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Electronic Publishing (EP) can radically improve the way organisations handle their information, retrieving information quickly from any location. Establishing a company database using a computing services organisation's facilities, e.g. Datasolve, provides benefits such as more secure information, and faster access. Examples of problems which have been solved using EP are outlined.

What is Electronic Publishing? Electronic Publishing (EP) is the application of communications technology to distribute information. In the context of libraries, it typically means large, often textual databases, stored on powerful computers, from which information is selectively retrieved using terminals linked to the computers via the telephone system.

STN adds major system enhancements. STN International, a scientific and technical network, has added major new system enhancements to reduce time and simplify searching. Singleport access now offers more simple cross‐file searching. Searchers log into STN and immediately enter the Home file, and then specify the file they wish to search. They are automatically switched to the appropriate computer in Ohio or West Germany.

The New Year will see Britain a member of the largest multi‐national free trade area in the world and there must be few who see it as anything less than the beginning of a new era, in trade, its trends, customs and usages and especially in the field of labour, relations, mobility, practices. Much can be foreseen but to some extent it is all very unpredictable. Optimists see it as a vast market of 250 millions, with a lot of money in their pockets, waiting for British exports; others, not quite so sure, fear the movement of trade may well be in reverse and if the increasing number of great articulated motor trucks, heavily laden with food and other goods, now spilling from the Channel ports into the roads of Kent are an indication, the last could well be true. They come from faraway places, not all in the European Economic Community; from Yugoslavia and Budapest, cities of the Rhineland, from Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Mulhouse and Milano. Kent has had its invasions before, with the Legions of Claudius and in 1940 when the battle roared through the Kentish skies. Hitherto quiet villagers are now in revolt against the pre‐juggernaut invasion; they, too, fear more will come with the enlarged EEC, thundering through their one‐street communities.

Attention has often been directed to the fact that much unwrapped bread becomes dangerously dirty by the time it is consumed, and there is now a considerable body of opinion in favour of making the wrapping compulsory. The hygienic advantages of this are unquestionable; for although a loaf may be of a high standard of purity on leaving the factory, there are ways by which much contamination may occur subsequently. There are dangers, beyond the control of Sanitary Authorities, arising from contamination by dirty hands, clothing, baskets and carts; the dust from streets, doorsteps and window sills; and from the organisms of disease harboured by apparently healthy “carriers” of infection; and very often pieces of crust are given to little children to bite upon, in order to aid the development of their teeth and gums.—Dr. G. H. Dart (the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney) has recently emphasised the fact that there is much typhoid and paratyphoid fever, and other disturbances of health, which occur without any source of infection being traced; and he maintains that it is a reasonable assumption that some of this infection results from our failure to adopt measures for safeguarding the cleanliness of bread. From a small investigation upon five loaves, it was found recently that four of them yielded bacteriological results that testified to gross contamination—a number of streptocococci, staphylococci and coliform organisms having been found upon each of the four loaves. It will not be disputed that the value of the precautions adopted, even in the most hygienic bakeries, may be greatly discounted by the failure to protect the bread from contamination in its subsequent passage to the consumer; and it seems—to say the least of it—inconsistent, to provide against the contamination of meat (as by the 1924 Meat Regulations)—an article of food which is cooked before consumption—and to ignore the contamination of bread which is eaten as delivered to the purchaser. That bread can be wrapped without loss of flavour and at little cost has been demonstrated in America and by some bakers in England. In a useful paper by C. H. F. Fuller, B.Sc, A.I.C., Research Laboratories, Messrs. J. Lyons & Co., Ltd., which appeared in the last issue of the Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute, attention is drawn to the fact that it is possible, by the employment of a waxed paper wrapping, largely to eliminate moisture loss from the loaf, and thus to secure a loaf which remains longer in a palatable condition, owing to delay in the onset of staling; but before wrapping, the loaf must be cooled until the centre attains a temperature not far beyond that of the outside air, in order to avoid the occurrence of “sweating,” i.e., deposition of moisture on the crust and inside of the wrapper. He also refutes the contention that the wrapping of bread necessarily leads to the absorption of foreign flavours from the wax or paper; for trouble from these causes is avoidable if suitable measures are adopted. Indeed, the whole subject of bread wrapping has been submitted to a close examination by a number of investigators; and in general there is agreement among them that no deleterious effect upon the quality of the bread results, and that the public would benefit from the resulting improvement in cleanliness, freshness and palatability. The hygienic considerations in reference to bread apply also to all exposed food which is not washed, peeled, cooked or treated in same way which removes dirt or renders it safe for consumption. The obvious remedy for the dangers involved by our neglect is to press for legal powers to enforce the necessary precautions and to educate public opinion upon the need for these.