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Mr L.J.Anthony, FLA, has been appointed to a new post of Assistant Director (Services) on the staff of Aslib and takes up his appointment at the beginning of October. Mrs Sauvee has kindly agreed to remain at work until he takes over. Mr Anthony is well known to the membership as the Librarian and Head of Documentation Services of the Culham Laboratory of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and as the former Deputy Librarian at Harwell; members of longer standing will remember him as Assistant Director at Aslib in 1954–55, when the consultancy service and first research activities were being established, and previously as Information Officer at British Telecom‐munications Research Ltd.

The Aslib Research Department was set up in 1959. Because of the difficulty of identifying the most significant problems and the need to establish appropriate experimental techniques, it initially tried its hand using a variety of approaches. During the period 1959–64 a survey was made of some fifty industrial information/library units, using structured interviews to collect data; a questionnaire study of the literature‐searching methods used by research scientists was undertaken, and a number of library procedures and problems were quantitatively surveyed. These latter included delays in binding, borrowing costs, inter‐library loan patterns and the effectiveness of translation indexes. Another subject investigated during this same period was conference proceedings: duplication of publication, their lack of subject indexes, and their coverage by abstracting services.

Aslib is due to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation in 1974, having been created at Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire in October 1924.

The interest of the Aslib Research and Development Department in economic aspects of information service reaches back to the early days of the Department, under the leadership of Chris Hanson. I will be referring to a study of standard times made in 1961 by Margaret Slater and himself. He also undertook an investigation, which was unfortunately never published, on the cost of interlibrary borrowing. Our current interests spread over five areas are:

Man, although generally described as a social animal, is not particularly well equipped for co‐operating with his fellows. Co‐operation implies willingness to surrender some freedom of action in order to promote the common good of the group, and although we exhibit this kind of behaviour throughout our lives, we do so only in response to pressures which are such that any other form of conduct would be intolerable.

Miss B.H.J. Sants (British Petroleum) said that the speakers had mentioned progressive ladders of promotion, but in most library and information units the staff were divided into professional and non‐professional staff. How did the platform suggest that by pursuing a policy of training aimed at developing the individual's talents one could continue to motivate by job‐satisfaction when the opportunities for promotion were bound to be limited?

Operational research was born during the 1939–45 war as an aid to military decision making. After the war it was rapidly applied to industrial production, and many new techniques were developed. It has since spread to all spheres of policy making.

Research in library and information service I take to be any systematic attempt to investigate problems and arrive at solutions. The problems can be small‐scale, e.g. the best way to file pamphlets; or large‐scale, e.g. the optimum distribution of reference libraries throughout the country. They can be specific to one institution, e.g. the best method of providing current awareness to Members of Parliament; or of general import, e.g. the economics of micro‐filming. They can be short‐term, e.g. a brief study and recommendations concerning a specific indexing job; or long‐term, e.g. a continually deepening exploration of the functions and structures of bibliographic records in all kinds of library situations. They can be very practical, e.g. redesigning the layout of a library; or very theoretical, e.g. developing a linear programming model for resource allocation.

After a short introduction, the speaker referred to equipment in the exhibition.

In 1955, at the FID‐IFLA Brussels conference, a resolution was passed noting that ‘various persons are working independently in different countries on the theory of classification; it would be extremely fruitful if they could study each other's work. It would be desirable for each one to prepare a bibliography of his work.’