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Watch your language ‐ One of my earliest schoolday memories is of a sweet, angelic little girl who sat behind me in class and at frequent intervals shot her hand in the air to exclaim ‘Please Miss, Allan Bunch swore’. Ever since then I have learnt to mind my language and whenever I felt the need to say ‘bloody’, I made sure it was suffixed by ‘Tower’, which somehow rendered it harmless. I was reminded of this incident by a new pamphlet published by NALGO called Watch your language, which is not about swearing but is a guide to using non‐sexist language for NALGO members. It is a very helpful guide, since it not only points out words to avoid but suggests alternatives or alternative ways of presenting the same information without the male bias. So, ‘manpower’ becomes ‘workforce or staff’ and ‘man‐made’, ‘artificial’. The pamphlet also covers stereotyping of jobs, sex‐typing and patronising married women by such phrases as ‘the better half’,‘the little woman’ and so on. I am less certain of their advice that cartoons should not portray women in the usual stereotyped roles and treat them as objects of ridicule, since the purpose of a cartoon is to ridicule, tosatirizeor poke fun at a person or behaviour and it achieves its effects mainly through exaggeration and stereo‐typing. But the point is taken. I was disappointed not to find the answer to a problem that has bothered me for some time, namely how to address a non‐sexist letter to a corporate body. ‘Messrs’ is out since it's masculine, but ‘Dear Madams/Sirs’ or ‘Dear Mesdames/Messrs’ sound terribly clumsy. Copies of Watch your language are free from NALGO, 1 Mabledon Place, London WC1 9HJ.

ROUSED out of pre‐breakfast tea‐gulping torpor recently by hearing on Radio London the confident assertion, ‘Oh yes, there's a great shortage of librarians throughout the country…’ No Rip Van Winkle beard, wasn't April 1 and no echo of the Last Trump. It was all about a book called Work after work by Judy Kirby and REACH—Retired Executives Action Clearing House, which seeks to relieve the withdrawal symptoms of the retired by finding outlets for their skills in work for voluntary organisations. These withdrawal symptoms in librarians are easily recognised and include immediate and compulsive reading of everything in the Record, a tendency to beam for the first time at young people at conferences, and a not always suppressed urge to write rude letters to the professional press or to the LA. Editing the professional press is not recommended as nostrum for those old retirement blues.

THE NAME OF Peter Labdon was first printed as Editor of NLW in the issue for July 1977. In this present issue it appears thus for the last time. In January 1983 Peter takes on the honorary and taxing role of Treasurer of the Library Association, which he sees as conflicting with continuation as NLW's Editor, and I will eschew mischief and concede him the point.

There's a poster going around with the surprising question “Can you tell a clean story?”, since it's usually only dirty ones that people want to tell you. The poster is inviting applications for the Pollution Abatement Technology Award which, if you haven't come across it before, is an annual scheme to identify, encourage and publicise innovations in technology to abate all kinds of pollution of the environment. So, if you've got any good ideas or would just like details, write to Pollution Abatement Technology Award, Royal Society of Arts, John Adam Street, Adelphi, London WC2N 6EZ.

I THOUGHT, shall I write a vigorously reproving letter to John Saunders, County Librarian of Surrey, or shall I fulminate in public instead? As you would expect, I chose the latter.

HOW DREAR the month of August seemed, bereft as it was of any issue of that influential and deservedly world‐famous organ, the Library Association record. For its masters have now decreed that July and August should be combined into a single issue, which they call ‘Numbers 7 & 8’ (which is cheating—suppose I gave two numbers to each issue of NLW, and then proudly claimed to publish 24 issues per year!).

For me the term ‘pyramid selling’ conjures up a picture of back street Cairo, with wily Arab entrepreneurs trying to con gullible tourists into buying a bit of the old Tutankhamens. The image is not totally inappropriate, as Consumer Affairs Minister, Michael Howard, warned when launching a new leaflet on Pyramid selling issued by the Department of Trade and Industry: ‘…get‐rich‐quick schemes which do not depend on getting out and selling a good product can end in disappointment and disaster for many people’. The new leaflet answers the most common questions about pyramid selling and outlines the statutory provisions governing such schemes. Copies can be obtained free from your local Trading Standards Department or direct from DTI Headquarters Library, Ashdown House, 1–19 Victoria Street, London SW1H0ET.

Ninety per cent of information handled within libraries, information units and offices is printed on paper. This comes in the form of books, journals, newsprint and miscellaneous documents including letters. At the same time information originating within organisations is increasingly generated on computers and is displayed and read via electronic screens. Libraries, information units and offices are becoming a mix of the automated and the unautomated. In the past, integrating printed material with computer stored material was impractical. The electronic storage of documents as images rather than computer coded text required storage capacity beyond the scope of many computer systems.

TRY THIS for starters in 1982: ‘The concept of the electronic journal is one which involves using a computer to aid the normal procedures whereby an article is written, refereed, accepted and published. With the help of suitable software an author may enter a text into a system, and the editor, referees, and ultimately the users, as well as himself, can have access to the text at their computer terminals.’

THE European campaign to catch up with the United States and Japan in the provision of information technology took a major step forward at the end of February when the Council of Ministers of the European Communities adopted the ESPRIT programme. ESPRIT equates to the ‘European Strategic Programme of Information Technology’ and the main areas of research cover micro electronics, software technology, advanced information processing, office systems, and computer integrated manufacturing. The programme will span the years 1984–88 and will cost 1,500,000,000 European Units of Account (£900,000,000), half of which will be contributed by the European Communities Commission, and half by industry. Although the European Community represents over thirty per cent of the world IT market, European industry provides only ten per cent of this market. For further details of the programme, contact Mr W Colin, IT Task Force, 200 Rue de la Loi, B 1049 Brussels, Belgium, tel 235 4477 or 235 2348, telecopier 230 1203, tx 25946.