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THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S worsening financial position is a matter of general concern, and any constructive suggestions will no doubt be helpful to the Honorary Treasurer and others who plan our finances. The present Library Association structure is workable in practice, but it is becoming increasingly expensive to maintain, and a little thought begins to show the possibilities of economy, without any loss of effectiveness. The most important associated factor at the present time is the possibility of drastic local government reorganisation in 1974, only one year after the earliest date when Library Association subscriptions can be increased. The effect of this reorganisation, as at present proposed, on Library Association structure, needs to be borne in mind.

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

Entitlement persists on the basis of race, gender, age, sexuality, language and able-bodiedness, despite all efforts to eradicate it – and abetted by some efforts to preserve it. Compounding this, as teachers, it is easy for us to become habituated to possessing the only knowledge of value in the room. This chapter takes place against a backdrop of movements such as Black Lives Matter, and its Australian manifestation, Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Me Too movement, on women's workplace rights and freedoms, movements against homophobia and transphobia, and quests for equality of accessibility. In particular, we explore the notion that Australia is a haunted nation – one that has not confronted its colonial past or properly reconciled with its first peoples and their descendants. Just as the nation needs to come to terms with its past, our conversations for this chapter will confront us with our own pasts and differing subjectivities. We make use here of our own stories in challenging entitlement, in ourselves and others.

IF YOU WERE to ask why ‘the treatment’ for (the London Borough of) Sutton's new central library, there are two reason's. First, Sutton's Chief, Roy Smith, was on like a flash to my sloppy discourtesy in neither acknowledging his invitation to the official opening in December nor turning up for it, and gave half a day of his time last month instead to take me round; second, in Mr Smith's own words, ‘This is one of the most interesting new libraries to come out of public librarianship for a long time’, and I am disposed to agree with him.

Education tends to colonize. Established authorities (teachers, curricula, and examinations) instruct newcomers, extending conditional membership. This presents a dilemma for teachers seeking to instill in their students habits of critical, creative, and lateral thinking. In Australia as elsewhere, blueprint educational documents embody lofty aspirational statements of inclusion and investment in people and their potential. Yoked to this is a regime routinely imposing high-stakes basic-skills testing on school students, with increasingly constrictive ways of doing, while privileging competition over collaboration. This chapter explores more informal, organic learning. This self-study narrative inquiry explores my career in terms of a struggle to be my most evolved, enlightened self, as opposed to a small-minded, small-hearted mini-me. To balance this, I examine responsible autonomy (including my own), rather than freedom. This chapter also explores investment in humans, with the reasonable expectation of a return on that investment. It draws and reflects upon events in or impacting my hometown, Sydney, Australia, focusing largely on WorldPride, the Women's World Cup, and a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, all of which took place as I compiled this chapter. Accordingly, the narrative focuses primarily on sexuality, gender, and race. I explore the capacity of my surroundings to teach me and my capacity to learn from my surroundings. The findings and discussion comprise diary-type entries of significant events and their implications for (my) excessive entitlement. The final section of this chapter reviews what and how I have learned.

AS PART of its campaign against adult illiteracy, which is outlined in a statement being sent to all public libraries in the UK, the Library Association has published a useful list of reading schemes and other materials for the new reader. New readers start here (LA, 50p) is an evaluative list of materials currently available, including books, games and kits.

COMPARISON of the amount and the variation between 1975/76 and 1976/77 of public library bookfunds is made possible by the Libtrad summary which was published in the Bookseller in mid‐April. It is encouraging to see that although there is a fair number of falls and no‐changes, many chiefs have been successful in extracting higher book‐funds from their authorities—no mean achievement in a year which has seen a pretty general standstill in rate demands. Essex is up by no less than 30%, and the percentage increases are in double figures in not a few cases. My own home borough is up by exactly one‐third, though it still only reaches the miserly total of £115,000 for a population of 200,000—well down the per capita league for London boroughs.

IT REALLY IS very hard to have one's kindliest intentions kicked back into one's teeth.

IT IS PERHAPS with wry understatement that the recent public declaration by the Library Association Council on the subject of library expenditure includes the remark that ‘The Library Association does not claim that libraries should be exempt from the economies which must now be borne by all’, for it has been manifestly apparent, since some dim realisation of national economic crisis first began to seep into the quasi‐cerebral thought processes of those who conduct government and local government, that the first neck upon which the sharpness of the axe would be tested has been library services everywhere.

‘I'M MINERVA. ASK ME. Out goes the image of the bespectacled, disapproving librarian, the woman who makes you feel frivolous for taking out nothing more weighty than philosophy. In comes the newstyle library hostess, smart, alluring, shaped for confidences.