

FORGOTTEN PEOPLE: The higher up the plum tree grows the sweeter grow the plums—which being rendered into library language means that opportunities for meeting colleagues usually start at the top and penetrate only as far downwards as funds permit, and we all know what that means. We are pleased to be able to report on a workshop for junior staff which did something to redress the balance.