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Earthworks are the embankments and cuttings that allow a railway to maintain a certain line, level and grade through the landscape. Earth embankments consist of an engineered bank of earth that carries the railway above the natural ground. A cutting is used to carry the railway through ground with a natural level above the line of the railway. Modern (post 1960s) earthworks are carefully engineered to perform well. However, many railways run on earthworks that were constructed over 100 years ago without the use of mechanised plant. The quality of construction of older earthworks was often poor compared with present-day engineering practice. Ageing of the earthwork structures, and the greater demands of heavier and faster trains and climatic change, means that earthworks suffer ultimate and serviceability failures that can present operational difficulties. Older earthworks that fail or do not perform well require maintenance and repair, and sometimes complete replacement. This chapter explores the main engineering considerations for modern earthworks, and the challenges associated with older earthworks including their modes of failure and upgrade and repair.

Institutions of higher learning are traditionally thought to contain the finest analytical brains in the country. But how relevant will the sophisticated techniques of academic research be to the running of college and research libraries in the next few years?

The annual reports of British university libraries all tell similar stories in the period under review: each year was described as a period of financial constraint, with hopes expressed that future years would bring an improvement. This never proved to be the case as on the whole the situation gradually worsened, the only respite being occasional periods of level funding.

From Keith Harris's “Death and transfiguration” — which one University Librarian significantly baulked at reviewing for LR — onward, Atkinsonian thinking has produced extended if confused debate in Britain. Roger Hickman, formerly of Glasgow University Library, looks in perspective at the original UGC report, the debate, and the future.

Libraries undertake mechanisation of serials records both as an end in itself to overcome the stresses of inadequate manual systems, and as a pilot stage towards an integrated overall system of automated processes. American Libraries have been experimenting in this field for some years now in both small and large serials holdings. The total systems approach for dealing with serials is recommended and a wide range of possible outputs of a machine system is described. Automation of accessioning individual parts has also been developed but is not regarded as worthwhile for beginners to attempt. Some writers prefer to concentrate on the catalogue outputs and to leave the administrative areas, subscriptions and binding control, to manual systems. Benefits are widely assumed as the result of an automated system but there is as yet little generalisation of relative costs of these systems within individual libraries and in comparison between libraries. Access to computers that have large memories and that operate at high speeds is considered necessary. The system brought in at San Diego between 1961 and 1964 and that is now being thoroughly revised on account of expansion of holdings and with a view to the use of the LC MARC format is the best developed system under review.

ANDREW Carnegie stands apart from all other library benefactors. No other man has given so much, or given so widely, in the cause of library progress. Although the United Kingdom was not the main recipient of his bounty, it received from him, personally, about £12 million, and considerable sums, in addition, from the Trust which he founded. It might well be expected, therefore, that his name would always be in our minds and that we would remember him more kindly than any other library benefactor. But it is not so.

Recession, inflation, cuts — these and related keywords have dominated the international literature of librarianship in recent years. The academic library community has been implored to change its “mission”, redefining its basic priorities, and substituting service for stock, access strategies for holdings strategies, collection management for collection development, undergraduate needs for postgraduate needs (or vice‐versa), and management skills for professionalism. While the production of prescriptions, frequently radical ones, has become an industry, analysis and, above all, measurement of the underlying problem has been strictly limited. Descriptions of cuts have tended to paint a qualitative rather than a quantitative picture. Statistical analysis of aspects of recession has usually been restricted by time‐span, subject coverage, type of material, or a combination of these.

The Workshop, promoted by the Aslib Computer Applications Group and held within the overall framework of SCOLCAP (Scottish Libraries Cooperative Automation Project), gave invited Scottish librarians an opportunity to discuss the exploitation of computer‐based cataloguing services. Descriptions of the services available from the British Library, Birmingham Libraries Cooperative Mechanisation Project, Oriel Computer Services, Blackwell Bibliographical Services, ICL DILS, and Telecomputing's TeleMARC, were followed by general open discussion and then the discussion of specific topics (input techniques; output techniques; integrated systems; problems of local classification schemes when using MARC records; pre‐publication cataloguing). The report concludes that automation is accepted as beneficial; collaboration can help to cut costs; automation provides an opportunity to define requirements afresh, but new systems should be as flexible as possible.

THE reader should not be misled by James Thompson's title into expecting a history of university libraries chronologically from Alexandria to Atkinson or geographically from Bolivia to Taiwan. The aim of this volume of fifteen essays is more modest and more uncertain. The editor's original idea, one suspects, was for a survey mainly of the last 30 years' developments in British university libraries, with overseas contributions to give the international or comparative dimension. The contributors however—nine from the United Kingdom, three from the United States, one each from Canada and Australasia, and one expatriate Briton from Italy—have interpreted their brief variously. The period covered by each consequently varies considerably. With the somewhat anomalous exception of Italy the countries represented in the “comparative” essays belong exclusively to the Anglo‐Saxon tradition in the universities and their libraries. Despite the limited connotation of “international”, this book may be read as a complement to the recent SCONUL‐German symposium on the current situation in British and German university libraries to gain a somewhat more truly international overview.

The Advisory Committee for L ending Services is comprised mainly of senior, experienced professionals from all types of library. The Committee has wide terms of reference from which several main themes of discussion have emerged: acquisitions policy, service quality, costs and prices, photocopies and copyright. The main acquisitions topics discussed have been the level of material acquired and acquisitions priorities if there were financial restrictions. Speed of service has been discussed several times, and costs and prices have been a matter of special concern. The Committee is a forum through which the Lending Division can learn the needs of the users and the library profession can put forward suggestions, criticisms and views on interlending.