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The aim of this study was to test whether the client homebound score (CHS), the case management intensity score (CMIS) and the client priority visit score (CPVS) could be used to predict in‐home time of professional caregivers in the Aspen community care program. A random sample of 34 community care clients from the different geographical areas of the Aspen Regional Health Authority was selected and the home visits for each client were tracked for three months. Information such as client demographics, the client diagnostic category, number and in‐home time of visits was collected. In addition, the CHS, the CMIS and the CPVS were measured for each client. Data were analyzed, using a robust variance estimator regression model. CMIS was found to be the best predictor of in‐home time (coefficient 9.521, p > 0.001), followed by the CHS and the CPVS.

The objectives of this study were to determine knowledge, satisfaction and perceptions of clients of a community‐based family‐planning program in Uganda. In an interview survey, male and female clients (48 female clients and one male client) were interviewed. Main outcome measures were the client knowledge score, the client satisfaction score, and the clients’ general perception of family‐planning services. Client knowledge and client satisfaction scores were high (85/100 vs 78/100). Obstacles to program improvement as perceived by clients were resistance to family planning by male sexual partners and religious leaders as well as shortages in the supply of contraceptives. In conclusion, it can be said that female clients in Kabarole were satisfied with the services they received from both male and female community‐based distributors (CBDs). Satisfaction with and acceptance of male CBDs by female clients are important for the increased recruitment of male CBDs in family planning.

This study investigated the design of three online public library catalogs in light of the cognitive ability and success of children ages five to eight.

A quasi-experimental approach was employed to examine the influence of system design on children’s searching strategies and search success. Interviews were used to explore children’s rationale for using icons and taxonomies in the catalogs. Fifty one children from one public library participated in this study. Inferential statistics were utilized to whether significant differences existed between use of the catalogs and the children’s success in finding information.

Use of images and text were helpful in searching the catalogs. Results of the ANOVA test indicated no significant difference among children’s searching success rates and the three catalogs. Additionally, the participants misidentified representations used in icons in all three catalogs and created valid search paths that did not produce results. There was a disconnect between the children’s cognitive abilities and the design representations of the three catalogs.

The study took place in one location, thus one should not overgeneralize the findings. Use of assigned tasks may have affected children’s success rates. Children’s searching using printed cards of display screens from the three catalogs instead of real-time interaction with them is also a limitation.

Because of the children’s reliance on images, the choice of visual representations is crucial to successful searching. Interface designers should involve young users in the design of today’s online catalogs. They should also consider new forms of representations such as auditory icons, verbal mouse overs, and zooms.

In addition to addressing the need for research on young children’s information seeking and use of online catalogs in public libraries, this research focuses on the need for an additional layer of visual representation and highlights flaws in currently used catalog designs.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.

Most social scientists believe that schools serving the disadvantaged provide considerably poorer learning environments than schools serving advantaged students. As a result, schools are thought to be an important source of social problems like inequality. However, an important subset of research employing seasonal comparisons (observing how achievement gaps change when school is in versus out) disputes this position. These studies note that socioeconomic-based gaps in skills grow faster when school is out versus in, suggesting that achievement gaps would be larger if not for schools. I discuss the advantages of seasonal comparison studies and how they provide a more contextual perspective for understanding several important questions, such as: (1) What is the distribution of school quality? (2) How does inequality outside of school condition the way schools matter? and (3) Which policies, school or non-school, most effectively reduce achievement gaps? I conclude that our understanding of how schools influence inequality would be improved by employing the more contextual perspective offered by seasonal comparisons. Seasonal comparison studies have not played a meaningful role in public discussions and so the public lacks a proper understanding of the extent to which social context shapes achievement gaps. This is unfortunate because we continue to try and address achievement gaps primarily through school reform when the real source of the problem lies in the inequalities outside of schools.

A LETTER from the President of the Library Association (Mr. Berwick Sayers) has been received which we have pleasure in giving prominently.

THE county librarian is often asked in amused, curious or contemptuous tone “what do the “villagers” read?” In a purely agricultural county consisting of small villages with no urban area it is possible that literary appreciation is on a lower level than in counties where there are a number of towns; for it is an undeniable fact that although a country man's ability may be equal to that of his town cousin, the standard of education is higher in the towns than in the country. Town dwellers have more varied interests and as a rule have had to make more use of the education received in youth than the village folk whose daily work makes less demand upon the mental faculties.

WE have now received the skeleton programme of, and the invitations to, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association which opens at Harrogate with a service at the Parish Church on Sunday, September 17th. The arrangements that are to be made locally are attractive; the picture of the interior of the Royal Hall, which we receive with the list of hotels and boarding houses, seems to promise a useful meeting place where perhaps the acoustics will be better than those to which we are normally accustomed at conferences. The Majestic Hotel, which has been chosen as headquarters, is not quite so expensive as some hotels which have hitherto been chosen although it is not cheap, and it has the advantage of being quite near to the meeting place.

In the speech in which he introduced the new Education Bill, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher remarked that it did not deal with a number of special questions, “which must be the matter of another measure.” One of these questions was “libraries,” and we are now definitely face to face with the fact that the Board of Education are of opinion that libraries are within their purview. The report of the speech as it appears in The Times is not conclusive upon the point. “Libiaries,” as an auxiliary of education, may connote in the Minister's mind the mere provision of libraries in schools and teaching institutions generally. If that is so there is no particular reason for alarm, so long as the authorities recognize that even the management of school libraries is a matter for librarians rather than for teachers.

OUR readers do not need the reminder that 1952 is the 75th year of Library Association history. Some opportunity may be found at the Bournemouth Conference to celebrate this fact, in however modest a manner. The American Library Association, older by a year, celebrated its anniversary at Philadelphia last October, on which occasion Mr. F. G. B. Hutchings represented this country and spoke at a luncheon meeting to three hundred of the guests with acceptance. That celebration, however, appears to us to have been most significant for the comment on the Carnegie library gifts which was made by Mr. Ralph Munn, librarian of Pittsburgh Carnegie Library, in some ways the most spectacular one founded by the great Scot. Munn said:—