Volume 52, Issue 4

The programme of Subject Reviews commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and organised by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2000-2001, is reviewed in this paper. The Subject Review process, which sought to assess the quality of higher education in England and Northern Ireland in individual subject disciplines, is explained, and evaluated critically from the viewpoint of a subject reviewer. The process enabled a limited sharing of best practice, and compelled institutions to review their approach to the provision of a suitable learning environment for their students. The pros and cons of the approach as a mechanism for ensuring quality are discussed, based on the experiences of the author. Finally, the extent to which such reviews are of long-term benefit is considered.

The Quality Assurance Agency's (QAA) External Subject Review process was not welcomed by the majority of UK academic departments in 2000. Peer review of learning and teaching was something new. The Information Science Department at Loughborough University was no exception. Immediately prior to the review process, the academic members of staff in the department were debating the very concept of peer review. This paper describes how departmental staff was brought together as a team to focus energy and effort into the QAA process to gain the maximum benefit from it. The team building is colourfully described and a resulting top score for the department was achieved.

The Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland conduct the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) every four to five years. The most recent results were published in December 2001 but the funding formula not announced until March 2002, amidst considerable concern about underfunding of the whole exercise and its likely future. International excellence was seen as the gold standard as assessed by individual panels, with regard to the best work being carried out anywhere in the world. Work deemed to be of international excellence was outstanding in terms of almost all these qualities. Sadly, a number of submissions claiming to be of international standard had very limited research outputs deemed to be of international excellence, although demonstrating good, solid work at national level. At international level, there was no shortage of international conference proceedings returned but the overall quality was disappointingly low and many showed little evidence of research.

This paper starts by considering briefly the background to subject benchmarking within the overall context of the Quality Assurance Framework. It then goes on to discuss the methodology and approach of the expert panel appointed to design and develop the benchmark statement for Librarianship and Information Management. The emphasis will be on the practical approach to the task of creating a subject benchmark statement for librarianship and information management, by representatives of our profession and the subsequent responses.

This paper first describes the accreditation instrument currently used by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), then considers some aspects of the future relationship between this professional body and Library & Information Science (LIS) education and training in the UK. A convergence of interests between CILIP and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education is discussed, notably with reference to subject benchmarking and the need to expand the traditional boundaries of LIS in order to encompass the interests of the archives, records management and museum communities. The paper also considers the impact on the information profession of certain aspects of Government policy in Higher Education, including lifelong learning and the expansion in Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The paper concludes with reference to a scoping exercise to be undertaken by CILIP in order to redefine professional territory and establish a new accreditation instrument.

Because of the importance to the academic community of shared research through publication, information specialists have developed mechanisms to identify important articles. One accepted method is citation analysis, where the use of an author's work is tracked by counting subsequent citations to that work. The development of Web-based scholarly journals offers new tools, such as server logs, for tracking an article's use and distribution. This paper explores the potential of server logs as sources of information to reveal distribution levels of individual articles. A new model is proposed for designating a work of significant scholarly impact, the “classic” article.

The first International Standard on Records Management – ISO 15489: 2001: Information and Documentation – Records Management and the accompanying guidelines on how to use and implement the standard were officially launched at the Annual Conference of ARMA International in October 2001. These two publications are a collection of best practices in the field of records management and should be welcomed by all those who are responsible for records management and all those who create and keep records. This article traces first the origin of the standard. The standard, which is wide in scope, covers records management in all organisations, large or small, public or private. It applies to records in any format and on any media. It offers guidance on the design and implementation of records management systems and is a benchmark for best practices in the field. The article discusses the benefits of records management, the principles of records management programmes, what is involved in the design and implementation of a records system and as the longest part of the standard and the guidelines is the discussion of records management processes and controls, the article devotes similarly much space to the discussion of these topics.

National legislation often permits state archival authorities to acquire archives created or owned by private entities. The 1988 Archives Law of the People's Republic of China directs state archival bodies to monitor the status of private archives of enduring value to the Chinese state and society or which contain information of a confidential nature; the authorities may acquire these archives under certain conditions. The Archives Law also grants independent disposition authority to private owners within established parameters and within the context of the state's exercise of ultimate appraisal authority. A case study of private enterprise archives, together with comparisons between Chinese and other models of national legislation, reveals the problematic formulation of this appraisal authority, especially as the scope of private archives is augmented to include an expanded set of private entities.

This article assesses some political, cultural, technological and international issues believed to affect strategic management in Ghanaian university libraries. The external environment of Ghana is perceived by some major stakeholders of the libraries to be highly uncertain. The macroenvironmental analysis of the strategic positions of the libraries is developed through the identification of opportunities and threats in the political and economic environments.