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Describes the development of an integrated computer‐based system (PROTECT) to aid the design of complex fire protection systems. Explains how PROTECT, developed through the application of object‐oriented technology (OOT), comprises a series of knowledge bases for specific protection environments and is integrated with other business systems. PROTECT enables the optimal design of fire protection systems to specified standards and the accurate estimation of system cost. Presents software development issues, and discusses system operational results and benefits of the PROTECT.

Knowledge management is a rapidly growing, and rapidly changing discipline. While the link between knowledge assets and competitive advantage has been accepted for some time, it is not obvious how this translates into the techniques and software tools that are labelled as knowledge management processes. This article details the strategic requirements linking the conceptual “mission” of knowledge management with the processes that serve it.

Describes the practical application, in an industrial setting, of an information system designed to support continuous improvements. This system, based on a quality monitoring system, differs from conventional application in that it seeks to support both quality conformance and continuous improvements to design and research activities. Such activities traditionally fall outside the quality management function, but are encompassed within knowledge management goals and techniques, which are used in this research to construct a system framework. The integration of information into functional areas previously unlinked to manufacturing issues is illustrated as the major obstacle which had to be overcome. The implications for management practices are subsequently described. Concludes that knowledge management principles can support a wider application of continuous improvement to obtain benefits for the organisation, by providing higher quality information, and increasing the levels of organisational expertise which can be applied to it.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

THE Library Association has begun the Centenary of the Public Libraries Acts' celebrations with an attractive booklet which, we suppose, is now in the hands of many, if not most, of our readers. We are to have, we understand, an official, documented history which should be worthy of the occasion; that may come later. The booklet, however, A Century of Public Library Service, should be made available in every library. To be effective it should go into every household—a manifest impossibility on any means at the command of the Library Association, since the booklet itself puts the registered borrowers alone at twelve millions, and if there are five people to a household, nearly two and a half million copies would be required. If it goes to every service point that will involve 23,000. These figures illustrate the difficulties of our publicity. The machine is too vast for all its parts to be reached. We suppose it will go to every librarian and every member of a library committee—about 6,000 copies—and that may be a good plan, although that would be sending it to those who are, we hope, converted. As for the book itself, it follows the lines of the paper read by Mr. L. R. McColvin at Eastbourne last year; it tells our history; shows by graph and figure the vast increase in supply to meet demand; deals successively with the various parts of the service; and surveys the future. Its value is as an assessment of book stock, staff and relative success and failure and the relation of these to the resources, financial and otherwise, of libraries. In 1949 we are spending £1,650,000 on books, if our calculation at 2s. 9d. per borrower is correct. This, for the whole population—say 45 millions—is not lavish. These and many other useful points are indicated. The work is for domestic consumption, to serve as a basis for self‐examination. On the physical side it is attractive, is printed on plate paper, which brings out brightly the twenty‐five illustrations and a graph, which show pleasant samples of libraries and readers. As a curious point we find no sign in any of the pictures that there are men librarians in public libraries.

I. INTRODUCTION This study attempts to extend and expand previous research conducted by the Department of Marketing at Strathclyde on the adoption and diffusion of industrial products.

OUR theme in general this month is the personality of the librarian. One may say that librarians have a habit of discussing the recruitment of the profession, its pay and other factors in the personnel. And it is natural that they should have, because after all it is their life. The librarian as a man rarely figures at any length or in any detail in the books or magazines that we usually read. Lately, it is true, Mr. L. Stanley Jast has been contributing to a contemporary, The Library Review, some admirable all‐too‐brief articles on his memories of personalities and doings mainly in connection with the Library Association thirty or more years since. It is a pity that Mr. Jast cannot be persuaded to give these reminiscences at much greater length, and although it is possible that their main appeal is to the born librarian, yet for those who read as they run, they possess many things of quite living interest. In short, the librarian is bound to be interested in the librarian himself; that is human nature.

The desire to obtain authentic guidance as to the real nature, quality and value of food‐products and of other articles of necessity has grown rapidly during recent years, while the demand for amending and additional legislation, and for increased governmental and official activity, plainly indicates that general public attention to this most important of national questions is at length aroused.