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To determine the most appropriate and effective support to enable autistic people to gain and maintain employment in their chosen field. This paper aims to determine this and by which methods are most suitable for this kind of support, with a focus on mentoring.

Mentoring is an intervention that has shown promise in assisting people who encounter barriers in finding work (for example, Roycroft, 2014). This research was conducted to determine whether the mentoring of autistic adults is effective in helping them to gain and maintain employment. The study examined the mentoring records of 90 autistic adults who were in receipt of funded mentoring with 18 separate organisations across England.

The authors found that the nationally recognised statistic of autistic people in full-time employment as 16% (National Autistic Society, 2016) was ambitious and subject to regional variation. Based on the results of a programme providing employment and mentoring support that is available and accessible to autistic people, however, outcomes improve and employment is more likely to be achieved and maintained – including in areas of, especially low employment. It was found that 48% of autistic job seekers who were supported by specialist mentors found paid employment (full-time or part-time), demonstrating a 16% increase in paid employment between those who received mentoring support and those who did not.

A wider study across the UK would first determine if the nationally recognised figure is incorrect and also highlight those areas of the country which perform particularly well or badly.

This paper believes that this is the only research of it is kind in the UK and that it is a springboard for others who have greater resources available to them. This study is two very early-career academics on the autism spectrum with limited resources available to us.

Alec Snobel samples service with its roots in ancient history

THIS is the month when librarians and library workers everywhere, their holidays over, turn to their winter plans. There are, however, some interesting events to take place before the darker and more active months come. The first is the meeting at Oxford on September 21st and subsequent days of the Federation International de Documentation. This will be followed by and merge into the ASLIB Conference, and there is in prospect an attendance of over three hundred. Our readers know that this organization produces and advocates the International Decimal Classification. It is not primarily a “library” society but rather one of abstractors and indexers of material, but it is closely akin, and we hope that English librarianship will be well represented. Then there is a quite important joint‐conference at Lincoln of the Northern Branches of the Library Association on September 30th— October 3rd, which we see is to be opened by the President of the Library Association. Finally the London and Home Counties Branch are to confer at Folkestone from October 14th to 16th, and here, the programme includes Messrs. Jast, Savage, McColvin, Wilks, Carter, and the President will also attend. There are other meetings, and if the question is asked: do not librarians have too many meetings ? we suppose the answer to be that the Association is now so large that local conferences become desirable. One suggestion, that has frequently been made, we repeat. The Library Association should delegate a certain definite problem to each of its branches, asking for a report. These reports should form the basis of the Annual Conference. It is worthy of more consideration.

THE fact that an English librarian was asked to describe the work of British municipal libraries, to audiences in Antwerp and Brussels, may be taken as a certain indication that a change is impending in the library world of Belgium. At the invitation of M. Frans Gittens, city librarian, Antwerp, acting on behalf of the Foundation for the Permanent Endowment of the Communal Library and Plantin‐Moretus Museum, and M. Paul Otlet, secretary‐general of the International Institute of Bibliography, Brussels, I had the honour and pleasure of lecturing on English library work and conditions to representative audiences greatly interested in the subject. This, it is understood, is the first time an English librarian has been invited to lecture on such a subject on any part of the Continent, and I certainly felt it a great honour and privilege to be thus selected for such a congenial task. The language difficulty was luckily no great bar, as most of my audiences, both Flemish and French, understood English quite well. In addition, the International Institute of Bibliography had printed a translation of the lecture, as No. 92 of its publications, and this was issued as a twenty‐two page pamphlet entitled Les Bibliothèques municipales en Angleterre, and distributed at Brussels. At Antwerp the programme also contained translations of the titles and remarks about the lantern slides, so that everything was made easy for one who has always deplored his inability to acquire the art of speaking foreign languages. As a further instance of the care and thoughtfulness exercised to provide for my comfort, I should acknowledge the kindness of M. Eugeen Everaerts, town librarian of Ostend, who, on representations from his colleague at Antwerp, met the steamer and passed me and my “projections” through the Custom House without trouble. There is no doubt that our Belgian friends have the knack of making strangers feel thoroughly at home. I am not likely to forget the kindness and hospitality of M. W. von Mallinckrodt, chairman of the Permanent Endowment Commission at Antwerp, who, with his charming wife, invited me to a lunch at which some of the chief residents were present, including Sir Cecil Hertslet, H.B.M. Consul‐General; Mr. Diedrich, the American Consul‐General; M. Henri Hymans, chief librarian of the Royal Library at Brussels; M. Max Rooses, of the Plantin Museum; M. Frans Gittens, with some members of his staff; and other gentlemen connected with the city and municipality of Antwerp. The same kindly hospitality was extended by M. Gittens, of Antwerp, and M. Otlet, at Brussels, and everything was done by all with whom I came in contact to make me feel at ease and nothing of a stranger. In fact it is impossible for anyone who has read Scott, Brontë and Conscience to feel like a stranger in Belgium. The lecture at Antwerp was given in the large and finely decorated hall of the Cercle Royal Artistique, Littéraire et Scientifique d'Anvers, a kind of general Arts Club combining the functions of places like the London Institution with those of an ordinary social club. The hall was capable of seating 1,000 persons, and was rather beyond my poor powers as an elocutionist. About 600 people attended, of whom a large number understood English, and my lecture, luckily for my audience, largely pictorial, was very well received. There was no preliminary introduction of any kind, and my “turn” came on after a concert had been about half heard. The following programme will give an idea of the kind of mixed entertainment which brought out 600 people on a snowy winter's afternoon:—

EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment of heaven is called down upon the fiction reader, and the library authorities are condemned as a set of ignorant and inefficient office‐holders, who pander to a depraved public taste. The last assailant of this sort whom we had the pleasure of setting right was Mr. J. Churton Collins, who used the Nineteenth Century and After, as the medium for conveying his accusations. Now comes Mr. W. H. Harwood, who fills six‐and‐a‐half pages of the Westminster Review for February, 1906, with a quantum of twaddle about libraries, which differs from most recent articles of the same sort only in its dulness. In his use of this journalistic cliché, Mr. Harwood displays the customary ignorance of the Public Libraries Acts, by styling his paper “Free Libraries and Fiction,” and by his failure to prove even one of his statements by reference to a single concrete fact. Briefly, Mr. Harwood's position is this:—

THE centenary of the birth of Edward Edwards is an event of great interest to all persons interested in the public library movement. Elsewhere in our columns we print a brief sketch of the life and work of “the chief pioneer of municipal public libraries.” The date generally accepted as that of his birth, December 14th, is regarded by some as doubtful, but is probably near enough for practical purposes. His retiring disposition resulted in the record of his life being doubtful or broken in places. The late Thomas Greenwood—another great library pioneer who has gone—collected all that could be collected in his valuable biography of Edward Edwards. It was his main regret that he could not obtain an authentic portrait of Edwards, and this regret we must all share, for a portrait brings reality to a verbal description. By the time these words appear in print, the Manchester Libraries Committee and the Library Assistants' Association will each have paid public tribute to the memory of Edward Edwards, and their example will have been followed in private by all other library workers having any regard for the history of their calling.

WE have to announce with deep regret the death of Mr. I. Chalkley Gould, founder and director of the Library World since its establishment in 1898. Mr. Gould was a member of an old Essex family associated with Loughton and its neighbourhood, and was born in 1844, his father being the late George Gould, of Traps Hill House, Loughton. His connection with the firm of Marlborough, Gould & Co. and other stationery and printing concerns led him many years ago to give some attention to library and museum work, towards which he had always been attracted because of his personal interest in archaeology and literature. In this way he became associated with many museums, libraries and antiquarian societies, and identified himself more particularly with the movement for the preservation of ancient British earthworks. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, vice‐president of the Essex Archaeological Society, the Essex Field Club, and the British Archaeological Association. Within recent years he acted as hon. secretary of the Committee for Recording Ancient Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures—a committee for the formation of which he was largely responsible and in the work of which he took a very deep interest. He was chairman of the Committee for the Exploration of the Red Hills of Essex—an important undertaking which is not yet completed. He also contributed several valuable papers to the Victoria History of Essex, and assisted the editor of that publication in revising the earthworks sections of other counties.

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.

JOHANN FROBEN, the famous printer of Basle, was born at Hammelburg, in Franconia, about the year 1460. The exact year of his birth is not definitely known, but 1460 is probably not far wrong, as we find him established at Basle as a printer in 1491. He was educated at Basle University, where he distinguished himself as a scholar, particularly in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages. After finishing his studies at Basle, he turned his attention to the then new art of printing, and he showed such aptitude that Johann Amerbach, another well‐known printer of Basle, who had set up a press in that city in 1481, induced him to devote his energies to the art, and appointed him to a position in his own printing establishment. Froben thus had the advantage of learning the art of printing under one of the best known printers of the period. In 1491, Froben set up a press of his own in Basle, having become a naturalized citizen of that city the previous year. He had been used in Amerbach's establishment to print with gothic types, and it was, therefore, but natural that his first production should also be printed in that type. This was an octavo Latin Bible, with two columns to a page, printed in a very small gothic type. He afterwards introduced the type invented by Aldus, that known as italic, the first book to be printed with this type being the Adagia of Erasmus, issued in 1513, of which mention is made later. Froben was also instrumental in making the roman type more popular in Germany, as although roman type had been used by German printers for about 20 years, having been introduced by Mentelin at Strassburg, about the year 1470, it was not so much in favour as the gothic type.

The last two decades have seen an increase in service user involvement (SUI) in the training of Mental Health Professionals (MHP). There is developing empirical support for SUI in MHP training, however, there is no published research into SUI in the training of Cognitive Behavioural Therapists. The purpose of this paper is to explore cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) trainees’ experience of SUI in their training. The study focuses on how an individual service user (SU) led training session is experienced and how this differs to routine CBT training.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six participants. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Data revealed three superordinate themes: first, predisposing influences on learning; second, factors associated with emotional processing of experience; and third, impact upon learning outcomes. The results suggest that participants’ appraisal of their learning from SUI maybe influenced by how they accommodate the emotional impact of the experience.

The paper makes recommendations for educators on courses involving service users (SUs), acknowledges the study’s methodological limitations and suggests areas for future research.