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In the context of the publication of a survey commissioned by the Library Association into library and learning resources in further education (FE), the authors identify the key findings of a series of similar surveys of libraries and learning resource centres in the FE sector in Wales, carried out between 1984 and 1997. The impact of growth in student numbers, changes in funding and management arrangements at national and local levels, and quality assurance mechanisms, is explored. The study also describes the major problems associated with quantitative and qualitative research in this sector, compares the results achieved and identifies areas for future research.

This paper reports on a project which aimed to ascertain current and anticipated use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in museums in Wales. The project also traced the primary ICT trends in the museum community worldwide, and listed relevant contemporary policy and project initiatives and funding sources in the UK. The main findings – applications, the resource and other issues, barriers to development, the perceived value of ICT in museum work, and the main project outcomes and recommendations are listed.

The findings of the Steering Group on Food Freshness in relation to the compulsory date marking of food contained in their Report, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, has brought within measurable distance the Regulations which were, in any case, promised for1975. The Group consider that the extension of voluntary open date marking systems will not be sufficiently rapid (or sufficiently comprehensive) to avoid the need or justify the delay in introducing legislation.

A highly significant action taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, reported elsewhere in this issue, could well result in important advances in surveillance and probably legislative control over enforcement of certain aspects of EEC legislation in the Member‐states. The Minister has sent an urgent request to the Commission in Brussels to dispatch inspectors to each country, including the United Kingdom, to examine and report on the standards of inspection and hygiene with detailed information on how the EEC Directive on Poultry Meat is being implemented. Information of the method of financing the cost of poultrymeat inspection in each country has ben requested. The comprehensive survey is seen as a common approach in this one field. The Minister requested that the results of the inspectors' reports should be available to him and other Member‐states.

We are growing accustomed to shock tactics of the US Administration in dealing with toxic residues in food or additives which are a hazard to man, as well as the daily press infusing sensation, even melodrama, into them, but the recent action of the FDA in calling in from the food market several million cans of tuna and other deep sea fish because of the presence of mercury has had the worthwhile effect of drawing world attention to the growing menace of environmental pollution. The level of mercury in the fish is immaterial; it should never have been there at all, but it stresses the importance of the food chain in the danger to man and animal life generally, including fish beneath the sea. Without underestimating risks of pollution in the atmosphere from nuclear fission products, from particulate matter carried in the air by inhalation or even skin absorption, food and drink, which includes aqua naturale would seem to be the greatest danger to life. What these recent events illustrate in a dramatic manner, however, is the extent of pollution.

The connotations, associations, custom and usages of a name often give to it an importance that far outweighs its etymological significance. Even with personal surnames or the name of a business. A man may use his own name but not if by so doing it inflicts injury on the interests and business of another person of the same name. After a long period of indecision, it is now generally accepted that in “passing off”, there is no difference between the use of a man's own name and any other descriptive word. The Courts will only intervene, however, when a personal name has become so much identified with a well‐known business as to be necessarily deceptive when used without qualification by anyone else in the same trade; i.e., only in rare cases. In the early years, the genesis of goods and trade protection, fraud was a necessary ingredient of “passing off”, an intent to deceive, but with the merging off Equity with the Common Law, the equitable rule that interference with “property” did not require fraudulent intent was practised in the Courts. First applying to trade marks, it was extended to trade names, business signs and symbols and business generally. Now it is unnecessary to prove any intent to deceive, merely that deception was probable, or that the plaintiff had suffered actual damage. The equitable principle was not established without a struggle, however, and the case of “Singer” Sewing Machines (1877) unified the two streams of law but not before it reached the House of Lords. On the way up, judical opinions differed; in the Court of Appeal, fraud was considered necessary—the defendant had removed any conception of fraud by expressingly declaring in advertisements that his “Singer” machines were manufactured by himself—so the Court found for him, but the House of Lords considered the name “Singer” was in itself a trade mark and there was no more need to prove fraud in the case of a trade name than a trade mark; Hence, the birth of the doctrine that fraud need not be proved, but their Lordships showed some hesitation in accepting property rights for trade names. If the name used is merely descriptive of goods, there can be no cause for action, but if it connotes goods manufactured by one firm or prepared from a formula or compsitional requirements prescribed by and invented by a firm or is the produce of a region, then others have no right to use it. It is a question of fact whether the name is the one or other. The burden of proof that a name or term in common use has become associated with an individual product is a heavy one; much heavier in proving an infringement of a trade mark.

Sections of the world's population have always been short of food, the menace of famine ever present. Among primitive peoples, the search for food is their greatest preoccupation. In the years before the first Great War, in the civilised countries of the west, including our own, the persistent poverty of the casual and unskilled workers, helped and held to a permanent state in so many cases by improvidence, was often stretched to near‐starvation, and with few agencies really capable of affording adequate relief. Families went short of food for fairly long periods, especially in the industrial areas and towns and this during times when a dozen stale loaves could be bought for a shilling and a pint of skimmed milk for a halfpenny. In the rural areas, nature helped a little and the country folk could talk of the pleasurable flavour of a rook pie and comb the hedgerows for edible roots, but here too were the cruel flashes when men went to prison for snaring a rabbit on private land or stealing a few swedes from a farmer's clamp.

For nearly as long as I can remember there has been jealousy between various kinds of local authorities with reference to many of their respective duties and powers —and not least in the matter of the enforcement of the Food and Drugs Act. The publication of the 1951 Census returns now adds to the number of boroughs and urban districts with a population of 40,000. These, unless the County Council concerned satisfies the Minister of Health that no change should be made, will become Food and Drugs Authorities by virtue of S. 64 of the Act of 1938. The Middlesex County Council in 1939 did satisfy the Minister that it should remain the Authority throughout the County, although many of the boroughs and urban districts then had populations greatly exceeding 40,000. At its meeting in July, 1951, the Ealing Corporation, with a population in the new Census return exceeding 187,000, decided to invite the Minister to make Ealing the Food and Drugs Authority instead of the County Council; and doubtless similar requests will be made elsewhere. By a coincidence, on the same day as that of the Ealing meeting, the House of Commons was debating the general question of the drastic revision of the whole structure of local government. The Minister of Local Government and Planning made it quite plain that the present Government, with its very narrow majority, will not countenance any important changes unless the associations of local authorities, which have for many months been conferring, reach a substantial measure of agreement; and in the course of the debate a well‐informed back bencher stated that good progress in that direction has already been made between three of the four associations. As I was the spokesman of the County Councils Association, on. the question of the allocation of Food and Drugs duties, before the Royal Commission on Local Government in 1925, and also before the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons on the Food and Drugs Bill of 1938, it will not surprise readers of the British Food Journal that I find the present situation interesting.

Difficulties which have for many years surrounded the interpretation of false descriptions of trade goods and services are emphasised in the discussions, in and out of Parliament, of the Protection of Consumers (Trade Descriptions) Bill, the new code of consumer legislation which although incorporating much that has gone before, does introduce a number of rather sweeping extensions. In the opening of the Committee stage in the House of Lords most of the debate ranged around the meaning of the term false description itself, and an amendment which defeated the Government, made it necessary for a description to be false in a material particular to be an offence. This is in fact the present law. The amendment has now little more than theoretical interest as the Bill with numerous others was jettisoned because of the General Election.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and an introduction to the papers in the special issue.

A narrative review of the previous research activities and contemporary research environment of the Department of Information Studies.

There is more to be learnt about the future of the research assessment exercise, whether it is moving to a metrics‐based system, or whether the system will look more favourably on departments that attract a range of research funding.

Identifies how changes in the scope of research activities in a department reflect changes in research funding and structures for the information sector, as well as changes in staff interests.