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Pilkington Brothers is by any token a highly successful manufacturing company. From its centre in St Helens, Lancashire, this 150‐year old glass company has in the past few decades expanded very rapidly. It is now a large and complex international business. Pilkington have plants in Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, and Sweden. The company is a technological pace‐setter. Glass manufacturers the world over use Pilkington‐developed processes on licence. Although still essentially glass‐producers, Pilkington have by expansion, acquisition and merger, diversified into optical glass, fibreglass, and toughened vehicle‐glass, for example. What is more, this family firm seems to have managed the process of ‘going public’ with a great deal of skill. It survived the bitter and damaging strike of 1970 emerging two years later with improved profitability. Future prospects are to all appearances excellent. Pilkington always enjoyed, and still enjoys, amongst their own employees at every level and widely amongst the British public, a high reputation as employers who treat their employees with decency and consideration, and as pioneers of modern management techniques. The strike, by common consent, certainly tarnished that image, but it still persists strongly, especially in St Helens. Certainly, senior managers of the company strive honestly and vigorously to restore and to maintain the company's reputation.

The art of management has been defined ‘as knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way’. F W Taylor, Shop Management, 1903.

The paper suggests that traditional descriptive approaches to Personnel Management do not successfully answer the question ‘what is Personnel Management?’, nor do they explain the way in which it actually exists in work organizations. A framework for analysis is proposed, looking at work organizations from the perspective of the Personnel Manager; it is suggested that this framework may help to answer some of these questions, provide a means of exploring the phenomenon of Personnel Management and also of studying it as a subject and a meeting point of disciplines.

… Strange but true facts, number 7: Wandsworth is famous for more than its blue halo.

It could be argued that sociology is part of the secular dogmata of industrialised systems. Its concerns are now almost entirely confined to theoretical analyses of the institutional and normative structures of modem societies. As a discipline, its interests are purportedly reformative as well as being disinterestedly academic. In the “trade”, there is a praise‐worthy emphasis on relevance and an increasing predisposition towards the practicalities of policy and decision‐making processes. It is absorbed by the problems that derive from industrialisation: the encroachments of the new technology and economic uncertainty; the expansion of the new colonialism and political instability; crime, terrorism and the anonymity of the urban situation ‐ in short, the mounting pressures of living in the contemporary world. All these provide sociology with its current, rather formidable, field of enquiry.

WE are happy to publish a very interesting and practical little article on a simplified system of borrowers' registration. Such a question may seem to have been settled long ago and not to deserve further discussion, but Miss Wileman makes it quite clear that there is still a little more to be said. Not all librarians will agree with her on one point, although recently it seems to be accepted by some librarians that the numbering of borrowers' tickets is unnecessary, and especially the decimal numbering of them. This matter has been discussed at various meetings of librarians who use these numbers, and they arc, we understand, unanimous in their desire to retain them. They are not intended for a single library such as is at present in operation at Hendon, from which our contributor writes. They are for a system of many branch libraries with a central registration department, and where there is telephone charge and discharge of books. The number is simply intended to give an accurate and rapid definition of an actual person. This we have said several times before, we think, and to dismiss a method which has been found successful with the statement that it is surely unnecessary rather implies that the writer has not fully understood the question. That, however, does not reduce the value of our article.

The Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Trade, presided over by LORD E. FITZMAURICE, met again on July 16th and proceeded with the Sale of Adulterated Butter Bill.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how recent immigrants and refugees to Canada (“newcomers”) use the facilities of a large, urban public library. As the library previously surveyed the general user population, the responses to the two surveys can be compared.

Questionnaires were administered as patrons were leaving Surrey Libraries Branches to adult public library members who self-identified as newcomers who arrived in Canada within the previous ten years.

The pattern of library use by newcomers differed from that of the general population. They visited more frequently and stayed longer. Newcomers were heavier users of library services and used a wider range of services. They used the library branch as a public place. The library provided them with a place to study, read or meet other people.

The study was exploratory. The small sample size and the data collection process do not allow extrapolation to the underlying population.

Recent newcomers often have similar informational, psychological and social needs. Public libraries can play a role in assisting newcomers during their adjustment process.

Researchers worked closely with library management to develop questions based on decision usefulness. An earlier in-house study allowed comparisons to be made between branch use by newcomers and general library users. Canadian studies into government policy, along with immigrant and refugee studies, provide context for the survey results.

This article aims to explore the concept of amateurism as a form of critique and addition to the concepts of professionalism, professional work and education.

This is a theoretically driven article based upon a review of the historical and sociological literature on amateur–professional relations in various work contexts.

While amateurism is usually conceived pejoratively, the notion of doing something “for the love of it”, even if one is not formally qualified, opens up the possibilities for conceiving new forms of work, worker and sets of working relationships based upon different conceptions of expertise. Drawing upon historical and contemporary studies of the contribution of amateurism to professional work, and exploring the role of digital technologies in enabling amateurs to contribute to forms of professional practice, the article explores some of the challenges posed for work and learning, and suggests some lines of research to be explored.

There has been little to no consideration of amateurism as a positive contribution to considerations of professional work, nor exploration of the expertise and learning of amateurs.