Pricing and Acquisitions Policies for Electronic Resources: Is the Market Stable Enough to Establish Local Standards?
SUMMARY Librarians establish pricing policies for traditional acquisitions to systematize what can be an unpredictable process. This article discusses whether the electronic resource market is currently stable enough for librarians to apply similar policies to their electronic acquisitions. It also examines the history and current state of electronic resource pricing, and relates electronic resource pricing policy preferences as articulated by professionals who work closely with electronic resource acquisitions.
Qualitative Analysis of Association of Research Libraries' E‐Metrics Participant Feedback about the Evolution of Measures for Networked Electronic Resources
The Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) E‐Metrics Project is an ongoing effort to develop new measures that describe and measure networked electronic resources and also to underscore the need for measuring the value of such resources. This article presents results from an ongoing iterative qualitative study with the following goals: (a) to understand ARL libraries’ needs for evaluating electronic resources; (b) to refine proposed definitions for describing and measuring electronic resources; (c) to institutionalize data collection for ongoing, annual reporting purposes; and (d) to develop reliable indicators for summative evaluation of electronic resources. Qualitative data collected from participants attending the initial meeting to develop the E‐Metrics Project in 2000 are analyzed and compared with an ongoing analysis of interview data collected from the 2003–4 E‐metrics participants. The evolving nature of the formats, methods of access, and acquisition plans for electronic resources present challenges in describing and measuring them. New methodologies that use a mixed‐methods approach should also evolve to support creative and innovative ways for evaluating an increasingly complex information environment.
Institutionalizing Corporate Social Responsibility: A Study of Provisions and Implications of Indian Companies Act 2013
Abstract 
The spotlight of this chapter is to understand the connection between public policy and corporate social responsibility (CSR); in other words – the institutionalization of CSR. What is the role of the government for setting standards and mandating for ensuring responsibility? The emerging accepted wisdom in policy and academic circles is that many sustainability solutions are likely to result from institutional (i.e., governance) reform. A perceptive on CSR evolving as an institution of broader societal governance appears as a promising opportunity to delve into at a point in time when conventional rules, actors, and markets that steered the global economy demonstrate to be undergoing credibility crisis. CSR therefore must be considered within the wider field of institutions for governing the corporation and the economy. This chapter is exploratory as it dwells into theoretical underpinning of emerging mandatory CSR as well as provides empirical mapping of corporate responses to the new enacted legislation. The CSR analysis presented is based on a content analysis of the information contained in the annual reports of some prominent companies, government documents, audits reports, companies websites, and newspaper reports, which will provide us evidences of responses of corporates toward the CSR provisions.