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Reviews the latest set of statistics on UK public, national, academic, special and school libraries. Deplores the general decline in financial support over the ten‐year period and the loss of facility represented by these reductions. Notes the consequent affect on usage figures. Suggests that dramatic efforts need to be made by public libraries with respect to Internet services and the provision of PCs generally. Proposes other useful additional data and analyses that might be produced and that, in particular, LISU should encourage the compilation and analysis of much more data on electronic services in academic libraries. Regrets the continuing poor coverage of school and workplace libraries.

The reviewer concludes that the human problems of knowing one’s users, liaison and collaboration with academic staff, user training and information literacy, are still unresolved issues despite the wealth of information potentially available to professionals via electronic services monitoring and despite the promise of electronically mediated solutions. The measurement and evaluation of electronic services remain difficult with little consensus on what to measure and how to do it. Contends that classification has much to contribute to electronic information retrieval yet is seriously neglected.

The reviewer argues that the future roles for academic librarians envisaged by the authors have always been the ideal intention. Librarians, at least in the UK, have long regarded their proper role as being that of partners of academic staff and as facilitators of learning in a research model, resource based, learning environment, rather than merely as providers of information services in a “supporting” role simply reacting to overt demands. Librarians have particular attitudes towards information use and skills within learning yet these cannot be separated entirely from subject content which is the jealously regarded province of academic staff. Librarians must become more like faculty in order to fulfil their role and potential, demonstrating their ability to contribute at all levels in the educational process. The book fails to explore adequately the practical, psychological, human, political and administrative problems involved in reaching this ideal.

The reviewer comments on the philosophical issues, lesson learned, the costs and quality considerations, in information and communications technology‐mediated learning discussed in these essays. Particular attention is given to the opportunities digitisation now presents to course designers in offering students choice in sequencing learning materials, the importance of objectives and the problems still presented by collaborative efforts.

THE COMMENT by Don Revill in the August issue of NEW LIBRARY WORLD raises a number of interesting points. The allocation of library book funds between departments or between site libraries has always proved a sticky problem, and, as Revill points out, a variety of solutions have been advocated. Of course, the actual division of the funds presents no real problem (everyone is willing to spend the money!) once the bases on which this division is to be made have been decided. Thus the real decisions boil down to judgements of the relative value (to the university? to the state? to the librarian?) of such factors as:

SCHEMES FOR the national library services of developing countries make the British library world seem positively victorian by comparison. Two factors, however, are likely to be agents of change in the next few years. At the apex of the pyramid, the proposals for the British Library will rationalise the British Museum, the National Central Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography complex. At more local levels, the re‐organisation of local government in England will ensure more effective provision of public library services under unitary control.

THE ORGANISING COMMITTEE of the British Library was set up in June 1971 following the acceptance in April 1970 by the government of the recommendations of the Dainton Report on the national libraries and the consequent White Paper (Cmnd 4572) in January 1971. The committee is to plan the organisation of the library and develop and co‐ordinate its policy, and is clearly of the greatest importance, not only to the national libraries but to all libraries through the bibliographic and research services the British Library will undertake. What do we know of the work of this committee, which has now been in existence for a year?

ONE CAN BE forgiven for worrying about the ‘Peter principle’ when taking up a post on the practising side of the profession after nine years teaching librarianship.

“Corporate planning” is the term which, perhaps more than any other, epitomises the adoption of business management techniques by the public sector. In Britain, with massive local government reorganisation in 1974, many librarians were forced to come to terms with such techniques whether they liked it or not. Of course, in its purest sense corporate planning applies to the combined operation of an entire organisation be it local authority, university, government department or industrial firm. However, in this paper I do not intend discussing “the grand design” whereby the library is merely a component part of a greater body. Rather, it is my intention to view the library as the corporate body. It is a perfectly possible and very useful exercise to apply the principles of corporate planning, and the management techniques involved, to the running of a library or group of libraries. Indeed, many librarians have already done this either independently or as their part in the corporate plan of their parent organisation.

APART FROM ESTIMATES of book losses there appears to be little or no information available on the value of items stolen from libraries. This article is intended to provide an overview of the security problems they face while mentioning some of the devices available to protect individual items or library areas.