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The term ‘informatics’ was first advanced formally by the Director of VINITI, A. I. Mikhailov, and his colleagues A. I. Chernyi and R. S. Gilyarevskii, in their paper Informatics—new name for the theory of Scientific Information published at the end of 1966. An English translation was circularized in the beginning of 1967. As the authors state in this paper, they are not the first to use this term, and they quote a review by Professor J. G. Dorfmann of their own book Fundamentals of Scientific Information in which Dorfmann criticizes the use of other terminology, such as ‘documentation’, ‘documentalistics’, ‘information science’, and so on. Although the authors do not object to the use of the word ‘Documentation’ in the name of the International Federation for Documentation, nevertheless they claim that this term has not found application in the USSR and indeed they apologize for spending some time in discussing its suitability as a name for ‘the new scientific discipline which studies the structure and properties of scientific information as well as the regularities of scientific information activity, its theory, history, methods, and organization’. It is clear that the authors have made a thorough survey of the literature, as might be expected, and they argue fairly about the meaning of most of the terms that have at one time or another been advanced to name this ‘new discipline’. Their definition is as stated above but they are careful to add the rider that Informatics docs not investigate the specific content of scientific information, only the structure and properties. In their paper they also advance definitions for ‘information’, ‘scientific information’, ‘scientific information activity’, ‘information officer’, and ‘information scientist’. They have backed up their proposal by changing the title of their own book for its second edition, and the title of the information science fascicule of the Referativnyi Zhurnal, which is now called Informatiki.

IThe activity of the group has continued to progress with great energy and enthusiasm for practical applications of the theoretical ideas and schemes of the members, many of whom have acted as consultants to private, government and international institutions. Some of the longer‐serving members retired, but continued to attend meetings. The Group heard with great regret of the death of Mr B. I. Palmer, its Founder Chairman. An important element in the discussions from its beginning was the theoretical scheme of S. R. Ranganathan, and this was largely due to Palmer, who had returned from war service in India fired with enthusiasm for Ranganathan's ideas, and determined to interest others in developing and applying them. His collaboration with Mr A. J. Wells, another founder member, had as an early result their little monograph, The fundamentals of library classification, which has greatly influenced both teaching and practice of classification, and not only in Britain.

UNTIL 1952 Queen's University was fortunate to have one main library building. With the establishment of the Institute of Clinical Science in the hospital area 1½ miles from the main university site, the formation of a separate medical library near the hospitals was considered essential.

This progress report attempts to chart the main trends in professional education during the 1970s and to identify the major problems facing curriculum planners for the rest of this decade—and beyond. Although the work is based on United Kingdom educational practice, developments in other countries are noted whenever it is felt that a helpful comparison may be made. The citations do not represent a bibliography of professional education: such a compilation has already been accomplished in the researches of Burrell, and to a lesser extent in Clough. Writings on professional education in librarianship and information science tend to date rather quickly; especially if they deal with information technology or technical services. Theoretical problems remain more durable and usually reappear in different guises. Both information science and librarianship are bracketed together whenever they interrelate or overlap, or whenever logic and common sense dictate. In no way is it implied that they are both one and the same thing; the terms denote different areas of professional application and activity.

This paper describes the installation and the first year's operation of a commercial computer‐based cataloguing system and the extent to which this system has been adapted to the specific needs of a new university (the Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen). The catalogue is regarded principally as a finding tool. Cataloguing is done locally according to minimal rules which are, however, MARC‐compatible; input effort is minimised by the use of automatic field recognition and automatic error detection. The data is batch processed by a computer bureau in England. The catalogue is output on COM microfiche in three sequences: 1. author; 2. title; 3. ‘KWUC’ (Keyword and UDC)‐a KWOC‐type format within broad UDC classes and originated from manually tagged title‐derived keywords. The system has been well received by users. Plans for further automation of the UIA Library are outlined.

AUSTRALIA, waste deserts where emus and kangaroos still have first claim on the land; desolation; drought; ingenious methods of irrigation; lone eucalyptus trees like grey‐green balls, thinly spread over the yellow, dry grass‐land; arid savannas; magic scenery; fertile plains where beef cattle and sheep graze; golden glittering citrus orchards; blue plastic‐covered bunches heavily creaking in the banana patches on sun‐drenched eastern slopes; twittering creeks at which soft‐haired Jersey calves sip the water; thick impenetrable, subtropical rain‐forest with a wild beauty; ravines; trees which seem to grow into the sky; flowers, flowers, flowers; and birds in sparkling colours. Yes, those are some memory images.

Before starting to trace the development of PRECIS to its theoretical beginnings I shall describe the system briefly in its present form. This will serve not only as an introduction for those who are not familiar with the system, but will also help to explain the relevance of some of the historical sections which follow, in which we shall see how a machine‐produced alphabetical indexing system, based on a syntax derived from a study of natural language, developed out of research into principles for a new general classification.

The discussion may be summed up under four headings, only one of which is classification; the other three are Politics, Finance and Management. We may begin with Politics, for many of the problems have their basis in politics. There is a sense of dissatisfaction with UDC among a number of important people: important, that is, in the sense that their views carry weight in international circles. In 1948 the Royal Society's Scientific Information Conference came to the conclusion (as a similar meeting did in 1896 in relation to Dewey's classification) that there was no satisfactory classification for science and technology, and that they would easily solve the problem by devoting a little thought to it; we are still awaiting their results. The UNISIST meetings were again largely meetings of scientists; Dr Coblans has assured us that they did not in fact come to any definite conclusions, but one gets the feeling that many of those present did not favour UDC. There is already some feeling—stemming I believe largely from ignorance—in the United States that UDC is not the scheme they are looking for; very few libraries there use it, and there is no guarantee that it would become popular even if the full English edition became available. The Eastern Europeans use UDC, but would they welcome the suggestion that the English edition should become the key edition?

THE CONFERENCE OF THE British Library Association held in the Guildhall, London, in May attracted almost seven hundred delegates. Three were from Scotland and four from Northern Ireland.

ALTHOUGH the first Public Libraries (Scotland) Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1853, it was not until 1899 that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow was empowered to establish and maintain public libraries throughout the city. Between 1876 and 1897 four attempts were made to secure public approval for the adoption of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Acts, but when all these efforts proved unsuccessful, the Corporation decided in June, 1888 to include in a Local Bill for submission to Parliament, certain clauses conferring upon themselves the power to become a library authority. Promoted in 1899, the Bill became known as the Glasgow Corporation (Tramways, Libraries, etc.) Act 1899, and the library clauses passed through Parliament without opposition and received Royal Assent on 1st August, 1899. The powers conferred by this Local Act empowered the Corporation: