Going beyond Google: the invisible web in teaching and learning

Review of: Devine, J. and Egger-Sider, F. (2009) Going beyond Google: the invisible web in teaching and learning. London: Facet Publishing (ISBN 978-1-85604-658-9

One potato, two potato: 'Mashed Library' two years in

An article aimed at academic librarians about the 'Mashed Library' movement and series of unconferences, which are all about 'bringing together interested people and doing interesting stuff with libraries and technology'

Using evidence to improve Psychological Therapies Services

Psychological therapy services offer help to clients with many different sorts of mental health problems using a variety of therapies provided by a range of different professional groups and are supported by a large amount of research evidence. However, applying evidence-based practice in routine clinical settings presents particular challenges. This paper outlines some of the difficulties applying research findings to routine settings and argues for a more inclusive approach to linking evidence with practice. It describes a systematic approach to service evaluation and practice based evidence within a large psychological therapies service. This approach is integrated into the service delivery. It enables clinicians to become engaged in the process of reflecting on evidence in a non-threatening way and allows innovative ways of enhancing reflective practice by linking evidence with practice in routine settings

On the Strategic Use of Debt and Capacity in Imperfectly Competitive Product Markets

In capital intensive industries, firms face complicated multi-stage financing, investment, and production decisions under the watchful eye of existing and potential industry rivals. We consider a two-stage simplification of this environment. In the first stage, an incumbent firm benefits from two first-mover advantages by precommiting to a debt financing policy and a capacity investment policy. In the second stage, the incumbent and a single-stage rival simultaneously choose production levels and realize stochastic profits. We characterize the incumbent's first-stage debt and capacity choices as factors in the production of an intermediate good we call "output deterrence." In our two-factor deterrence model, we show that the incumbent chooses a unique capacity policy and a threshold debt policy to achieve the optimal level of deterrence coinciding with full Stackelberg leadership. When we remove the incumbent's first-mover advantage in capacity, the full Stackelberg level of deterrence is still achievable, albeit with a higher level of debt than the threshold. In contrast, when we remove the incumbent's first-mover advantage in debt, the Stackelberg level of deterrence may no longer be achievable and the incumbent may suffer a dead-weight loss. Evidence on the telecommunications industry shows that firms have increased their leverage in a manner consistent with deterring potential rivals following the 1996 deregulation.Industrial organization; Deregulation; Deterrence; Capital structure; Capacity; Telecommunications

Controlled Clinical Trial of a Self-Help for Anxiety Intervention for Patients Waiting for Psychological Therapy

This study was a controlled clinical trial in which patients were offered a brief low cost, low intensity self-help intervention while waiting for psychological therapy. A CBT based self-help pack was given to patients with significant anxiety problems and no attempt was made to exclude patients on the basis of severity or co-morbidity. The treatment group received the intervention immediately following assessment and the control group after a delay of 8 weeks so comparisons between the two groups were made over 8 weeks. Although there was some support for the effectiveness of the self help intervention, with a significant time x group interaction for CORE-OM scores, this was not significant with the intention to treat analysis, nor for HADS anxiety and depression scores and the effect size was low. A follow up evaluation suggested some patients attributed significant goal attainment to the intervention. The findings suggest the routine use of self-help interventions in psychological therapies services should be considered although further more adequately powered research is required to identify the type of patients and problems that most benefit, possible adverse effects and the effect on subsequent uptake of and engagement in therapy

Using CORE to research outcome measurement

Chris Leach and Mike Lucock have been involved with CORE from its beginning. Jointly responsible for the development of one of the first large databases of the use of CORE in routine clinical practice, they have published a number of key papers looking at the relationship between CORE and other outcome measures, and its use to track client progress during therapy