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Barbara Kyle is a respected member of the library profession. It is sad to know that she has resigned her place in Aslib work. She is too young and too able to be lost to library science. We look forward to seeing her health restored and her work resumed. Our first meeting was in 1948, in Chatham House. The huge work of newspaper clippings being done there impressed me as a first‐class piece of documentation work in the field of social sciences. Our next meeting was at Geneva in 1955 at a meeting of the Committee on the International Organization of Documentation Work in Social Sciences. There her dynamism could be seen in its fullness. In May 1957, she presided over my talk on Classification as a Discipline at the Dorking Conference. These were all formal occasions. We had a more intimate talk later, when we happened to ride by chance on the same bus down New Oxford Street in London.

The ASM Information Retrieval System is currently in process of redesign to incorporate major refinements and improvements resulting from five years of operating experience as well as experience and research of others in the field. Principles and methodology underlying these changes are explored for various components of this system, principally vocabulary, links and roles, and computer hardware and programming. The major change is from semantic code to thesaurus as the system vocabulary, and the relative efficiencies and inherent capabilities of each are compared and related to the general principles of vocabulary control.

Aslib Council 1957–58. Mr. Austen Albu, M.P. for Edmonton, and Mr. F. Willey, M.P. for Sunderland North, have both agreed to serve as co‐opted members of the Council for the current year.

One of the least studied aspects of information retrieval is the relationship, on the linguistic plane, between the language of enquirers and the terms used by indexing systems. Much of the writing about system structure assumes that these are equivalent, that every enquirer is honest enough to call a spade a spade, and that the problems of designing descriptor languages for use in indexing he in the field of definition. This partly accounts for the sudden leap to fame of the thesaurus; for while a dictionary merely gives definitions of words one by one, a thesaurus, being slightly more refined, gives descriptive analyses in terms of synonyms and near‐synonyms, sometimes grouping them into sets based on some common characteristics.

Thisissue of Aslib Proceedings is mainly devoted to papers presented at the 24th Annual Conference, held at Ashorne Hill, near Learnington Spa, Warwickshire, from 9 to 11 September, 1949. In addition, we have pleasure in printing the annual report and accounts of the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals.

This issue of Aslib Proceedings is mainly devoted to papers presented at the 24th Annual Conference, held at Ashorne Hill, near Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, from 9 to 11 September, 1949. In addition, we have pleasure in printing the annual report and accounts of the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals.

As her many friends and colleagues all over the world already know, Barbara Kyle retired prematurely at the end of June from her twin posts on the staff of Aslib: Research Librarian and Editor of this Journal. Thus ill health has interrupted a career of singular éclat in the realm of librarianship and imposed a burden of rest and recuperation on one whose capacity for living is everywhere a legend. And ‘everywhere’, it must be said, contains in this context no hint of poetic licence, for rarely can the British documentalist abroad have engaged in converse with his colleagues without the name of Kyle being mentioned with respect, admiration, or personal affection—frequently the rare tribute of all three.

As part of a series to mark the 60th anniversary of the Journal of Documentation, the aim is to review a 1956 article by Barbara Kyle.

Literature review and analysis.

The theme of Barbara Kyle's 1956 Journal of Documentation article “Privilege and public provision in the intellectual welfare state” retains its professional resonance in the 21st century. Her distinction between the mission of the library for the general public and that of the private sector library for a restricted clientele, draws attention to the broad educational and leisure mission of the former and the contribution to the commercial advantage of the organisation of the latter. The current professional focus on public rights to information, as expressed in freedom of information legislation, threatens to obscure the private sector's concern with the protection of intellectual property and the acquisition of business intelligence for the benefit of the organisation, but the distinct missions of library and information services in the two sector remain as significant as ever.

Provides a review of historical information still of value today.

The Question Master for this session was Miss Mildred Couldrey. The Panel of Experts included Mr. D. V. Arnold (I.C.I., Ltd., Paints Division), Miss Ruth Jacobs (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research), Miss Barbara Kyle (Royal Institute of International Affairs), Mr. F. A. Sharr (Manchester Public Libraries), and Mr. E. N. Simons (Edgar Allen & Co., Ltd.).

Miss Barbara R. F. Kyle has been appointed Research Librarian of Aslib and, in succession to Miss E. M. R. Ditmas, Managing Editor of the Journal of Documentation. She will join the Aslib staff on 24th June. Barbara Kyle is at present Assistant Director of the National Book League, which appointment she has held since 1958. After wide experience in public libraries she was, for ten years, Librarian of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Since 1955, thanks to grants from both the Nuffield Foundation and the United States National Science Foundation, she has drafted and is testing a classification for social sciences. She is a member of the Unesco International Advisory Committee for Bibliography, Documentation, and Terminology, and a Vice‐President of the International Federation for Documentation. For many years she has taken an active interest in Aslib affairs. She was elected to the Council in 1949 and has since given her services as Chairman of the Conference and Meetings Committee (1950–51), Honorary Secretary (1951–55), Chairman of Council (1955–57), Chairman of the International Relations Committee (1957–61), Chairman of the Research Committee (1961–62), and has served also on the Education and the Executive and Finance Committees.