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THE BOUNDARIES have been set now and re‐organisation has come upon the public library world at its set date, approaching, occurring and passing on, like a lunar eclipse.

I WAS standing in a queue at the till in a department store in London, recently, when a woman in front of me, apparently unprovoked, showered racial abuse over the heads of a crowd of lunchtime shoppers. She started with the 20th‐century cliché, ‘They should all be sent back where they came from!’, she continued by accusing the despised minority of all manner of depravity and degeneracy, and climaxed with a comparison between Black Britons and jungle beasts—to the latter's advantage.

BECAUSE national governments will not assist finance company research outside their own borders, the only machinery for R & D between firms in the EEC lies with the multinationals. Now EUROPMI, the federation of medium and small firms is trying to foster more R & D co‐operation within the community. When British small firms participate, it would be satisfying to think that they had the backing of their local library co‐operative, to support them with ready provision of research documentation. EUROPMI are at 66a rue Joseph II, 1040 Brussels.

The District Library at Queen Mary's University Hospital, Roehampton provides a comprehensive service to all staff employed by the National Health Service within the boundaries of Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton Health Authority. In 1987 the library moved into a new building which is shared with the postgraduate medical centre. The stock consists of approximately 3000 books and 180 current journal titles. There is one full‐time librarian and at the time of buying BookshelF‐PC only one assistant for 18 hours a week. There is an annual issue of books of about 3000 and it was becoming increasingly difficult to control the stock. Being so short staffed meant that activities other than stock control, such as inter‐library loans and literature searching took precedence. Overdues were issued very infrequently, and since the readers filled in their own issue slips it was often impossible to match the slip to a book or a reader. There was also no way of keeping a check on readers who were leaving the hospital (and with junior doctors staying only six months, and medical students only six weeks this was important), nor readers who had not completed membership forms before borrowing books. The District Library is part of a cooperative network of libraries within the South West Thames (SWT) Region and already contributed to the union catalogue of books held on the regional database. This database is administered from the SWT Regional Library Service at Guildford using the INMAGIC software; individual library records are sent to Guildford where they are added to the database. Participating libraries receive back a disc to update their own local database of stock and a microfiche copy of the whole database.

PROMPTLY UPON the ending of the seemingly interminable Christmas/New Year holiday—I just had to go back to work between the two, because another plate of cold‐turkey‐plus‐cold‐Xmas‐pud would have driven me insane—there landed upon my desk the first issue of the LAR vacancies supplement, a sheet of job advertisements which is to be issued fortnightly while publication of the Times literary supplement Is suspended, and may even be continued thereafter on a permanent basis if demand warrants.

I was editor of the City Press weekly newspaper from 1966 to 1975. From 1970 I also produced for BBC sound radio a daily report on the city. For 5 years I did daily pieces for BBC Radio London; and for two years in addition I did a spot on the Stock Exchange and the financial news of the day for the ‘P.M.’ programme at 5.50. On top of this, at City Press we briefed both BBC Radio London and ‘The World at One’ on any exciting City events which took place in the morning, and often broadcast about them.

THE GENTLEMAN who tipped me off about the Ridgmount Street Arrest, on which I commented in August (p151), tells me he cannot find out further how the matter progresses or when it may come to trial. Not being on the staff there, he is not, of course, in close touch; I mention this because the LA frequently reveals an indiscreet interest in my private gossip‐lines to the profession, which do—they may learn with surprise—stretch to both of the principal genders, and include many not on the association's payroll.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this paper is to perform a critical analysis of the relationship between small- and medium-sized social enterprises (SMSEs) and banks. Based on the conceptual framework for the analysis of SME’s credit availability developed by Berger and Udell (2006), this study aims to contribute to the current debate in two ways: first, outlining the characteristics of the lending technologies currently used by banks and financial institutions to evaluate SMSEs when they apply for credit; and second, discussing, based on the results of the empirical analysis, the coherence of these systems from the social ecosystem perspective and identifying areas for possible improvement.

The paper develops a conceptual framework based on the model proposed by Berger and Udell (2006), which defines the characteristics of lending technologies that banks use to evaluate SMEs, and applies it to the case of SMSEs. To study the interplay of these lending technologies, the empirical analysis is based on a case study of five Italian banks. Data are collected from multiple sources to capture key dimensions of the problems analyzed.

The paper provides empirical insight about the relationship between SMSEs and banks. The Italian case shows that the current lending infrastructure must be revised to support SMSE credit availability, and government policies affect the national financial institution structure. The relationship between SMSEs and Italian banks remains underdeveloped.

The research supports the scaling up of social business.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how social enterprises credit access can be enabled.

Members will have heard with regret of the death, on Friday 6th May, of Miss Irene Shrigley, MA, who had been actively associated with Aslib for the past eighteen years. The following tribute is sent by Mrs Stowell, Chairman of the Economics Group, and a close personal friend of the late Miss Shrigley: