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Benchmarking is a continuous process of comparing and measuring an organization’s business processes against those of business leaders anywhere in the world. Attempts to benchmark internal auditing in Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Bases the analysis on surveys undertaken in all three countries. The surveys of both chief executives and internal audit managers establish benchmarks for international comparisons of internal audit practice. A number of issues were addressed by the surveys including attitudes and recognition, professionalism, role and scope, career opportunities, education and training and the future role of internal audit. The comparison provides useful insights into the internal audit profession in Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

ALL the auguries for the Bournemouth Conference appear to be good. Our local secretary, Mr. Charles Riddle, seems to have spared neither energy nor ability to render our second visit to the town, whose libraries he initiated and has controlled for thirty‐seven years, useful and enjoyable. There will not be quite so many social events as usual, but that is appropriate in the national circumstances. There will be enough of all sorts of meetings to supply what the President of the A.L.A. describes as “the calling which collects and organizes books and other printed matter for the use and benefit of mankind and which brings together the reader and the printed word in a vital relationship.” We hope the discussions will be thorough, but without those long auto‐biographical speeches which are meant for home newspapers, that readers will make time for seeing the exhibitions, and that Bournemouth will be a source of health and pleasure to all our readers who can be there.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

MRS. — receives neither honourable nor other mention in annual reports, yet she cannot be unknown to every librarian. The assistant at the issue desk could probably give a very interesting account of her habits and instincts, of which he must perforce make a daily study. In a temple of literature issuing 100,000 volumes annually there will probably be twenty of her class, and each morning ten at least of “the old familiar faces” may be seen, apparently worshipping mystic, symbolic figures for awhile, and then offering and receiving gifts from the messenger of their goddess. From remarks passed by these devotees, we gather that they worship not Truth, but Fiction. Their saints are Miss Braddon, Mrs. Wood, Marie Corelli, and others. Many of their saints' good works are “not in,” “read long ago,” &c. Mrs. —'s reading may produce no apparent effect upon herself, but it has such an influence upon the tabulated results of Public Library work that it is worth while giving the matter some attention. It is most unfortunate that those judging the influence of a Public Library upon a community should rely solely upon the statistics usually given in annual reports. Pro and con may take the same statistics, and by most flawless logic each will prove the arguments of the other to be absurd, and in many cases it is done quite conscientiously; the conclusion arrived at quite depending upon the point of view. In this library issuing 100,000 volumes a year the percentage of fiction is, let us say, 60. Mrs. — comes at least every other day for a novel, and, as we may safely multiply Mrs. — by 20, we find she borrows 3,000 novels a year, or 3 per cent. Then, again, we never consider the many novels taken away and brought back next day because they were “not nice.” If there are 20 daily, we would now gladden the heart of the librarian by showing the percentage of fiction borrowed from his library to be 51, instead of 60. Should the issue in the class containing magazines and reviews be counted with fiction or not, certainly a large assortment of attractive magazines falsifies the record if not placed amongst fiction. Think of a classification which places in the same column—as is very frequent—the Strand Magazine and Mathew Arnold's “Essays”! Juvenile literature is surely fiction, and yet many reports totally ignore this fact, although it often amounts to 25 per cent. of the issues. For example, I find in the thirtieth Annual Report of the Borough of Tynemouth that the issue of fiction is 53 per cent. of a total issue of 85,625; but, if we take into account the 16,121 juvenile literature and 15,531 magazines and reviews, we will find the percentage of Fiction to have jumped up to 90 !

MOST librarians are, sooner or later, faced with the necessity of extending the library service to meet the needs of a growing town. The position of the central library is almost invariably in the centre of the town, and as the population increases the residential districts move further and further away from the business centre. To meet the requirements of the borrowers the library must move with them, and this is done by establishing smaller libraries in such parts of the town as the density of the population warrants.

A NEW YEAR is a season of Stocktaking in normal times; this year it is especially so. The library journals of the world all fill their pages with discussions on libraries in a time of economic depression and financial stringency; and in America this note is even more Stressed than in any country, and we trust that some good may come of it seeing that America has proved more helpless in the face of world depression than any nation had thought possible. That, however, is by the way. The immediate problem of the New Year is how to ensure that in the general reductions of expenditure that are being made the expenditure on libraries is reduced as little as possible.

TECHNICAL Education, after looming before the British public for half a century, is now with us a recognised factor in our national life. The passing of the Technical Instruction Acts of and 1891, and the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of gave an impetus to the movement, and has produced results of a most gratifying character. Technical schools, or institutions bearing other names in which technical instruction is given, are now considerably more numerous than Public Libraries. According to a return of the National Society for promotion of Technical Education in England (excluding London), 319 technical schools, under municipal and public bodies, have been erected at a cost of £3,186,102—an average of £10,000 per school in round numbers—and of this sum, one quarter of a million has been involved since 1901. In order to obtain an adequate idea of the extent to which technical instruction is given, it is necessary to take into account the higher grade schools and other institutions which are used for this purpose. But if technical schools be numerically stronger than Public Libraries, the former institution is incomplete without the latter. In such isolation, its relative position to the student, is like a conservatory without a garden to the botanist. A Public Library, with carefully selected books of reference, bearing on the subjects taught in the technical school as well as on all the industries carried on in the neighbourhood, is an indispensable condition to the success of the technical school, and I hope County Councils will, in the near future, use their influence to promote the establishment of Public Libraries in every locality where a technical school is considered essential.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Universities are social and economic instruments for investment in man and thereby for the development of human resources at the highest level. This is truer in the case of developing countries where science and technology have not yet extended their beneficial aspects to whole spheres of social life. While preserving culture and heritage, universities are the most powerful institutions for social change and innovation. At the same time, universities and colleges themselves are subject to changes and need to adapt to these.

THE scientist and philosopher will tell us that the mind of man cannot in a lifetime fully grasp and understand any one subject. Consequently it is unreasonable to expect that the librarian—who, in spite of popular belief, is but man—can have a complete understanding of every department of knowledge relative to his work. He must, in common with his fellows in other callings, content himself with a more or less general professional knowledge, and may specialize, if he be so disposed, in certain branches of that knowledge. The more restricted this particular knowledge is, the greater will be its value from a specialistic point of view.