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This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

Of course the predominating subject in British librarianship in the past month was the Manchester Meeting. It was the largest gathering in our recollection, and those who were fortunate enough to attend lived some crowded hours of glorious life. The arrangements showed that the most careful and painstaking labour had gone to their making. The Local Committee and the various librarians in Manchester and the district deserve all possible gratitude, and the Library Association has every reason to congratulate itself upon a conference which ran without fault and which received great and wide publicity.

THE first of the Islington Public Libraries, opened on September 21st, has proved a phenomenal success, and, at the same time, has thrown an interesting light on several modern theories in librarianship. It is, as our readers know, the fust of a system of five libraries, towards the erection of which Dr. Carnegie has given £40,000. The building itself is, as many librarians had an opportunity of judging at the “private view” described in our last number, of an exceedingly well‐lighted and attractive character. The arrangement and accommodation provided present several novel features. On the ground floor, opening from the Central Hall, is the Children's Lending Library and Reading Room. This is stocked with about 3,000 volumes for lending purposes, including French and German juvenile literature, and the reading room portion has seating accommodation for about a hundred children. A representative selection of children's magazines are displayed here, and there are special study‐tables for girls and boys equipped with suitable reference collections. A feature of this room is a striking dado of pictures illustrating scenes from English history, which goes far to make the room interesting and attractive.

IT is with peculiar pleasure that I find myself once more engaged in University Extension work under the presidency of Lord Goschen. Until your well‐remembered tenure of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer drew you from active service with us, my lord, you presided for many years over the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, and therefore, over myself as a humble member of the Council. I trust you have as pleasant memories of us, as obedient and diligent workers, as we have of you as an energetic and enthusiastic chairman. Many changes have come since then. The London Society is a thing of the past, absorbed into my own University, which itself has changed almost beyond recognition. One of the members in your time is now a Bishop, another rules South Africa, you, yourself, no longer sway the House of Commons. If we still existed and had now to hold a sub‐committee in the chamber of our colleague Milner, we should have to travel many hundreds of miles instead of walking round to Duke Street, St. James's, as you will remember we did in those old days.

THIS month the Editor finds himself in rather a quandary. Since the number of staff that may justifiably be employed on a specialized journal of relatively limited circulation is not large, there must inevitably be some overlapping of the various functions involved in its publication, and we therefore have occasion to concern ourselves to some extent with the subscription side of The Library World, as well as with its production. We have been glancing through some of the 1957 issues of the journal, which at that time were appearing some three months later than their publication dates, and noting also the circulation figures of those issues. We then turned to the issues for the first six months of 1959, the second half of Volume 60, and their circulation, which showed an increase of roughly 20% on the earlier figures.

ON the library front generally we have no event to record of what may be called bibliothecal importance for, our readers will readily understand, the induction of Mr. Cashmore as President for 1946, which took place at Birmingham under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor on February 13, happened too late to be included in these pages. An account will, of course, be in our March number. It is, however, a singularly gracious matter that it should have occurred to the Council to hold the ceremony in the second greatest English city, which also happens to be the home and work‐field of the new President. Only rarely does a man receive such honour in his own place, as we have divine warrant for mentioning. Probably in other ways also Mr. Cashmore is an exception, because we have ample evidence of the regard in which Midlanders hold him. The presence of the Lord Mayor was perhaps to be expected when an Association holding the Royal Charter visits his town officially, but we are assured that it is also a tribute to the esteem in which Mr. Cashmore is held.

AT the time of writing the future of the Library Association is still uncertain. The revised bye‐laws, approved by a large majority at Hastings, have been submitted to the Privy Council and a reply is still awaited. This delay and uncertainty must be causing some concern at Chaucer House and indeed, there was evidence of this in last month's issue of the Library Association Record which urged members not to worry if voting papers did not reach them by the statutory date. In other words the office does not really know under which set of bye‐laws it is at the moment operating. This situation ought really to have been foreseen: in the event, it has proved embarrassing and presumptuous to try to operate the re‐organisation proposals as early as January 1962. We have waited so long for re‐organisation: ought we not to have delayed putting it into practice until 1963 when it could perhaps have been done with some semblance of order and dignity?

HAVING outlined the scheme for monotyped catalogues, it only remains to consider it in its financial aspects. At Hampstead tenders were obtained for the same catalogue by monotype, linotype, and by ordinary setting up. It may be mentioned that the catalogue is of royal‐octavo size, in double columns, each being fifteen ems wide and fifty deep. Main entries are in bourgeois; subject‐headings are set (by hand) in clarendon, and the entries under such headings are put in brevier. Notes and contents were specified for either minion or nonpareil, and many lines break into part‐italics. The monotype machine provided all these founts except the two already mentioned—italic numerals and clarendon. We had to do without the former type, but the latter not being numerous are easily carried in as wanted from an ordinary case. Naturally, I cannot give the exact figures of the accepted tender, but it may be stated that in our particular case the cheapest quotation was for linotype work, although there was not much difference between that and monotyping; whilst for both these methods worked out at appreciably less than the quotations for ordinary hand‐work.

IN a system like that of the Public Library, which is yet in the evolutionary stage, it is but natural—as it is also a sign of vitality —that there should be conflicting opinions on many questions of administration. On one general principle, however, librarians are unanimous. It is that the Public Library should be conducted upon sound business methods. Yet, strange to say, although it is generally conceded that sound business principles are essential to success in librarianship, that a lack of business acumen is fatal to efficiency, one of the cardinal points of modern business has been almost altogether overlooked. Systematic advertising, the key‐note of modern business, which forms the chief difference between the new methods and the old, is the point to which we refer. That advertisement, the real secret of success, has been overlooked, is not wholly the result of accident, but is rather due to the fact that many librarians are haunted by a fear of degrading their profession by employing this means of reaching the public. They fear that, if they advertise, they may be classed with the vendors of Black's Pills or Green's Ointment; but, after all, the Public Library is a business institution—it may not be a commercial institution, but it is certainly a business one. It is here—if we may be allowed a short digression to illustrate our point—that British and American libraries differ so radically. The successful American librarian is not a librarian as we know one. He is a business man. Granted that it is a part of his business to know the ins and outs of technical librarianship; yet, unlike his British contemporary, he does not consider it his whole business. He has a trained staff to whom he can leave the technical detail, while he devotes himself to running the library on the most approved business lines. The result has been that, instead of the American librarian being degraded, he has risen very highly in the estimation of the public. And if the status of the American librarian can thus be raised, why not that of the British? It is not necessary to use startling handbills or aggressive posters to achieve the desired end. It is absolutely true that in many towns possessing excellent and old‐established libraries, there is a large percentage of the population to which the library is a dead letter, or is altogether unknown. On examining the figures in the Annotated Syllabus, which have been compiled from the returns of most British libraries, we find that the percentage of possible readers is fifty, while the percentage of actual readers is twenty. This leaves the large percentage of thirty, representing people who must be reached through advertising.