This presentation was made to a breakout session at the 2011 Skills Australia and Industry Skills Councils joint conference, "Putting Skills at the Heart of Economy". The paper addresses the challenge of measurement in workforce development planning and discusses the role of the various players in the labour and training…

Interviews with 30 million-dollar donors to colleges and universities, including 17 individuals and representatives of 8 corporations and 5 foundations, revealed that donors gave with the expectation of receiving some return but sought indirect rather than direct benefit: enhancement of the institution, community, or society at large. (MSE)

Describes an opinion survey distributed to software publishers and software preview centers in which participants ranked suggested criteria for identifying or certifying preview centers, development of center policies and procedures, and the role of schools in the process. A revised survey is included to which readers are encouraged to respond.…

Reviews the litigation the international publisher Gordon and Breach initiated against the author and publishers of serials pricing surveys. Events that led up to and followed the lawsuits are recounted, and reactions to the lawsuits from the library community are summarized. (28 references) (EA)

Discusses nonfiction series for young adults; presents results of a survey of librarians who evaluated various series; presents criteria for evaluating nonfiction series, including readability, organization, format, timeliness, and length; and considers characteristics of the top 10 series, including marketing and audience. (LRW)

Discussion of problems library wholesalers/distributors face trying to fulfill public libraries' needs while adjusting to a changing industry is based on responses by librarians to a survey on library jobbers. Increased services to libraries, electronic ordering, timeliness, stock management, and quality control are addressed; and a chart of…

Alumni periodical editors who successfully carry advertising were surveyed. Advertising, it is suggested, can pay for itself and defray part of production and distribution costs. The range of advertisers includes national, local, and in-house advertising, classified, business and professional advertising, and career placement advertising. (MLW)

A survey of 114 colleges and universities in 11 southeastern states gathered information on the institutions' mission statements and their use. The statements were analyzed applying a variation of the dimensions previously used to evaluate leading corporations' mission statements: target clientele, products, geography, commitment, philosophy,…

Investigates whether information services markets are measurable so that results are comparable between countries and over different periods of time. Topics include definitions of information services; statistical criteria for data collection; survey methodologies; guidelines for data analyses; and disseminating survey results. (LRW)

Colleges and universities can aid in solving many of society's future problems, but to meet these increased demands, higher education will need greater public and governmental support. An informal survey of 20 college presidents who were asked to look ahead at the next decade is described. (Author/MLW)

A study of the importance of foreign language skills to the success of Australia's business and industry in exporting to non-English-speaking countries is reported. The study has three parts. The first describes a telephone survey of 50 Australian companies requesting information on crucial factors in export marketing and employee language needs,…

A survey of business and industrial training team supervisors and members was undertaken in order to identify the most important entry-level competencies required of instructional development specialists in a variety of business and industrial settings. The study sample of 300 was randomly selected from the approximately 2,850 members of the…

Respondents to a survey of educational software producers to determine extent to which computer assisted instruction courseware is fieldtested, and what this process involves, indicate that 52% fieldtested all their software. The relevance of these results to school media specialists and their role in selecting and evaluating software is…

Reviews the history of sales of nonprint media to schools, speculates about reasons for declining sales, and discusses implications for the future of nonprint media. (Author)

Four major publishers of college guidebooks respond to the concerns of colleges and universities about the guides, the information they contain, and the demand for the information. Specific issues addressed include development of a standardized survey response, data integrity and validity, specialized information needs, publisher-institution…