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The Elementary and Secondary School Library Media Act (ESSLMA) was introduced on October 2, 1992, by Paul Sarbanes (D‐MD) and Paul Simon (D‐IL) in the Senate as S‐03307, and on October 5th in the House as HR 6173 by Jack Reid (D‐RI). A number of other House members have indicated intent to sign on to the bill when it is reintroduced in the 103rd Congress.

The point of reckoning is at the bottom line. In the accounting that deals with figures, the income and the outgo are stated in dollars; at the bottom line we see the result, the sum total of what we have done — for better or for worse, profit, or loss.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

As government organizations step hopefully into a new century, among the challenges they face will be the demands of the “New Purchasing” and persistent pressure to redefine the role of the purchasing practitioner in government. Reengineering of purchasing activities was a constant feature of the 1990s in many government jurisdictions. Those who manage the function usually influence a large share of organizational expenditure and must also cope with the demands of e-commerce, devolution of responsibility, partnering and strategic alliances, and the implications of globalization within the context of an accountable public sector. Applying some theoretical, functionalist models of a profession, this paper seeks to establish professional credentials for purchasing practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to assess pharmacy students' perceptions of the usefulness of the teaching evaluation (TE) instrument and the rationale behind their responses.

A comprehensive survey instrument is constructed by the authors. Pharmacy students at University of Jordan (JU) are asked to complete the survey instrument. The questionnaire is completed during students first required, regularly scheduled class.

Of the 577 pharmacy students who are invited to participate, 557 completed the survey for a response rate of 96.5 percent. The majority of the 557 pharmacy students viewed student evaluation of teaching as worthwhile (4.11 out of five on a Likert scale anchored at “1, strongly disagree” and “5, strongly agree”), but agreed that the faculty members receiving the best evaluations are not always the most effective teachers (3.54 out of five).

This paper only surveyed pharmacy students who are studying at JU and hence the results from this paper cannot be generalized to all pharmacy schools or countries in the Middle East. In addition, results may be biased by a social desirability effect whereas students respond in a manner that is different than their true perceptions.

Students acknowledge that the nature of the course, answering questions during office hours, and a pleasant instructor personality positively affected their evaluation score, while the majority of students disagree with the belief that having less work to do and easy exams impacted positively their evaluation scores.

This paper is one of the few attempts to assess the students' perception towards the TE process and the rationale behind their responses in the Middle East.

A NEW YEAR is a season of Stocktaking in normal times; this year it is especially so. The library journals of the world all fill their pages with discussions on libraries in a time of economic depression and financial stringency; and in America this note is even more Stressed than in any country, and we trust that some good may come of it seeing that America has proved more helpless in the face of world depression than any nation had thought possible. That, however, is by the way. The immediate problem of the New Year is how to ensure that in the general reductions of expenditure that are being made the expenditure on libraries is reduced as little as possible.

IN this issue we conclude our symposium on Modern Library Planning, and although it is not as complete as we could wish, it has certainly proved to be one of the most interesting subjects we have been able to deal with in recent years. We regret that lack of space has prevented us from including some interesting details about new libraries, and that we have laid ourselves open to the criticism of over‐crowding. We hope, however, that we shall be able, from time to time, to add further material as the occasion warrants. We had hoped to obtain a description of the Central Library Extension of the Hull Public Libraries, but this has, unfortunately, proved impossible. Lancashire County Library, too, is constructing four new branch libraries, an account of which we should have liked to include. Plymouth may be mentioned as still another library of which the material was not ready in time for our symposium. Also, we are sorry to have had to omit some of the illustrations which librarians have been kind enough to offer us for reproduction. In spite of these omissions, however, we have been able to gather together much that is new and interesting in modern planning, and one of the points that is well worth notice is the willingness of librarians to experiment in new ideas, even if conservatively.

This conceptual article aims to explore the current state of knowledge management systems, to describe the potential role of synthetic worlds for knowledge integration, and to suggest a future research agenda.

Using the constraints of current knowledge management systems outlined in Alavi and Tiwana as a guiding structure, this article explores knowledge integration through a synthetic world and outlines several propositions intended to frame existing knowledge and guide the development of future inquiry.

Current knowledge management systems neither exploit the capabilities of high performance computing, nor adequately address organizational challenges presented by increasingly knowledge‐laden, dispersed, global organizations. The limitations of current systems: constraints on transactive memory, insufficient mutual understanding, limited retention of contextual knowledge, and inflexibility of organizational ties; can be effectively addressed through the synthetic world environment.

Debate regarding the role of Web 2.0 in twenty‐first century knowledge management continues. In order to move this debate forward, the Web 2.0 phenomenon must be unbundled and the role a specific virtual environment may play considered. To that end, this article explores the potential role of synthetic worlds for organizational knowledge management and integration. It heightens awareness and generates dialogue that fosters an appreciation of the emerging synthetic world environment.

The purpose of this paper is to study the differences in the internationalization process of firms from emerging economies and the impact of their international expansion related choices on the nature of technological innovations developed by these firms. Specifically, the authors compare two principal perspectives on internationalization – the incremental internationalization process (slow, gradually increasing commitments using greenfield investments to similar host countries) and the springboard perspective (aggressive, rapidly increasing commitments using mergers and acquisitions to advanced host countries).

Building on key differences between the incremental internationalization and springboard perspectives, the authors argue that differences in the speed and mode of entry, as well as the interaction between the mode of entry and location of internationalization, will lead to differences in the types of technologies (mature versus novel) developed by emerging economy firms. The authors examine the hypotheses using panel data from 1997 to 2013 on emerging economy multinationals (EMNEs) from the Indian bio-pharmaceutical industry.

The findings suggest that firms internationalizing at higher speeds and using cross-border M&As tend to have innovations in mature technologies. The interesting findings can be explained by the challenges faced by emerging economy firms in experiential learning and the assimilation of external knowledge. In addition, the authors find that internationalization to technologically advanced countries weakens the relationship between cross-border M&As and innovation in mature technologies, suggesting that direct learning from technologically advanced environments may help alleviate the assimilation challenges of cross-border M&As.

The authors advance literature on EMNE internationalization by comparing the impact of their choice of internationalization approaches (incremental internationalization or springboard approach) on their innovation performance. The authors contribute to literature on EMNEs that has focused on the determinants of internationalization by identifying the learning implications of internationalization. The authors contribute to the nascent stream of literature on the level of innovation and catching up by EMNEs by performing a fine-grained analysis of the nature of technology innovation.