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Notes the “spectacular” growth of derivatives over the last 20 years and reviews previous research on the risk management policies and practices of corporations. Reports a survey of leading, non‐financial Canadian firms and compares it with previous studies. Shows the differences between respondents using/not using derivatives, the proportions of different types of treasury organization, the importance attached to treasury benchmarking and the integration of risk management policy with strategic plans. Finds that Canada uses derivatives more than Europe or the USA; that most Canadian and European treasuries operate as cost or service centres but are not benchmarked; that although most Canadian and European companies have written risk management policies, these are not integrated with financial/operating plans; that US risk managers are more likely to take positions reflecting their market views; and that in all the countries covered derivative users are larger than non‐users. Believes that most risk management programmes “remain in an introductory stage”.

This series of annual reviews of the literature of special librarianship, which now reaches its fifth year, has been designed to help those most in need of the body of professional experience contained in the literature. Those special librarians or information officers with little or no professional training, who work in small departments far away from more experienced colleagues, have only the recorded knowledge in the literature to help them, but, because of lack of experience, they are often unable to sift from the mass of articles of varying value and character which crowd the pages of the professional journals the comparatively few items likely to be of practical use to them. For their benefit we present a selection of those papers really likely to give them solid help, leaving aside all purely theoretical and polemical articles, however important, and all literature on large libraries, unless they are likely to have applications in smaller ones. To these we add a selection of reference books likely to be of professional use to anyone in information work, including a number which he may wish to know about, even though he does not have them in his own library. The list is not restricted to work published in 1956, but is intended rather to be representative of items received in British libraries during that year. With the growing volume of library literature, the choice of a hundred or so items is bound to be in some respects a personal one, with which many may disagree, especially over the omissions, but it is hoped that all the items included will be of positive value.