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Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

OUR readers will, we trust, appreciate our double souvenir number issued in connection with the Library Association Conference at Glasgow. Special features are the articles on the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 1874–1924, by a member of the staff, Mr. J. Dunlop, and one on the Burns Country, by Mr. J. M. Leighton, of Greenock Public Library. We printed the provisional programme in our July issue and as we go to press have little to add to the particulars there given, except to compliment the Library Association and the Local Reception Committee on the excellent programme arranged for the occasion, from both the professional and social point of view.

Dr J. H. Mitchell, who was a member of the Editorial Board of this journal since its foundation in 1972, died at his home in Paisley, Scotland, on the morning of 7 August 1988, at the age of 59. This is, indeed, a tragic loss. The medical and computer worlds are very much poorer for the loss of a pioneer and outstanding contributor to knowledge in the domain of the applications of computers in medicine. I am also mourning the passing of a loyal friend and splendid collaborator over a period of more than 20 years.

This study aims to address the research gap about value in the holistic discourse of creative placemaking. It identifies and synthesises the often discounted social and environmental values of creative placemaking along with typically emphasised economic values.

This paper builds upon two research phases; first, a review and extraction of creative placemaking value indicators from relevant current urban, cultural and planning literature; and second, the identification of relevant, practice-based, value indicators through interviews with 23 placemaking experts including practitioners, urban planners, developers and place managers from the two largest cities of NSW, Australia; Sydney and Newcastle.

This study identifies three broad thematics for valuing creative placemaking along with several sub-categories of qualitative and quantitative indicators. These indicators reveal the holistic value of creative placemaking for its key stakeholders, including expert placemakers, designers, building developers, government and community groups. A key conclusion of the research is the need for tools that grasp the interconnected, and at times conflicting, nature of placemaking’s social, economic and environmental outcomes.

While a variety of value indicators exist to understand the need for ongoing resourcing of creative placemaking, stakeholders identified the limitations of current approaches to determine, represent and appraise the value of creative placemaking. The indicators of value proposed in this research consolidate and extend current discourse about the value of creative placemaking specifically. The indicators themselves have profound practical implications for how creative placemaking is conceived, executed and evaluated. Theoretically, the study builds on the deep relationships between values and practice in creative placemaking, as well as critiquing narrow forms of evaluation that entrench economic benefits over other outcomes.

THE enterprise of two London newspapers, the Tribune (for the second time) and the Daily Chronicle, in organizing exhibitions of books affords a convenient excuse for once again bringing forward proposals for a more permanent exhibition. On many occasions during the past twenty years the writer has made suggestions for the establishment of a central book bazaar, to which every kind of book‐buyer could resort in order to see and handle the latest literature on every subject. An experiment on wrong lines was made by the Library Bureau about fifteen years ago, but here, as in the exhibitions above mentioned, the arrangement was radically bad. Visiting the Daily Chronicle show in company with other librarians, and taking careful note of the planning, one was struck by the inutility of having the books arranged by publishers and not by subjects. Not one visitor in a hundred cares twopence whether books on electricity, biography, history, travel, or even fairy tales, are issued by Longmans, Heinemann, Macmillan, Dent or any other firm. What everyone wants to see is all the recent and latest books on definite subjects collected together in one place. The arrangements at the Chronicle and Tribune shows are just a jumble of old and new books placed in show‐cases by publishers' names, similar to the abortive exhibition held years ago in Bloomsbury Street. What the book‐buyer wants is not a miscellaneous assemblage of books of all periods, from 1877 to date, arranged in an artistic show‐case and placed in charge of a polite youth who only knows his own books—and not too much about them—but a properly classified and arranged collection of the newest books only, which could be expounded by a few experts versed in literature and bibliography. What is the use of salesmen in an exhibition where books are not sold outright? If these exhibitions were strictly limited to the newest books only, there would be much less need for salesmen to be retained as amateur detectives. Another decided blemish on such an exhibition is the absence of a general catalogue. Imagine any exhibition on business lines in which visitors are expected to cart away a load of catalogues issued separately by the various exhibitors and all on entirely different plans of arrangement! The British publisher in nearly everything he does is one of the most hopeless Conservatives in existence. He will not try anything which has not been done by his grandfather or someone even more remote, so that publishing methods remain crystallized almost on eighteenth century lines. The proposal about to be made is perhaps far too revolutionary for the careful consideration of present‐day publishers, but it is made in the sincere hope that it may one day be realized. It has been made before without any definite details, but its general lines have been discussed among librarians for years past.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

In 1899 the medical practitioners of Dublin were confronted with an outbreak of a peculiar and obscure illness, characterised by symptoms which were very unusual. For want of a better explanation, the disorder, which seemed to be epidemic, was explained by the simple expedient of finding a name for it. It was labelled as “beri‐beri,” a tropical disease with very much the same clinical and pathological features as those observed at Dublin. Papers were read before certain societies, and then as the cases gradually diminished in number, the subject lost interest and was dropped.