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Early in 1980, a survey was made to determine the degree of overlap between each of seven major lists of serials used in checking requests for serial titles not held by the British Library Lending Division. Previously reported surveys have examined what happens to serial requests satisfied outside the Lending Division, but have not distinguished between requests for which the Lending Division holds other issues of the serial in question and requests for titles the Lending Division does not hold at all. The majority of requests not satisfied from Lending Division stock are in the former category. However, failures due to absence of titles require a similar number of staff, because the likelihood of finding a location is less in such cases, and because more work is required to verify the titles.

Library of Congress update The Urgent Supplemental Appropriations Bill for FY 1986 signed into law in July by Ronald Reagan contained an appropriation of $867 000 for the Library of Congress. This means that the general reading room is able to restore evening and weekend hours. The ten “Books Not Bombs” people who first protested the closure spent several weeks in July in a courtroom trial, where testimony was given by the Librarian of Congress and other officials. Since the “freedom readers”; as they are called in a newspaper article, face jail and/or a fine, perhaps appreciative scholars and researchers should start a fund to help defray the costs of their protest.

In a recent article in Interlending Review on the use of serials at the British Library Lending Division it is stated that: ‘Lists of titles in rank order of use have been produced from both the 1980 and 1975 surveys. The amount of overlap between the top titles on each list is not great, and decreases as the number of titles increases. Of the top 5,000 titles on each list, only 2,591 (52%) are common to both lists.’ The conclusion was drawn that: ‘This inconsistency of rank lists overtime sheds doubt on the continuing value of core lists of serials, which might decrease substantially in validity over a relatively short period.’ At first sight the conclusion seems justified; for example, only 60% of titles occur in the first 100 on both occasions. Let us, however, look at the overlap in more detail.

IFLA's Universal Availability of Publications programme is concerned with highlighting and solving problems concerned with the widest possible availability of recorded knowledge. Its concern includes the improvement of access to grey literature (material not available through normal bookselling channels) at both national and international levels. At the national level centralization linking bibliographic control and availability is advocated. A centralized approach has already been adopted in the UK where the British Library Lending Division has developed a fairly comprehensive collection of report literature, translations, theses, conference proceedings and back up documents to synopsis journals etc. Through its monthly publication, British Reports Translations and Theses, it is also involved with the bibliographic control of grey literature.

The factories are instructed as to what kinds of pack they are to produce, and their product is controlled by samples sent at specified times to the research laboratory. With greater and less attention to detailed steps the whole of agriculture and the food industry in Italy is so controlled. In Germany can be noted as an example the development on a large scale of the fishing industry in the Baltic—the scrapping of the privately‐owned small fishing boats in that sea—the launching of large vessels with their factory vessels in attendance— the keenness with which every step in the development of fish preservation has been followed—the official tests on such methods as the American Birdseye Quick Freezing, the German Heckerman process, the English Z process, and the building and the equipping of the large factories where the whole of the waste fish products are worked up into edible and useful products. This last is the keynote of the German system : waste nothing. The recovery of waste fats has been practised in Germany in an intensive fashion for several years. There have been in Germany other changes of a more subtle character, and not so obvious to the outside world. The food laws of Germany were such that the nation could be justly proud of them, but for some time there has been a distinct slackening of the control—as for example in the use of preservatives. These were strictly limited in kind and number—but even before the present phase the blind eye of the official had often been turned towards the use of disallowed preservatives and I am given to understand that certain chemicals, erstwhile forbidden, can now be used officially. It may be policy for our Ministry of Health to aid in the present critical situation by relaxing some of the regulations at present in force. Those preservatives to be released would not in any way lower the nutritional value of the foods, nor would there be allowed any of those preservatives against which a case has been made in respect of their physiological action. The impetus given to research work by totalitarian states should be an inspiration to the democracies. One of the first things the Italian Government took in hand after their conquest of Abyssinia was a scientific survey of the natural products of the country. A recent issue of Nature states that the first number of a new official Italian journal contains the results of the first three years' work on the fish of the inland waters of the former Ethiopia. As Nature points out, the far greater areas of British Eastern Africa have been subjected simply to spasmodic and short‐termed scientific examinations, chiefly resulting from the initiative of private individuals or of institutions. It is to be stressed, however, that the stimulus given to scientific studies of food production and manufacture both in Germany and Italy was activated by abnormal conditions. In neither the one nor the other can it be said that the development was a natural one—in both it was originated by the desire of the government to make the country as self‐sufficient as possible in case of war, and therefore the whole idea was abnormal and biased. In this country and in the United States the development has followed much sounder lines. In this country the standard of living has become remarkably high, although perhaps somewhat lop‐sided. One might quote the example of bread. The loaf as we know it to‐day is made almost wholly from wheat flour, derived from that portion of the wheat kernel which gives the whitest flour. The Ministry of Health has, I think, been very properly concerned to maintain our high standard and has looked with disfavour on flours which, in order to simulate that particular white portion of the wheat grain, have been bleached. America is the only other country in the world where the people demand white loaves of such delicate and even texture. There much be something very attractive to the public in this type of loaf: some of us remember the fiasco of the standard bread, and members of the bakery trade know what a small proportion of their sales are concerned with brown loaves. The general character of the bread in continental European countries is very different; even the delightful loaves of France, generally well baked, are dark in comparison, although in no sense “ brown ” or “ whole‐meal.” In most countries flours other than wheat are incorporated. We may have to incorporate potato‐flour, but if this is done in any large quantity the resultant loaf has an entirely different texture. It is obvious that the dividing line between the scope of agriculture and that of the food industry is essentially ill‐defined. The importance, however, of the pre‐industrial treatment is such that it is really impossible to dissociate the scientific work of the agriculturalist from that of the industrialist. To quote examples :— Under the aegis of the Food Investigation Board a study has been made of the production of bacon in this country, with remarkably successful results to the farmer, to the bacon‐curer and to the consumer. Similarly the extensive series of experiments carried out by the Food Investigation Board on the storage of fruit has had great success, and the economic effect on the fruit trade, not only here, but also in the Dominions and Colonies cannot be estimated at the moment. An agricultural study of great importance to the housewife was undertaken by the Potato Marketing Board; this was concerned with the blackening of potatoes and was unfortunately not concluded when the war brought a sudden halt to the work. The problem of obtaining “ figures ” for characteristics of food is the most difficult with which the chemist has to deal. There is no method by which palatability can be registered, for it is compounded of many factors which themselves are not possible of measurement. Flavour, appearance and edibility are all concerned. It is comparatively simple to connect softness on the palate of a cream centre of a chocolate with the size of the grain of the sugar crystals, or the smoothness of an ice cream with the size of the ice‐crystals, but to express the texture of a cake in terms measuring the reaction of the palate, or the toughness or tenderness of a beef‐steak are far more difficult. This last example has been considered in some detail. Much work has been done at the Low Temperature Station at Cambridge on methods of judging the tenderness of meat. There is no simple method of reproducing the complicated movement of the jaws in mastication—but the consumer of the steak judges the tenderness by the reactions of his jaws to the muscle fibre, and the problem is complicated by the fact that the judgment of a person with a denture is entirely different from that of a person with his natural teeth; it has been estimated, for example, that the pressure which can be applied during mastication is only, even by those with the most perfect denture, one tenth that of normal. A somewhat complicated instrument has been designed and constructed at the Research Station at Karlsruhe in order to make possible investigations on the problem of the toughness of meat. Sufficient data have not yet been accumulated to pass judgment on its efficiency but it appears to be the most satisfactory attempt yet made to enable definite measurements of the toughness of meat to be determined. These are but examples of the general trend of scientific work in food production and manufacture, examples of the range of subjects and problems being attacked with an ever increasing vigour.

Enabling entrepreneurial creativity is a key aim of UK Government; however, there is a dearth of constructively aligned models of teaching and assessment. This paper aims to introduce design‐based pedagogies and to highlight cognitive approaches that develop innovative mindsets; it seeks to indicate their propensity for adoption in entrepreneurship education.

A literature review plus empirical evidence from pedagogical approaches developed through the extended collaboration of specialists in creative design, financial management and brain‐related occupational therapy inform this paper.

Neuroimaging studies challenge the thesis that learning for creative output is entirely algorithmic; diverse ideas occur when the brain's right cortex has opportunity to bring its findings to the fore, usually via “relaxed cognition”. Design‐based entrepreneurship pedagogies embed these concepts.

The paper offers initial insights into how these understandings can be applied in transdisciplinary entrepreneurship‐education contexts.

Predicable assessment outcomes equal predictable students; which needs more working practices, behaviours and cultural environments that encourage innovation. Any educational environment that excludes these understandings is inherently flawed.

The case study/project “Free time is thinking time” implies that traditional 9‐5 working practices are inappropriate for creative mindsets.

This paper links emerging bodies of evidence; it provides a first response to calls for a more creative enterprise curriculum and offers constructively aligned assessment.

Cryptocurrency arose, and grew in popularity, following the financial crisis of 2008 built upon a promise of decentralizing money and payments. An examination of the history of money and banking in the United States demonstrates that stable money benefits from strict controls and commitments by a centralized government through chartering restrictions and a broad safety net, rather than decentralization. In addition, financial crises happen when the government allows money creation to occur outside of official channels. The US central bank is then forced into a policy of supporting a range of money-like assets in order to maintain a grip on monetary policy and some semblance of financial stability.

In addition, this chapter argues that cryptocurrency as a form of shadow money shares many of the problematic attributes of both the privately issued bank notes that created instability during the “free banking” era and the “shadow banking” activities that contributed to the 2008 crisis. In this sense, rather than being a novel and disruptive idea, cryptocurrency replicates many of the systemically destabilizing aspects of privately issued money and money-like instruments.

This chapter proposes that, rather than allowing a new, digital “free banking” era to emerge, there are better alternatives. Specifically, it argues that the Federal Reserve (Fed) should use its tools to improve public payment systems, enact robust utility-like regulations for private digital currencies and limit the likelihood of bubbles using prudential measures.

Financial technology or FinTech companies are relatively new players in the market. The ideas of alternative options to banks were widely discussed since October 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” Since this topic is not yet thoroughly studied and investigated, it especially appeals to the author to elaborate on that topic and follow the evolution and development of FinTech as well as its influence over banks. Without no doubt there will be brought up probable limitations and challenges that could decelerate the advancement of fresh alternative to traditional banking. The development of technology in the financial sector has led to the formation of a new financial and technological ecosystem. Revolutionary innovations in the field of financial services arise in the interaction of both organizations among themselves and organizations with customers. In the interaction between organizations, new companies appear that develop and offer technologies in the field of payment services at a lower price and on more favorable terms, unlike financial organizations.