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This paper reports on research in progress that reviews the skills used by library and information science (LIS) professionals and how to record them in a manner that encourages continuing professional and personal development. A portfolio was developed by the learning and teaching support network for information and computer sciences (LTSN‐ICS) in conjunction with the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and academic departments in the United Kingdom (UK). The portfolio was evaluated at pilot sites in UK LIS schools by surveying the progress of those students who took part. Evaluation of the participants indicates that the portfolio is a useful tool in the personal and professional development of LIS students. The general consensus among students themselves is that the portfolio provides a tool to help them plan their future professional development. Further evaluation is planned in 2003/2004 with LIS professionals to enable both the professional body and the LTSN‐ICS to determine the appropriateness of the portfolio as a tool for continuing personal and professional development.

The purpose of this paper is to concentrate on establishments that are known as the “built heritage”, often described as “historic houses”. Many operate in a similar vein to small businesses and often have a more diverse range of needs. In the UK historic houses form part of the tourism and leisure market. Heritage encompasses a wide variety of establishments including historic houses, historic gardens, heritage centres, town centres, countryside and museums.

A model was developed for the study to show the information needs of historic houses and the information‐seeking behaviour of those managing historic houses. Data have been collected both via questionnaires to and interviews of those managing properties. The collection of data focused on diversity of activities, information provision, use of information, developments (including technology) and collaboration.

The conclusions discuss the management of information and the difficulties expressed for those managing historic houses as discovered during the research. Properties need to be able to make effective use of this to protect the heritage for future generations. Building on the empirical work recommendations are made on policy making, education, audits, co‐operation and technology to improve the provision and management of information within the sector to support these establishments.

The research represents the first study to investigate the existing situation of historic houses and their information needs in the UK, to try and provide an overview of the sector and information provision and how that might be improved.

Steam contamination (solid particles in the superheated steam) comes from the boiler water largely in the carry‐over of water droplets. The need for extreme purity of steam for use in high pressure turbines has prompted the development of highly satisfactory devices for separating steam and water in a boiler drum. Consequently, steam contamination has been steadily reduced. Troublesome turbine blade deposits may occur with surprisingly low (0.6 ppm) total solids contamination in steam. In the 3.5–6 MPa range, however these deposits are usually water soluble and can be removed by periodic washing. In the 4 to 10 MPa range, however, silica deposits predominate and these deposits are not easily removed by water washing. With operating pressure of 13 MPa and above insoluble deposits do occur which may be controlled by residual water washing. Before the unit is returned to service, the deposits should be removed by air or water‐driven turbine cleaners or by chemical cleaning.

Millions of the British people have for some years now been struggling valiantly to live with hard times, watching them day by day grow worse but always hopefully that the cloud had a silver lining; that one day, reason and a sense of direction would prevail. Tyranny in many forms is a feature of history; the greatest epics have been risings of ordinary people to overthrow it. The modern form of tyranny is that of Money; the cruel and sinister ways in which it can be obtained and employed and the ineffectiveness of any measures taken to control the evils which result. Money savings over the years and the proverbial bank book, once the sure safeguard of ordinary people, are whittled away in value, never to recover. Causes always seemed to be contained within the country's own economy and industrial practices, and to this extent should have been possible of control. The complex and elaborate systems constructed by the last Government were at least intended for the purpose, but each attempt to curb excessive demands for more money, more and more for doing less and less— the nucleus of inflation—produced extreme reactions, termed collectively “industrial strife”. Every demand met without compensatory returns in increased work, inevitably led to rises in prices, felt most keenly in the field of food and consumer goods. What else would be expected from such a situation?

The transformation of France under De Gaulle from the “sick man of Europe” with governments changing every few months, to one of the world's strongest economies, holds lessons for us all. Of course France's virtual self‐sufficiency in food and fuel always ensured an eventual resurgence under a strong and stable government. We thought of this recently on a trip to Western Provence, the oldest part of France and one off the beaten tourist track. It was one of the earliest provinces of Imperial Rome and in each settlement the Romans tried to reproduce a petite Rome, with arena, theatre, baths and villas, so that many Provencal towns have as many Roman antiquities as Rome itself. In its beauty of line and colour, its architecture, clustered villages on hilltops and the tall Lombardy pines, the countryside looks Italian, but the people seem unlike the Italian, Spanish or French. We thought them descendants of the ancient Gaul, whose tribes settled all over Western Europe, from the shores of the Mediterranean to Galway Bay.

Diseases due to nutritional deficiencies might well be considered something from the poverty and grime of Victorian times and unknown to the people of this affluent society. It may come as a shock to many people, therefore, to learn that the rising incidence of rickets among the young in some of our big cities is causing grave concern; that iron deficiency anaemia, not altogether uncommon in women and in the undernourished but rarely of any great severity, is being found in a much more severe form in a great many West Indian infants, the hæmoglobin frequently not amounting to 50%; and that among the many skin lesions of coloured children there is at least the suggestion of riboflavin and perhaps other vitamin deficiencies. All this despite the blessings of the welfare state and a half‐century of local authority personal health services. It casts no reflection on these services, however; their work has resulted in vastly improved child health in this country, which speaks for itself.

The terms are not synonymous; their differences are mainly of function and areas of administration. Community Health is used in national health service law; environmental health to describe the residuum of health functions remaining with local authorities after the first NHS/Local Government reorganization of 1974. Previously, they were all embraced in the term public health, known for a century or more, with little attention to divisions and in the field of administration, all local authority between county and district councils. In the dichotomy created by the reorganization, the personal health services, including the ambulance service, may have dove‐tailed into the national health service, but for the remaining functions, there was a situation of unreality, which has persisted. It is difficult to know where community health and environmental health begin and end. From the outside, the unreality may be more apparent than real. The Royal Commission on the NHS in their Report of last year state that leaving environmental health services with local authorities “does not seem to have caused any problems”—and this, despite the disparity in status of the area health authority and the bottom tier, local councils.