This study adopts a qualitative approach and uses the case study method. Fourteen researchers and librarians were interviewed in four organizations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.The responses based on the semi-structured interviews provide information about the current status of scholarly communication, the awareness of researchers and librarians about open access and the actual and potential challenges in implementing open access strategies in Ethiopia. This research is believed to illuminate the practicalities and procedures of how open access scholarly communication models could foster and support knowledge sharing and collaboration among Ethiopian researchers.The results of the study show that Ethiopian researchers suffer from lack of adequate access to scholarly literature. There is also lack of scholarly communication outlets to publish and disseminate their research results. This study reveals that the current scholarly communication system in Ethiopia is faced with technological and social challenges. Open access is proposed as a viable alternative for Ethiopia. The research indicates that if Ethiopianuniversities and research institutions adopt open access policies and strategies, it would help them improve the access and dissemination of scientific research results. A concerted effort is required from administrators, librarians, researchers, funding agencies and government to implement and fully harness open access in Ethiopia.

This ethnographic study examines the role of public libraries in supporting lifelong learning (LLL) activities. It was undertaken in a library in the North of England. This study adopted the community of practice (CoP) as a conceptual framework to highlight the importance of the public library as a lifelong learning institution and to explore the significance of the knowledge and skills that are developed through social interaction with learners (users of the library) and librarians and the effects of that on users’ learning and identity. Fieldwork was conducted in the library during a period of nine months. Participant observation and unstructured interviews with 11 librarians, semi-structured interviews with 48 users, along with documentary analysis, were used to generate qualitative data on the library as a lifelong learning institution and the role of librarians in supporting lifelong learning activities. The findings reveal the potential for the public library to be a lifelong learning institution which are: the stimulating learning environment of the library; diversity in the library; a variety of learning resources and accessible facilities as well as cooperation with other organisations in the community. The findings also suggest that the library has integrated social, economic and educational effects on both individuals and communities. The library offers equal and free learning opportunities for everyone, regardless of their background, which provides learners with on-going skills. In this sense, the library is considered as key to unlocking inequality. The findings reveal that the library achieves social justice, fosters social cohesion and prevents social isolation. In addition, the public library plays a vital role in promoting individuals’ health and well-being through bibliotherapy sessions. The findings also show that the library constructs learners’ identities as they become confident, independent learners, critical thinkers and active citizens. On an economic level, the library has a direct and indirect economic impact on individuals, as well as on the whole community. The direct role has been demonstrated by saving users money and supporting people to find jobs as well as starting up their own businesses. Its indirect role is demonstrated though saving money for the public Exchequer, such as the NHS. However, the library faces challenges which affect the quality of delivering those services such as funding cuts, leading to the closure of library buildings, lack of public perception of the library’s value and misunderstanding the rules by the users. The study also highlights that the librarians play a significant role in supporting lifelong learning activities. The librarians deliver the learning sessions as proficient teachers. They also support library users by guiding them to access the valuable information resources and learning sessions which meet their needs. This study shows that there are criteria for librarians to be able to support LLL activities. However, the data indicates that the librarians face challenges such as replacing them with volunteers to run the library services. In addition, there is a lack of public awareness about their significant role in the community.

A common feature of cancer cells is the loss of cell polarity. Scribble is a cell polarity protein with an unknown mechanism for its role in tumour suppression. Changes in the phosphorylation pattern of four serine sites at the C-terminal of scribble, implicate scribble in breast cancer invasion and metastasis. This was due to CD74 overexpression in lymph node metastatic triple negative breast cancers. Investigating how changes in serine phosphorylation status at these sites affect the regulation of invasion and metastasis in breast cancer was the focus of this study. These sites were mutated by site-directed mutagenesis to generate mutant scribble genes grouped into A-mutants and D-mutants, based on the amino acid change to the serine sites to mimic unphosphorylated and phosphorylated scribble, respectively. Widefield and confocal bioimaging of the expression and localization of these mutants in cell line HEK293T revealed good expression but varied localization to cytoskeletal elements, intercellular contact site, microtubules, centrosome and vesicles. Wound healing, MTT and flow cytometry assays were conducted on HEK293T transfected with these mutant genes to study how their expression affected cell migration, proliferation and the cell cycle, respectively. Notable differences emerged: 1.) A-mutants migrated more than D-mutants. 2.) D-mutants proliferated more than A-mutants and 3.) There were significantly more D-mutant expressing cells in the G2 phase of the cell cycle. Protein interaction study was also conducted. The binding partners of S[1306+1309]A and S[1306+1309]D mutants of scribble were captured and analysed by Co-IP and mass spectrometry. Bioinformatics analysis identified the pathways these binding proteins were significantly involved in: S[1306+1309]A binding partners were involved in cell migration via regulation of actin cytoskeleton pathway but contribute to intercellular adhesion via the tight junction pathway. S[1306+1309]D binding partners were involved in the TSH signalling and cell cycle pathways. The results show a significant possibility that unphosphorylated and phosphorylated hScrib support cell invasion and cell proliferation, respectively, and that these processes are antagonistic.

This thesis explores Gladstone's relationship with his book-collection and Library chronologically and thematically. It is interdisciplinary in scope and methodology. It is based primarily on study of Gladstone's books and marginalia (preserved at Hawarden, North Wales) and integrates his reading and library ownership securely into our understanding of his life and career. 'Enlarging the Text', is a late quotation from Gladstone particularly appropriate to the thrust of the thesis. By it he referred to the persistent human desire to acquire and transmit knowledge. This study analyses Gladstone's personal efforts to achieve this through the collection, use and eventual 'public' endowment of a library. The phrase refers both to this endeavour and the concomitant broadening of Gladstone's mind, which I argue accompanied it. The thesis is divided into three sections: 'Making the Reader' (Chapters 1-3), 'Transforming the Reader' (Chapters 4-5) and 'Enlarging the Text' (Chapters 6-7). Chapter One places Gladstone's early book collecting and reading within the contexts of his family life and late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century society. Chapter Two presents a case study of Gladstone's reading and reception of Sir Walter Scott and presents new insights into the significance of this textual relationship to his personal life, identity, nationality and understanding of political vocation. Chapter Three addresses the development and function of Gladstone's private Library, principally located in Hawarden Castle. This chapter is concerned with issues of privacy and publicity, which is a central theme of the thesis as a whole, and concludes with discussion of Gladstone's 'forbidden' reading and collecting outside the Temple of Peace. Chapter Four deals with the events surrounding Gladstone's first retirement in 1874-5. It looks in detail at the circumstances and meaning of Gladstone's retirement, his uncertain status as an intellectual in politics and his continual struggle to decide whether his public vocation should best be lived out politically or theologically. It then seeks to explain how this statesman/scholar paradox was largely resolved in the years up to 1880. Chapter Five presents an analytical case study of Gladstone's representation as a scholar and reader through visual imagery. It shows how Gladstone's scholarly persona was subject to a multiplicity of 'outside' readings over the course of his life and conclusively demonstrates how his early unpopular image was visually reinvented (importantly by Gladstone himself) over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Furthermore it constitutes a balance to the private, interior-focused sources, which are so fundamental to this project. Chapter Six returns to the complex debate over Gladstone's later religious attitudes. It questions previous characterisations of him as an ultra-orthodox religious dogmatist, which have both misrepresented his theological, ecclesiastical and epistemological views and have also made his foundation of St Deiniol's Library extremely difficult to explain. It is argued that he is best described during his last years as a Liberal Catholic rather than as a High Churchman. The second part of the chapter provides fresh evidence for this through coverage of an important but previously overlooked aspect of the St Deiniol's foundation: the impact of Gladstone's relationship with the Liberal-Catholic Anglican Lux Mundi group, active in the Oxford of the 1880s. The final chapter discusses the circumstances and motivations behind Gladstone's decision to found his Residential Library in rural North Wales and highlights the difficulties he faced in making this personal and practical contribution to the Liberal Catholic movement. In summary, this thesis raises the profile of Gladstone's Library as an historical source. It provides the first in-depth chronological and thematic study of Gladstone's lifetime of book collecting and library building. It revises and fully contextualises the history and significance of St Deiniol's Library, integrating it within the broader context of Gladstone's intellectual and religious life. It offers a significant new interpretation of Gladstone's later theology and presents a fresh perspective on the Gladstone 'myth' through study of visual representation and analysis of his intellectual and scholarly persona.

After thirty years of neoliberal public sector reforms involving the increased use of the private sector and the import of private sector methods, in many respects, the public sector is barely recognisable from when Mrs Thatcher was elected. This study is about one specific part of the public services – the public library service – and is analysed in the context of the wider picture of change in the public services. In particular, the focus of the thesis is the attitude of library service workers to the public service ethos (PSE), whether and how it informs their attitude to their work and its potential for use by their union in mobilisation. The thesis addresses three research questions: • Has the public service ethos survived? And if it has, what does it mean for workers? • Is there a relationship between commitment to the public service ethos and union membership and activism? • Could the union utilise the ethos in its campaigning? And, if so, how? Starting from a theoretical discussion of the origins and meaning of the PSE and a discussion of the relevance of mobilisation theory, the study highlights three key areas. First, there is an examination of whether workers in the public library service believe that a PSE exists and, if so, what it means to them. It is demonstrated through qualitative and quantitative data, including a survey of union members in the library service that it is both alive and well and a significant influence on how they view their working life. Secondly, there is an analysis of whether there is a relationship between union activism and commitment and a belief in the PSE. Connected with that is a debate about the utility of the PSE as an aid to mobilisation at the workplace. Thirdly, there is a discussion of the relevance of the PSE to unions’ wider campaigning, given their expressed aim of drawing on external power resources through alliances with service user groups. The study shows that public service workers continue to believe in a PSE, offering their union the opportunity to associate itself with it, thereby distinguishing itself from the employer and strengthening the union both within and outside the workplace.

The creation of a highly detailed on-line catalogue of Walter Scott’s Library at Abbotsford has made it possible for the first time, not only to see exactly what items Scott collected, but also in many cases to determine when and how he acquired them. If, as Alberto Manguel has claimed, all libraries are autobiographical, what does this enhanced information about Abbotsford Library tells us about Scott? Five distinct topics have been selected for examination: Americana, Ireland, Science, Politics and Bibliography. They have been chosen because, although they are for the most part not subjects frequently connected with Scott, they are nonetheless areas on which he collected a substantial amount of books or manuscripts, and for which substantive information about his involvement or interest can be deduced from external sources such as his Journal or correspondence. In addition to the investigation of these specific subject areas, the collection as a whole is explored for evidence for Scott’s personal relationships, both with other writers and with members of his family, focussing especially on his collections of Burns and Byron, the commonplace book he kept as a young man, and his own marginalia. Evidence concerning Scott’s final book purchases is surveyed against the conflicting accounts of his mental and physical health in 1831/2 as given by J. G. Lockhart, William Gell, and other contemporary observers, and an account of the afterlife of the Library traces its history from Scott’s death to the present day to examine how closely the present arrangement of the books resembles that intended by Scott, and whether changes which took place after his death could mislead us into drawing incorrect conclusions. Finally a description of the twenty-first century cataloguing process with some statistical analysis of the contents of the Library examines the importance of the holdings to ask if this is a significant collection, even without the provenance of one of the most popular and prolific writers of the Romantic Era, and whether Scott’s influence on nineteenth-century book culture is one of his most important contributions to modern scholarship.

In spite of improving the library performance (LP) of academic libraries (ALs) is based on a set of standards and criteria, improving the SPALs is relied on the vision of the ALs’ decision-makers; and subjected by a number of barriers that hinder improvement. This research aims to improve the LP of the Arab International University (AIU) in Syria. The focus is made to achieve improvement based on the end-users’ expectations and requirements (EUERs). Thus, identifying the EUERs is aimed in this research also. Data was collected by adopting a mixed methods approach, embraced to a single case study (LAIU). Primary quantitative data was collected by distributing two questionnaires to the end-users (undergraduates & academics). A printed-format questionnaire was designed for the undergraduates, while the academics’ questionnaire was designed using Smart-survey. The aim of these questionnaires was to understand the end-users’ perspectives, expectations, and their requirements of the LAIU. 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 librarians and 3 administrators to identify the situation of the LAIU, and understand the library staffs’ perspectives about the EUERs and end-users’ ISB. SOWT analysis was used to address the strengths, weakness, and threats facing the library, and their suggestions to improve the LP. Furthermore, the analysis of the secondary statistics collected from the LAIU and related websites took place in this study to support the primary data collected. A total of 228 undergraduates, and 30 academics have participated in this study. The data collected from the questionnaires were analysed using PASW software; version 18.0, while the collected data of the interviews was analysed thematically using NVivo 10.0 software. To maximise the outputs of the research and understand the holistic situation of the LAIU, the tools of the SSM were implemented. This assists in identifying the problematic areas of the situation. A number of challenges and barriers have been discovered relating to four categories: EUERs, end-users’ information-seeking behaviour, end-users’ satisfaction, and the LP. The analysis showed that although the EUERs are academic in the first place, there are differences regarding their demographic variables. It presented that end-users are not strongly satisfied with their LP. Furthermore, the findings reflected the need to improve the LP. They addressed the end-users’ behavior during their journey in seeking information. Based on the use of the rich picture, these barriers have been classified into internal and external barriers. The focus was limited to investigate internal barriers. Additionally, the implementation of the SSM’s tools helps in developing the root definitions and related conceptual models that led to improving the situation of the LAIU. This study contributes to establish an appropriate and vital strategy to improve the LP based on a set of recommendation driven from the implementation of the SSM’s tools. It contributes to generate the S-diamond model addressing the requirements of improvement. It develops a model of the end-users’ ISB in the SPALs. Furthermore, this study reflects a theoretical significance by providing unique findings discovering the relationships between the themes under the investigation (EUERs, LP, end-users’ ISB, and EUS).

No description available.

Over the past two decades (1980s and 1990s), changes in environmental factors demanded that higher education institutions should be managed more efficiently. It is necessary for library administrators to evaluate their organisational structures in order to meet their customers' rising expectation and parent institutions' vision, mission, and strategy for future development. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent oflibrary reorganisation within the UK and Taiwan universities, and the principal differences and similarities on organisational structure changes between 1985 and 2001. This study was a population study. This study was composed of two surveys (the initial survey and the follow-up survey) in the two countries. Quantitative data was gathered though a questionnaire. The researcher investigated general aspects of library reorganisation, then focused specific on eight research problems and conducted comparison between the UK and Taiwan. Thirteen hypotheses centered on the issues concerning organisational structure changes were tested. Of the thirteen hypotheses, some were supported by the study and others were not. Comparisons were made among organisational charts during this IS-year period. The main findings are: (1) The extent of library reorganisation for the two countries was high over the IS-year period (1985-2001). However, there had been an overall decline during the follow-up survey period. If the non-respondents represented a biassed set (they all had not conducted organisational structure change), then the extent of change in the two countries was actually not so high. The plans of organisational change will continue with 30% respondents from UK and 24% from Taiwan in the follow-up survey were considering the possibility. (2) There was no significant relationship between the extent of the library reorganisation and the selected background of libraries studied. (3) Of the environmental factors responsible for organisational structure changes, Service reasons and management reasons played the top two major roles. Economic and technological influences on organisational change declined over the survey time. 'Changes in higher Education', 'the development of digitized collection/digital library', 'change in human expectations', and 'changes in scholarly publishing/communication' became the important reasons for changes in the follow-up survey period. (4) Most of the libraries conducted internally reorganisation rather than externally. The top two methods adopted in internal reorganisation were: 'creating new functions/departments/units', and 'combination of functions'. Convergence activities were only reported by several responding libraries, the results showed that the extent of convergence activities seemed increased with time. The major reasons for the convergence were: shared vision; to pursue a more effective administration; to cooperate in supporting teaching, research, and learning; overlapping missions and strategies; exchanges of specialization between organisations; more economic administration; to cooperate in development of digital resources and digital collection; sharing of staff, facilities, and equipment. (5) After reorganisation, most university libraries in the UK adopted hierarchical structure and based on a combined functional/subject-based pattern. Team-based structure was the second favorite. Almost all respondents' libraries in Taiwan preferred a hierarchical structure and based on a functional pattern, however, 'teamwork' concept was adopted by some libraries. (6) The new organisations mostly emphasized user services, integration of the management of varied resources in libraries, and technological support. (7) The management levels of libraries in the UK tended to be flatter after reorganisation. However, most of the libraries in Taiwan retained the same management level after reorganisation. (8) The title of library managers within UK universities became more versatile after reorganisation. However, most of the library managers in Taiwan retained the same title even after reorganisation. (9) The considered important challenges of organisational change were: 'the parent institutional climate'; 'managerial support within and outside the library'; 'the climate of the libraries'; 'the staff strengths and weaknesses'; 'staff attitudes towards change'; 'the attitude of library directors'. (10) The results of library reorganisation have been mostly positive, and have provided lessons in organisational change from which other libraries may benefit.

Classification is a fundamental tool in the organisation of any library collection for effective information retrieval. Several classifications exist, yet the pioneering Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) still constitutes the most widely used scheme and international de facto standard. Although once used for the dual purpose of physical organisation and subject retrieval in the printed library catalogue, library classification is now relegated to a singular role of shelf location. Numerous studies have highlighted the problem of subject access in library online public access catalogues (OPACs). The library OPAC has changed relatively little since its inception, designed to find what is already known, not discover and explore. This research aims to enhance OPAC subject searching by deriving facets of the DDC and populating these with a library collection for display at a View-based searching OPAC interface. A novel method is devised that enables the automatic deconstruction of complex DDC notations into their component facets. Identifying facets based upon embedded notational components reveals alternative, multidimensional subject arrangements of a library collection and resolves the problem of disciplinary scatter. The extent to which the derived facets enhance users' subject searching perceptions and activities at the OPAC interface is evaluated in a small-scale usability study. The results demonstrate the successful derivation of four fundamental facets (Reference Type, Person Type, Time and Geographic Place). Such facet derivation and deconstruction of Dewey notations is recognised as a complex process, owing to the lack of a uniform notation, notational re-use and the need for distinct facet indicators to delineate facet boundaries. The results of the preliminary usability study indicate that users are receptive to facet-based searching and that the View-based searching system performs equally as well as a current form fill-in interface and, in some cases, provides enhanced benefits. It is concluded that further exploration of facet-based searching is clearly warranted and suggestions for future research are made.