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The London and South‐Eastern Library Region (LASER) facilitates interlibrary lending in London and South East England. It has access to some 40 million volumes and through its union catalogues is responsible for 215,000 Interlending requests per annum. This paper describes the background to the automation of LASER'S referral activity. It also gives details of the mini‐computer system which was eventually installed and in which over 1,000,000 titles are now recorded. Careful monitoring over the last two years has demonstrated a number of advantages over the manual system which preceded it. Bibliographical checking has been reduced by 25% and cost containment has exceeded expectations. The next stage in LASER'S development will be the provision of on‐line access to a number of the Bureau's main users.

The conversion of large files of catalogue information requires, in addition to the manpower for keypunching, a considerable amount of preediting by professional staff. An experiment in machine editing and tagging of unedited but structured catalogue information demonstrated the possibility of eliminating professional effort from a large majority of the records.

A brief history of the libraries in Oxford University is given, followed by a review of progress towards comprehensive library automation from the early 1960s. This includes a description of the retrospective conversion of the Bodleian Pre‐1920 Catalogue, the OCLC LS2000 pilot project, and the present university‐wide IBM DOBIS/LIBIS system. The process of selecting, installing and modifying this system is described in more detail.

The Bodleian Library has undertaken, not as an experiment, but on a full production basis for the next five years, the conversion of its pre‐1920 catalogue entries to machine readable records structured for handling by computer. The poor state of the public catalogue of its pre‐1920 books and the uncompleted revision of the library staff's copy of that catalogue presented a situation to which some rapid solution was essential, and it seemed likely that the solution might be found in computer processing.

The history of the Bodleian Library's Pre‐1920 Catalogue of Printed Books is given, with particular emphasis on the developments commencing with computerisation from 1967. The further development and enhancement of the Catalogue in preparation for its publication as a CD‐ROM is described, together with an outline of its Windows interface and the searching options.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by Tony McSean, Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription to VINE is £17 per annum and the period runs from January to December.

From whichever point of view we consider it, Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries is a remarkable work. Its two volumes provide a total of two thousand pages of text It is at once a history of libraries—and a history on a world scale—and a manual of library administration. It can, of course, be criticised on that score. Would it not have been better to have issued the history separately, in two still sizeable volumes, and to have presented the practical manual as a separate work? As published by Trubner in 1859 the manual occupies the second half of the second volume which itself consists of rather more than 1,100 pages. But to Edwards the history and the administration were by no means so clearly divisible. The practical chapter on book‐binding, for example, approaches the subject historically; prints a small selection of Roger Payne's bills; and is illustrated, inter alia, with lithographs of sixteenth century bindings.

A survey of some means—mostly photographic or mechanised—of converting a large card catalogue to book form. Details are those calculated for the Main Library catalogues at Birmingham University.

Civil engineering index ‐ The latest major file of trade catalogues in microform to be published is ‘Construction and civil engineering index’ by Technical Indexes Ltd (NLW February 1982). Although some of us are more familiar with the very efficient ti cartridge catalogues, this new index comes on microfiche on a reduction of 24x. The file is updated quarterly, contains over 4000 product references, and is classified by the CI/sfB—that is the widely used construction industry classification imported in the early 'sixties by the Royal Institute of British Architects from Sweden; the ‘sfB’ comes from the Swedish ‘Samar Betskommitten Sör Byggnadsfragor’ which is the name of the committee set up in Sweden in 1947 to produce the scheme. Technical Indexes have published a brochure giving further details of the index and catalogues. The total annual cost of the service is about £1500, but it is possible to purchase particular sections separately. For further information, contact Kevin Brennan, Technical Indexes Ltd, Willoughby Road, Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 4DW, tel 034426311, tx 849207.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by Tony McSean, Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily relect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription to VINE is £10 per year and the subscription period runs from January to December.