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COVID-19 has accelerated the shift to remote work. Enabling knowledge workers to do their jobs from home or elsewhere brings benefits by increasing labour participation, avoiding unproductive commuting time (thus reducing the carbon footprint), and reducing the gender gap by enabling a partner with domestic care responsibilities to work. Not all jobs are suitable for remote work, but far more remote work is feasible than has been typical to date. The post-pandemic new normal is sure to differ both from the pre-pandemic normal and from current arrangements. Hybrid arrangements where part of the week is spent at the office, and a part at home, might well become the norm. Employers, workers, trade unions, and governments will need to adapt to the new normal.

The purpose of the paper is to address the issue of demand for broadband access and the specific role that bandwidth plays in this context. The aim is to assess available empirical evidence regarding the dynamics of bandwidth consumption in different countries and to discuss implications for public policy regarding the deployment of ultra-fast broadband infrastructures, in particular vis-à-vis the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE).

The approach adopted uses publicly available empirical data in order to derive patterns of the development of broadband demand in previous years as well as regarding current demand in specific countries. The authors contrast these findings with information on the deployment of broadband infrastructures in these countries.

The relationship between availability of fast broadband and the use of bandwidth by consumers appears to be richer and more complex than many have assumed. Availability of fast broadband does not alone appear to determine the level of use. This suggests that a more balanced approach between supply side and demand side measures is likely to be warranted.

The paper provides new evidence on the relationship between the speed of fast broadband infrastructure and its use by consumers.

This chapter is contextual in nature. It provides an overview of the impact of COVID-19, highlighting both the significant number of deaths caused by the pandemic as well as the economic disruption that occurred. Particular attention is paid to the role of digital technologies during the pandemic, which enabled a wide range of activities (e.g. work, education and shopping) to go online. The disruptive impact of COVID-19 is widespread and far-reaching, with the pandemic acting as a ‘change agent’ expanding and encouraging the greater use of digital technologies. The second half of the chapter presents summaries of the other chapters in the book. In doing so, it illustrates the scope and scale of the impact of COVID-19, the multitude of different challenges it has caused, and how these varied across different regions and contexts, as well as the diversity of reactions to the pandemic. Some of these reactions are technical in nature, while others are commercial and political. The summaries also draw attention to ongoing policy debates, the significance of which has been heightened by the pandemic.

This study examines the role of mentorship in black Greek letter fraternities (BGLFs) in resisting cultural and institutional oppression. Based on 20 interviews with black male college students, we build upon the works of others that have sought to examine the functions BGLFs play among black men in college. We suggest that BGLF participation offers collegiate black men mentorships with older members who motivate them to succeed personally and academically, support in integrating them into the black student community, and helps develop their professionalism and leadership. This mentorship allows young black men to contest the negative controlling images of black men culturally, and the lack of institutional support at predominantly white colleges and universities.

I am trying to reason how cultural entrepreneurship research still could become more cultural, by developing two ideas: (1) that cultural entrepreneurship research describes the scholarly effort to inquire into how concepts, plans, recipes, rules, and instructions govern and are battled in the emergence of the organization-creation process. (2) Second, that this reveals a great affinity between the cultural and the entrepreneurial and that a more literary approach to writing cultural entrepreneurship research holds promise of a more nuanced, imaginative, and thus more cultural entrepreneurship research. In effect, the entrepreneurial process would, culturally understood, be the successful struggle to move beyond the comfortable place of dominant normality (and its assuring roles and templates) into an “un-insured” temporary space of potentialities, attractive to the imaginative mind for its motivating intimacy with hitherto undisclosed value. Most of this comes from re-reading Clifford Geertz’s (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures using Stephen Greenblatt’s (1997) The Touch of the Real as a companion. It brings me to the conclusion that we have never quite been Geertzian, and at least not Geertzian enough.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

ELSEWHERE in this number we list libraries which have Esent us copies of their annual reports which we are glad to have. Now and again we are able to elaborate on these, but in the present issue that has not been possible. We would say, however, that these reports are deserving of the attention of librarians generally, and of students at the library schools. They are records of work in progress, and they do suggest the development of library policy. The best of them are of textbook value.