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This thesis is the first in-depth exploration of the social, cultural and historical development of Marischal Museum throughout the twentieth century. The study explores a range of museum and archive sources to reconstruct the Museum's cultural history, and to highlight significant issues which make the Museum an important case study in historical museum studies. This thesis examines the changing nature of museums, and in particular, the shifting relationship between anthropology, empire and museums. Museums are considered here as hubs at the centres of complex and geographically wide-ranging social networks. Wider political and cultural changes are seen to be expressed in the architectural structure, collections and displays of the Museum. I explore these changes through an examination of the exhibition galleries, processes of acquisition, storage, classification and display from the early twentieth century to the present day (2003). A combination of cultural historical, anthropological and museological approaches are drawn upon to provide an in-depth analysis of Marischal Museum's internal social relations and cultural practices over time. The thesis argues that museums are shaped in important ways by their social, cultural and political contexts, as well as by the persons who create and use them. The internal processes of museums need to be understood as cultural historical processes involving social contacts, patterns of acquisition, classification, documentation, and decisions about gallery architecture and display. Analysis of these processes can shed light on public exhibitions, and the contemporary role of museums in society. It is argued that museums are more than repositories of material objects. Instead, the materiality of the museum sites, including their spatial dimensions and their diverse collections, is entirely bound up with the social relations of the people who have shaped the institution over time, and who continue to be referred to in the present practices at the Museum. The past informs the present in museums as they draw upon and reinterpret their histories.

This thesis is an exploratory study of the process of informing among a group of managers directly involved in the daily operations of a manufacturing plant. In addition to describing and analysing the process of informing itself, the thesis depicts the process of the entire research act. I define the process of informing as an interpretative process whereby managers assign meaning to data or "mere" information (processed data) gathered or received from official documented information, meetings, personal records, observations and particularly interactions. The managers thereby construct a definition of the situation and act or select a course of action on the basis of that definition. I introduce the concept of improvisation, derived from the music and literature of Jazz, to depict the process whereby managers construct or create a novel, innovative course of action in a situation which is defined to be unfamiliar, and for which there is no behavioural precedent. I introduce the concept of loosely coupled shared arrangements, to depict the process by which managers align their individual courses of action and thus enter into joint or concerted action. These arrangements, through frequent occurrence, may appear as semi-permanent structural units which give form and structure to the organisation. I define informant networks as shared arrangements to inform, where managers rely on each other to supply them with reliable, accurate and timely information. Finally, I adopt a critical stand towards the traditional view of management information systems. Firstly, I argue that the MIS may only be viewed as being part of the overall process of informing and not as constituting the whole of it. Secondly, I suggest that the MIS produces "mere" information which is not imbued with meaning until the manager's interpretative process is brought into play. Finally, I question the assumptions about choice and the nature of organisation reality underpinning the traditional view of management information systems.

The development of a computerised information retrieval system called Hortbase is described. Hortbase has been designed to meet the information needs of the professions involved with decorative plant usage in the landscape, and is composed of two constituent databases, Plantbase and Climatebase. Plantbase supplies information on the environmental tolerances, husbandry requirements and morphological and aesthetic characteristics of decorative plants. Climatebase provides information on key climatic limitations to plant growth and development for any planting location in England and Wales. The design of the databases and the quantification of climatic factors and plant characteristics is discussed together with the influence of factors such as traditional information sources, fashion, plant availability, and contemporary cultivation thought and practice in determining plant use and success in the landscape.

The aim of the present study is to develop an explanation of the information seeking behaviour of dental professionals that relates the three main instances of this behaviour (users, their information needs, use of information sources) in a meaningful way. The research looks into the information-seeking behaviour of one of the less investigated groups of health practitioners and it does so from a qualitative point of view, using data collected by means of semi-structured interviews. 110 dental professionals were interviewed between May 1989 and June 1990. The interviewees were dental professionals in Sheffield District Health Authority (postgraduate students; academic staff; community service dentists; hospital staff and general dental practitioners). A coding paradigm based on grounded theory was applied to analyze their replies. This basic paradigm explains the information-seeking behaviour of dental professionals in terms of 'conditions' that provoke seeking information; 'strategies' implemented to seek information; 'interactions' the ways in which information sources are used. The conditions for their information needs are created by their clinical tasks (diagnosis, treatment and delivery of dentistry) or their academic tasks (teaching and lecturing, research and publications). Dental professionals apply six basic strategies for seeking information: Reading, Talking, Enquiring, Attending/organizing continuing education events, Watching and Using the library. Each of these strategies is associated with the use of certain information sources: Reading with written/printed literature, Talking with colleagues, Enquiring with individuals from other occupations or professions, Attending... with courses and conferences, Watching with audiovisual materials and Using the library with the use of printed literature via a library service. While the strategies are common to every subgroup in the study, the actual patterns of information-seeking vary from subgroup to subgroup because the strategies are implemented in different ways by each of them. The reason for this variation is determined by the particular combination of clinical and academic tasks of each subgroup. The findings - apart from describing how a representative group of dental professionals uses a variety of information sources - have several implications for library and information services, computer applications, dental training and further research in health care user studies.

This project investigates patterns of communication in condensed matter physics in Brazil with the ultimate purpose of obtaining information to improve the scientific information system in this country. It comprises three interconnected parts, each of which has a partjcular objective: (1) the characterization of the development of the community during the period studied, in terms of institutions, human resources and literature produced; (2) patterns of communication in terms of the formal and informal channels used for scientific information transfer; (3) the interpretation of the results obtained in the light of the country's historical and scientific background, taking into account present and possible future changes in the communication system of science at national and international level. The community analysed is examined as a whole and by specific groups using the scientific literature as the" basic element of investigation. Interviews with members of the community, selected via carefully defined criteria have helped create a picture of the circumstances under which the community grew and developed. The analysis revealed an active expanding scientific community, now reaching maturity (as viewed in terms of the volume and regularity of publishing). Research interests cover core and fringe areas of condensed matter physics, and interaction between national groups is becoming significant. An analysis of communication activities revealed similar patterns to those encountered for communities in developed countries. The community values equally formal and informal channels of communication, indicating that both aspects should be considered when discussing an adequate structure fo~ an information system. A minimum core collection of journals of interest was identified; the great majority of them were tr~ditional scientific journals published in the more developed countries. Strong invisible colleges between Brazilian physicists and those in developed countries supply. researchers with information, by-passing the deficiencies of the present information support system in the country. Bibliometric research techniques have proved to be helpful in studying patterns of communication in science in developing countries.

The principle that libraries have a role to play in the provision of information for jobseekers is recognised widely in public library authorities across the country, not only by the authorities themselves, but also by other bodies concerned with jobseekers. However, the range and variety of initiatives is capable of generating confusion among jobseekers. The library is well placed to act as a focus for information for jobseekers - information that comes from a variety of institutions and initiatives and is not only confined to vacancies. This thus poses three questions which the research attempts to answer :- - is the library at the focus? - is the library seen to be at the focus? - if not, why not - if so, how does it make it work? This project approaches these questions by contributing to the current national debates as to the future development of information agencies, policies and initiatives through the interviews with Job Centre clients, a group whose views in this area have never before been canvassed and who, therefore, offer a new perspective on the issues. This debate has raised the potential of the public library network as an agent of social and economic regeneration, a role of the public library previously accepted within the service, but rarely without. The thesis demonstrates the interface between the social and economic potential of the public library and the needs and demands of the 'information poor', as well as highlighting the importance of the recreational role of the Public Library. The methods used to answer these questions were threefold. Firstly, a survey was carried out of all public library authorities in England and Wales. Of the surveys distributed, 82% were completed, an excellent rate of response. It is clear from this survey that the overwhelming majority of public library authorities feel that it is their role to provide services for jobseekers. The survey also shows that many authorities provide a wide range of non-statutory services. This provision of the "newer" technologies is important for jobseekers as they are generally unable to afford to purchase such technology. The survey also indicated that the view of jobseekers held by public library authorities was an inclusive one, and covered those both in and out of work. Secondly, case-study authorities were chosen from the respondents to the questionnaire. These were selected on the basis of declared level of provision, and also on type of authority. Four case studies were selected, one County Council (Wiltshire), two Urban Authorities (Lewisham and Manchester) and one Welsh Authority (Wrexham). The selection was carried out thus in order to reflect the preponderance of Urban Authorities in the respondents to the original survey. These case studies have investigated the demographics, control and profile of the authorities involved. Managers and staff of library authorities were interviewed about provision and provision was viewed on site and assessed with reference to other case studies and two models of provision, the 'integrative' and the 'targeted' were identified. Thirdly, interviews were undertaken with clients of Job Centres in the case-study authorities. Ninety-four interviews were carried out across the four authorities. These interviews investigated jobseekers use of both the public library and other information providers in this area, and also assessed jobseekers' attitudes towards the public library. The survey showed that almost 70% of those interviewed used the public library, with 48% of these using the library at least once a month. Just over half of the respondents said that the Public library was for everyone and should provide useful information for jobseekers. Only 16% said that the library was not the place for jobseekers to obtain information. When asked if they would use the Public Library if it advertised services useful to jobseekers, 94% said that they would. This empirical work has been placed within a theoretical framework based on the work of Jiirgen Habermas. The public library is "arguably the nearest thing we have in Britain to an achieved Public Sphere" (Webster 1995) and this research enables the conception of the Public Library as an achieved Public Sphere to be reassessed and, therefore, the role of the public library to be reconceptualised.

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Health Authorities receive vast quantities of data from providers relating to patients treated. Ibis data is used to survey the health of the resident population and to determine future healthcare services. It is therefore essential that the quality of this data is measured. North Staffordshire Health Authority already monitor, to a certain extent, the quality of data received. However, accuracy is one attribute of quality not monitored. This thesis proposes a method to measure the accuracy of patient data, in particular clinical coding. The traditional method of measuring accuracy determines whether a data item is correct or incorrect. The definition of accuracy, however, is the measure of agreement with an identified source. The proposed measure ranks incorrect clinical codes by their level of inaccuracy. Concepts from measurement theory are used to ensure that this measure adhered to the rules of the theory. This alternative method of measuring data accuracy was tested on a sample of inpatient data. From the results, the most appropriate way to analyse clinical data whilst still maintaining a level of accuracy satisfactory for the intended information purposes could be identified. Managers at North Staffordshire Health Authority were surveyed for their views on the usefulness of this alternative method of measuring data accuracy compared with the traditional method. Auditing a sample of data like this does not help to prevent errors occurring. Therefore, to identify how data accuracy could be improved in the long term, the source of the errors were discovered by examining the data life cycle.

A survey investigating the reading and information needs of elderly Punjabis was conducted in Bradford and Derbyshire. A questionnaire was prepared which was used as a structured interview. 120 interviews were recorded, 60 from each authority. This number included Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs and the generic term 'Punjabi' was used for these three distinct religious groups. Women were also included in this survey to see if they have any different requirements from men. Reading and information material included print and nonprint material. This research presents the actual needs of elderly Punjabis as they perceive them. A special collection could easily be prepared on the basis of the material quoted by them in their interviews which would be helpful for any library authority with few adaptations according to their local needs. Social, economic and cultural factors influencing their reading behaviour and pattern are also discussed.