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Managing customer relationships is a key ingredient of business success ‐ across all industries. Recent technological developments offer the potential to dramatically improve our ability to provide such management ‐ by delivering information about customers, at a detailed and individual level, to those who are handling the interrelationship. The customer gets a better service, and the organisation gets a satisfied and loyal customer. Describes the nature of such technology and the improvements it can provide.

AFTER more than thirty‐three years THE LIBRARY WORLD appears in a new and, we hope our readers will agree, more attractive form. In making such a change the oldest of the independent British library journals is only following the precedent of practically all its contemporaries. The new age is impatient with long‐standing patterns in typography and in page sizes, and all crafts progress by such experiments as we are making. Our new form lends itself better than the old to illustration; we have selected a paper designed for that purpose, and illustrated articles will therefore be a feature of our issues. We shall continue as in the past to urge progress in every department of the library field by the admission of any matter which seems to have living interest for the body of librarians.

Aspiring writers are always advised to be persistent in their work, to keep sending rejected manuscripts the rounds of publishers and editors until they are accepted and published. This is easy advice to give if not to follow, but the fact that it is well worth taking in all cases is borne out by the experience of a great many famous writers. The number of well‐known books which were originally refused by the publishers is as surprising as it is interesting. It might be said, in fact, that almost all authors have to endure seeing their books rejected before they achieve print and subsequent success.

We recall Sidney Greenstreet's profile of Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon: ‘Upon my soul sir, you are a character, you really are.’ The same might be said of Gorby, the leader of the second most powerful country in the world, whose stated philosophy over seventy years has been: profit is a moral evil.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.

In connection with the suggestion recently made in the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL to the effect that a National Pure Food Association should be established it is of importance to call attention to the fact that a society describing itself as the “League for the Defence of Human Life” has been recently formed in Paris with the object of preventing the frauds practised by dishonest traders upon their customers. One of the obligations entered into by the members of the League is to discover and prosecute persons engaged in the sale of adulterated or injurious articles of food and drink. Judging from the recent reports of the proceedings of certain Parisian tradesmen it would appear that a society of this description has much scope for its operations in the French Metropolis, and, as we have suggested, a society with similar objects might with advantage be formed in this country, with branches in all the principal cities and towns. With the legal machinery placed at the disposal of local authorities, cumbrous, inadequate and weak as it is, much more might be done in the way of repression if only the responsible authorities could be brought better to appreciate their duty.

IN a recent Money programme on BBC TV Sir Monty Finniston was seen advocating the need for greater investment in industry as opposed to money being sent abroad to be invested either in Japanese industry or American real estate.

The Food Bill has emerged from the Grand Committee on Trade, and will shortly be submitted, as amended, to the House of Commons. Whatever further amendments may be introduced, the Bill, when passed into law, will but afford one more example of the impotence of repressive legislation in regard to the production and distribution of adulterated and inferior products. We do not say that the making of such laws and their enforcement are not of the highest importance in the interests of the community; their administration—feeble and inadequate as it must necessarily be—produces a valuable deterrent effect, and tends to educate public opinion and to improve commercial morality. But we say that by the very nature of those laws their working can result only in the exposure of a small portion of that which is bad without affording any indications as to that which is good, and that it is by the Control System alone that the problem can be solved. This fact has been recognised abroad, and is rapidly being recognised here. The system of Permanent Analytical Control was under discussion at the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, held at Brussels in 1894, and at the International Congress of Hygiene at Budapest in 1895, and the facts and explanations put forward have resulted in the introduction of the system into various countries. The establishment of this system in any country must be regarded as the most practical and effective method of ensuring the supply of good and genuine articles, and affords the only means through which public confidence can be ensured.

With juggernauts under persistent attack from environment‐conscious transport planners, the British Waterways Board has picked an opportune time for stepping up its campaign to revive Britain's neglected canal network. Supporters point to existing strategic links with industrial centres and the advent of large‐capacity ‘aquanaut’ barges. But for the inland waterways to have an assured future, heavy State investment is vital‐and that is not forthcoming at this stage. Report by David Harvey.