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SINCE LEAVING NORWICH, where I had lived and worked for eight years, I have been interested to read Philip Hepworth's periodic bulletins in NLW, the latest being Defeat (NLW, January, pp 7–9). I have come to the conclusion that it must quickly have become a far wickeder and less hospitable place than I remember it. I don't recall the world of librarianship in that fine city being a battlefield, with winners and losers. Indeed, unless I am mistaken, PH was always quick to imply that county library services were very much second rate affairs, and am somewhat surprised that he subsequently became very keen to join one—not like him at all.

VAST NUMBERS of courses and conferences coming up just now—or so it seems; summer must be coming!

British public librarians welcomed the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 with relief: for the first time a government department was made responsible for public libraries and (it was hoped and assumed) norms were going to be established. Communities, Clause 7(i) said, were entitled to “a comprehensive and efficient service” and, innocent as we were, we thought we had gained an advantage over academic and special libraries, which had no such legal warrant for minimum standards. Few would claim that anything of the kind has been achieved.

IF THE Guinness book of records is still watching these columns, I can now tell them that, after all, Mrs Carole Bignell's hope (NLW February p30) that she had established a record by registering her daughter as a library member at the tender age of two weeks must be dashed. Ken Bowden, District Librarian at Bacup, Lanes (where he gets his copy of NLW a little late), writes that not only did one of his neighbours enrol his daughter when she was five days old some years ago, but that Ken's own son entered the world in February 1977 and was enrolled at Bacup on his third day. Any advance on three days?

IF we count the University of Strathclyde School of Librarianship as a “new” school—rather than simply an old school transferred from a College of Commerce to a university—then four “new” schools were established between 1963 and 1964, three of the four in universities and the other closely linked with a university, though remaining independent. All four schools have their special features but I consider the more significant of Belfast's features to be its right, from the outset, to conduct all its own examinations for graduates and non‐graduates. Queen's was also the first British university to provide non‐graduates with courses in librarianship. (Strathclyde is the second.) All successful students are eligible for admission to the Register of Chartered Librarians (ALA) after they have completed the prescribed period of practical experience.

THE HARDCORE staff establishment at the Library Association has been in a positive tizzy of excitement since somebody ‘leaked’ to them a couple of months ago the news that NEW LIBRARY WORLD is to have a new Editor.

YOU WILL HAVE seen, no doubt, recent announcements that my wife and I have sold our book‐publishing business of Clive Bingley Ltd to the Munich‐based firm of international reference publishers, Verlag Dokumentation.

Pleasing and satisfying as it is for the national ego to record that Australian book production continues to expand — and the commercial benefits that accrue therefrom to Austrialian authors, publishers and booksellers are surely swelling the pocket books of a small sector of Australian society — the year under review included three events which are perhaps of greater interest to those who care for Australian literature in its broad sense.

Outlines the ideas incorporated in “development economics” and criticizes the lack of distinction made by some writers between development and economic growth. Asks whether underdeveloped countries really need a different economic theory from Western Europe and suggests that growth (in gross national product) and development (i.e. structural change) are actually complementary processes. Reviews various theories on the causes of underdevelopment (e.g. market failure, government failure) and strategies to cure it (e.g. government intervention, private initiative, market mechanism); and cites some examples of successful positive intervention.

The existence of weak‐form efficiency in the equity markets of the three main Central European transition economies (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) is examined for the period July 1995 through September 2000, using weekly Investable and Comprehensive indexes developed by the International Finance Corporation. Several different approaches are used. Univariate and multivariate tests provide some evidence that stock prices in these exchanges exhibit a random walk, which constitutes evidence for weakform efficiency. This differs in some cases from studies using data for the initial years of these markets. The variance ratio test (VR) of Lo and MacKinlay (1988) yields somewhat mixed results concerning the random‐walk properties of the indexes. A modelcomparison test compares forecasts from a NAÏVE model with ARIMA and GARCH alternatives. Results from the model‐comparison approach are consistent in rejecting the random‐walk hypothesis for the three Central European equity markets.