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This paper considers the design of technology in domestic, or home, settings. The systems themselves have become increasingly complex and the need for dependable systems correspondingly important. The design problem is concerned less with the creation of new technical artefacts than with their effective configuration and integration. Inadequate understanding of the lived reality of use and user needs is often responsible for lack of dependability. The paper illuminates and highlights some fields for future investigation.

Evidence from a variety of sources indicates that there is a correlation between environment, support structures and behavioural response for people with complex needs which affects the quality of life in living environments. As part of the shift from institutional living to community‐based options, an inclusive approach, working on a theoretical and practice‐based response, was established. The aim of the project was to achieve an inclusive package of support while encouraging development of individual skills of daily living, in a flexible and interactive environment. During the course of the project, 39 purpose‐built housing units were established using the approach described, and they are currently the subject of evaluation.

OF old the public library was wont to take its reputation from the character of the newsroom. That room, as everyone knows, attracts every element in the community and it may be it attracts especially the poorer elements;—even at times undesirable ones. These people in some towns, but perhaps not so often now‐a‐days, have been unwashen and often not very attractive in appearance. It was natural, things being as they are, that the room should give a certain tone to the institution, and indeed on occasion cause it to be avoided by those who thought themselves to be superior. The whole level of living has altered, and we think has been raised, since the War. There is poverty and depression in parts of the country, it is true; but there are relief measures now which did not exist before the War. Only those who remember the grinding poverty of the unemployed in the days, especially the winter days, before the War can realise what poverty really means at its worst. This democratic levelling up applies, of course, to the public library as much as to any institution. At present it may be said that the part of the library which is most apparent to the public and by which it is usually judged, is the lending or home‐reading department. It therefore needs no apology if from time to time we give special attention to this department. Even in the great cities, which have always concentrated their chief attention upon their reference library, to‐day there is an attempt to supply a lending library service of adequate character. We recall, for example, that the Leeds Public Library of old was first and foremost a reference library, with a lending library attached; to‐day the lending library is one of the busiest in the kingdom. A similar judgment can be passed upon Sheffield, where quite deliberately the city librarian would restrict the reference library to works that are of real reference character, and would develop more fully the lending library. In Manchester, too, the new “Reference Library”—properly the new Central Library—has a lending library which issues about 1,500 volumes daily. There must be all over the country many libraries issuing up to a thousand volumes each a day from their central lending departments. This being the case the department comes in for very careful scrutiny.

Subcontracting has always been an important aspect of the infrastructure of manufacturing industry, particularly the aerospace industry. For 1992 it will be even more important for two very good reasons.

BUSINESS SCHOOL GRAFFITI is a highly personal and revealing account of the first ten years (1965–1975) at Britain’s University Business Schools. The progress achieved is documented in a whimsical fashion that makes it highly readable. Gordon Wills has been on the inside throughout the decade and has played a leading role in two of the major Schools. Rather than presuming to present anything as pompous as a complete history of what has happened, he recalls his reactions to problems, issues and events as they confronted him and his colleagues. Lord Franks lit a fuse which set a score of Universities and even more Polytechnics alight. There was to be a bold attempt to produce the management talent that the pundits of the mid‐sixties so clearly felt was needed. Buildings, books, teachers who could teach it all, and students to listen and learn were all required for the boom to happen. The decade saw great progress, but also a rapid decline in the relevancy ethic. It saw a rapid withering of interest by many businessmen more accustomed to and certainly desirous of quick results. University Vice Chancellors, theologians and engineers all had to learn to live with the new and often wealthier if less scholarly faculty members who arrived on campus. The Research Councils had to decide how much cake to allow the Business Schools to eat. Most importantly, the author describes the process of search he went through as an individual in evolving a definition of his own subject and how it can best be forwarded in a University environment. It was a process that carried him from Technical College student in Slough to a position as one of the authorities on his subject today.

WE have to announce with deep regret the death of Mr. I. Chalkley Gould, founder and director of the Library World since its establishment in 1898. Mr. Gould was a member of an old Essex family associated with Loughton and its neighbourhood, and was born in 1844, his father being the late George Gould, of Traps Hill House, Loughton. His connection with the firm of Marlborough, Gould & Co. and other stationery and printing concerns led him many years ago to give some attention to library and museum work, towards which he had always been attracted because of his personal interest in archaeology and literature. In this way he became associated with many museums, libraries and antiquarian societies, and identified himself more particularly with the movement for the preservation of ancient British earthworks. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, vice‐president of the Essex Archaeological Society, the Essex Field Club, and the British Archaeological Association. Within recent years he acted as hon. secretary of the Committee for Recording Ancient Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures—a committee for the formation of which he was largely responsible and in the work of which he took a very deep interest. He was chairman of the Committee for the Exploration of the Red Hills of Essex—an important undertaking which is not yet completed. He also contributed several valuable papers to the Victoria History of Essex, and assisted the editor of that publication in revising the earthworks sections of other counties.

The British countryman is a well‐known figure; his rugged, obstinate nature, unyielding and tough; his part in the development of the nation, its history, not confined to the valley meadows and pastures and uplands, but nobly played in battles and campaigns of long ago. His “better half”—a term as true of yeoman stock as of any other—is less well known. She is as important a part of country life as her spouse; in some fields, her contribution has been even greater. He may grow the food, but she is the provider of meals, dishes, specialties, the innovating genius to whom most if not all British food products, mostly with regional names and now well‐placed in the advertising armentarium of massive food manufacturers, are due. A few of them are centuries old. Nor does she lack the business acumen of her man; hens, ducks, geese, their eggs, cut flowers, the produce of the kitchen garden, she may do a brisk trade in these at the gate or back door. The recent astronomical price of potatoes brought her a handsome bonus. If the basic needs of the French national dietary are due to the genius of the chef de cuisine, much of the British diet is due to that of the countrywoman.

IN last month's Library World attention is drawn to the subject of literary history and its teaching by Mr. Sayers, who points out some weak points in the syllabus and examination scheme of the Library Association. His remarks recall the fact that this subject has always been a difficult and rather inflammable one to tackle, because wrapped up in it is that other exciting question of Language, which must be taken in connection with Literature when considered as a teaching subject. We understand that the Literary History syllabus of the L.A. is merely a compromise, which arose out of a tangle caused by the language difficulty. The draft scheme for the teaching of Literary History which was first submitted, provided for a very strict limitation of the subject to the great authors of all nations, according to a list which had been prepared. This scheme proposed to get over the language difficulty by allowing for all purposes the use of text‐books and translations in English, because it was felt to be utterly ridiculous to expect students to be equipped with first‐hand knowledge of Homer, Dante, Hafiz, Confucius, the Vedas, Moliére, Cervantes, Schiller, Virgil, Tolstoy, and other great authors. This proposal, which would have limited the requirements of the examination to a biographical and critical knowledge of about 300 or 400 of the greatest authors of all times, was rejected, and in its place was adopted the compromise to which Mr. Sayers and many others object. This compromise on the face of it, limits the examination to English Literature only, but, when more closely scanned, it will be found also to demand a most extraordinary knowledge of all kinds of foreign authors, in a form which has not yet been systematically recorded. Apart from this, the dimensions of an unlimited survey of English Literature are enormous, because there is no attempt at definition. All that can be gathered from the actual Examination Papers is that the examiners have largely confined themselves to the purely critical side of the subject. But students are not told that modern technical and scientific literature is excluded, nor is any indication given which will show that it is the “literature of power,” and not of “knowledge,” in which candidates are expected to be proficient. Now, it is perfectly well known to every reader that not 1 per cent. of the books published is literature at all. The output of printed matter all over the world consists mostly of Lamb's “books which are not books”—text‐books, ephemera, rubbish in general, and other nondescript essays in typographical art—which have no real place in a Literary History Syllabus. It was to get over this anomaly, and equip students with the knowledge mostly required in libraries—an acquaintance with “books which are not books”—that the original draft scheme for the Literary History syllabus imposed a limitation which should prove effective in confining the examination to pure literature, and relegating the literature of knowledge to the sections devoted to Bibliography and Book Selection. In the present Syllabus, as revised, this distribution actually takes place, but with an extraordinary degree of overlapping which makes it necessary for a candidate to pass thrice in Literary History! He must first pass in Section I. Literary History, which demands among many other things a “knowledge of the editions and forms in which the works of the authors have been published.” Good. No limitation here, and any examiner would, accordingly, be perfectly fair and within his rights in asking for bibliographical details of Cocker's Arithmetic or Buchan's Domestic Medicine. Again, in Section II., Elements of Practical Bibliography, we have a demand for knowledge of book selection, the best books and periodicals, and courses of reading. Here, once more, no limitation, and again an examiner could ask when the first edition in English of the “Arabian Nights” was published,or what is the best edition of Cædmon or the Koran. Finally, in Section V., Library History and Organization, the same requirements are set forth, without any limitation, and candidates are evidently expected to possess a full knowledge of all literature before they can obtain a certificate. All this is very confusing and absurd, and gives point to every complaint which has been uttered against this part of the scheme of examinations. After all, a dilletante, gossipy, pseudo‐critical acquaintance with literary history is of very‐little practical value, compared with exact bibliographical knowledge concerning great authors and their works. For this reason we think the Association should carefully revise its Syllabus, and adopt a better‐proportioned and more equitable distribution of the subject. Section I. certainly requires strict limitation within reasonable bounds, and it ought to be confined to a working knowledge of the chief authors of the world according to a carefully prepared list of names. This should demand knowledge of biographical and critical facts, plus enough of bibliographical detail regarding titles to satisfy an examiner. Failing this, a list of authors, periods, or subjects selected for study and examination should be issued every year before the examination; but a fixed limitation to begin with would, we think, be better.