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This paper aims to offer detailed preliminary data and analysis that focuses specifically on the structures and financial aspects of the UK cocaine market.

This paper is based on in-depth interviews with – among others – four active criminal entrepreneurs involved in powder cocaine supply in the UK. Furthermore, along with a review of relevant literature and open sources, in-depth interviews were undertaken with a range of experts with knowledge of the cocaine market. These experts include law enforcement agents and independent academics/researchers who have researched the cocaine market in the UK and internationally.

The cocaine market is a fragmented business dependent on networks of individual entrepreneurs and groups. At the core of collaborations often lie family, ethnic or kinship relationships and relationships forged within legal businesses and in prison. Capital investment practices in this market are flexible, “messy” and mutating, and money comes from a range of different sources. Credit is an integral feature of the cocaine business in the UK. The financial management of the cocaine trade is a result of (and reflects) a number of factors, such as the fragmented and decentralised nature of the trade.

Empirical research into financial aspects of organised crime manifestations is important for the assumptions that are part of public debate to be tested. In addition, understanding the broader range of financial aspects of organised crime is an important component of the process of crimes for gain and can contribute to both better investigation and better prevention.

Internet use has changed the mechanics of drug dealing. Although this has spurred some initial academic interest in how markets and their users have been changing, the issue is still under-researched. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the organisation of the distribution of prescription drugs and other illegal drugs overlap in these online markets by analysing data gathered from observation of the Swedish Facebook drug market and its participants.

Data were gathered during three months of digital ethnography conducted among Swedish Facebook posters supplemented by 25 interviews with sellers (20) and buyers (5). Screenshots and interview data were coded by carrying out an NVivo-based content analysis. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics of drug types, co-occurrence with other drugs, group size and the demographic characteristics of sellers. Additionally, the interviewees’ descriptions of the marketplace and their drug dealing or buying activities were included in the analysis.

In total, 57 Swedish Facebook groups that sold illegal substances were located. The groups rarely specialised in specific drug types, but were convened around demographic factors, such as specific cities and locales. The sales of prescription drugs were part of the overall activity of groups selling other illegal drugs, but they were more often sold in separate Facebook posts, possibly by specialist sellers. Swedish Facebook sales primarily concerned alprazolam, tramadol, pregabalin and clonazepam, and were sold by both professional and amateur sellers.

This study reports findings from a Nordic comparative study on social media drug dealing, representing the first in-depth study of digitally mediated prescription drug dealing outside of cryptomarkets.

The origins of the roof of the Great Hall at Alexandra Palace go back to Owen Jones' project for a ‘Palace of the People’ to be built at Muswell Hill, published in the Illustrated London News in 1860, as North London's answer to the Crystal Palace which had newly moved to Sydenham. This was not built, but in response to public request, when the Great Exhibition of 1862 was dismantled, a large section including one of the lateral domes was erected at Muswell Hill to form the first Alexandra Palace. This was done under the direction of the architects, Meeson & Johnson, who produced the water colour painting now held at the Palace illustrating the project viewed from the north (Photo A). The building consisted of a long nave running east‐west with three transepts, the largest in the centre being on the site of the present Great Hall with the crossing crowned by the mammoth dome raised higher than it had been at South Kensington by the introduction of an upper clerestorey level (Figure 1). The diameter of the dome was approximately 160 ft —larger than either the Pantheon (143 ft) or St Peter's (138 ft) in Rome.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the courses in library service jointly developed and run by the University and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, between 1917 and 1928.

An historical approach is adopted and use has been made of relevant extant primary sources held in the National Library, as well as various notices and reports of the courses published in the journals of the time.

Strong similarities between the Summer Schools in Library Service of 100 years ago and the degree programmes currently offered via distance learning by the Department of Information Studies have been indicated.

Due to the nature of the research and the reliance on the survival of primary source material, it has not been possible to trace a complete set of Directors’ Reports, which would have offered greater insight into the content of the later Summer Schools as well as the people who attended these courses.

The year 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the College of Librarianship Wales, (which has evolved into the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University). However, the roots of this educational establishment can be traced back nearly 50 years earlier to the University’s Summer Schools in library service. This is a largely unexplored subject but represents the first step towards the establishment of the current Department of Information Studies.

We hope that our Conference Report Number of The Library World will give our readers as much pleasure as the many communications we have received assure us our last issue did. The record of the proceedings at Norwich appears on other pages; here we need only say that the conference will be remembered as one of the most delightful and stimulating in a long list of delightful and stimulating conferences. Everything went smoothly from beginning to end with that absence of obvious effort which is a certain sign that immense effort has gone to the organisation. We expected much from Norwich, and we received it. The tributes paid to the Local Committee and the special references to the enthusiasm and devotion of Mr. Stephen and his able deputy, Mr. Charles Nowell, were blessed to give and we hope were blessed to receive. They were thoroughly deserved.

We wonder if, in the history of the world, any conference devoted to the intellectual interests of mankind has ever been held in such circumstances as made memorable the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Library Association. For the whole week before those in and near London had been submitted to an ordeal well calculated to try the strongest nerves; an ordeal borne, it is true, with remarkable stoicism, but, nevertheless, one not likely to induce that calm, judicial frame of mind in which library topics should be discussed. Fortunately, however, the night before the opening meeting was the last of that particular series of air attacks, and the whole meeting passed in peace, so far as London was concerned. Raids and rumours of them may have reduced the attendance somewhat; it is fair to suppose that they did; yet the attendance, when all things are considered, was creditable to the Association.

Except that there is a more intense international situation the circumstances in which we open our twenty‐first volume differ but little from those in which we commenced the twentieth. The War, which has been the cause of so many hopes and fears for libraries and librarians, still drags its disastrous length across the world, thwarting and stifling all those activities for the advancement of mankind of which libraries are part, but the specific attacks upon educational institutions of all kinds have lost their original force; indeed there has been, as every reader of this magazine knows, a rejuvenesence of educational ideals and energy in spite of the baffling obstacles of the time. In almost every municipality libraries have regained much of their former position, and evidences of development have been many. These have been recorded in our pages regularly month by month, with such criticism from ourselves as the occasions seemed to demand; and in relation to suoh progress THE LIBRARY WORLD has endeavoured to pursue a catholic and progressive policy, examining every new idea frankly, and sympathetically whenever it has been possible to do so. Our pages have been open freely to the expression of all phases of library thought, even in cases where our own views did not coincide with the writers. That policy we shall endeavour to continue, welcoming contributions from all who feel that they have something to say to the profession, in the belief that even impracticable schemes and untenable theories have a value of their own if they cause librarians to think anew in contesting them. It is, at the best, a difficult time for professional journals, and for few more than it is for library journals. Cost of production, the obsession of librarians with definitely war‐work, and the absence of more than half of the permanent workers in libraries, are causes which need no elaboration. The mortality amongst our contributors in the great cause has been considerable, and most painful to us. The fact that in spite of all these difficulties our circulation has steadily increased gives us reason to believe, with all modesty, that THE LIBRARY WORLD plays a definite and useful part on behalf of librarians. In thanking those who have supported us, we can add the assurance that our best efforts shall be expended in promoting and sustaining the interests which the magazine was intended to serve.

The Southport Conference was in many ways a decided success, although we have heard better discussions, and the speech‐making was done almost entirely by our veterans. In the nature of the case this could not have been otherwise. Questions of vital moment could only be handled with great circumspection, and statements of our attitude towards the alleged Government proposals would probably be dangerously dealt with by the more youthful amongst us. Even so, it is questionable if some of the papers and discussions— almost entirely hostile to what we believe Mr. Fisher's intentions to be—were altogether wise. We have to allow for human nature, and an uncompromising antagonism to the proposal that libraries should become a department of the local education authority, is likely to irritate that authority.

When we reach June in normal years we are expectant of some definite particulars of the Annual Meeting of the Library Association. The place of meeting is usually known from the year previously, and an outline of the prospective proceedings has been circulated. This year, we are given to understand, there is to be a meeting, although it will be briefer than usual, no public hospitality will be asked or expected, and it will be held at some place which is not a great town or city, so that we may escape the possibility of such hospitality being offered. In these circumstances there can hardly be any objection to a meeting, and we can see many advantages in it. If a place in Derbyshire, in Wales, or in some other district where there is beautiful scenery, can be selected, we hope that it will be, so that librarians, who many of them greatly need a brief holiday, may be able to include the Annual Meeting in their holiday programme. We shall await more particulars with interest, and we hope that they may not be long delayed.