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IT WAS THE then Duke of Gloucester who, observing the said Mr Gibbon (of Roman Empire fame) writing, said, to quote as accurately as my reference source will allow, ‘Another damned thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon!’

Controversy was aroused by the Whitford Report of 1977. Library professional bodies and others argued strongly against the Report and recommended alternative approaches to cover multiple copying. In respect of photocopying, the Whitford Report recommended ‘blanket licensing to cater for all user requirements for facsimile copies’ with payment of royalties to collecting societies for distribution to copyright owners. The licensing scheme envisaged would remove the right of an individual to the ‘fair dealing’ single copies which are allowed without royalties by the 1956 Copyright Act, though private researchers or students would be permitted to make their own manuscript copies. Owners of coin‐operated machines would require a special licence and responsibility for infringement would be transferred from the individual user to the machine owner.

‘Twas way back in the Festival Year of nineteen fifty‐one

A recent biography claims that Georges Simenon, of Maigret fame, knew more than 1200 prostitutes. A recent psychiatrist is on record as saying that Ian Fleming had to sublimate a paranoid madness by writing about James Bond. We know now that Enid Blyton hated children and didn't get on with her husband, that Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared and reappeared, and that the later Dorothy L Sayers turned against crime fiction because she felt it would corrupt social morals. Authors are a very strange bunch indeed, and their quirks and quaintnesses are legion: here is just a small platoon of gossipy tittle‐tattle, in the interests of clearing the air, not letting go of a good thing, and flying the flag.

THE COMTAT is an area of France which stretches from Avignon to the Mont Ventoux eastward, down to Cavaillon in the south, and north to Vaison‐la‐Romaine. It has not existed as a separate entity since the French Revolution, when it ceased being Papal territory, but the locals have a strong sense of history, and the Comtat has kept its identity. In this small area—about twenty‐five miles across and about forty from north to south—there are three libraries of importance.

Writers in Britain traditionally license a wide range of rights to publishers and broadcasters, often through agents. This tradition, known as the “Anglo‐American” as opposed to the “European” tradition of licensing collectively such rights, has meant individual negotiations, up‐front money and residuals.

What can the schools or Youth Employment Service do for the ambitious child from a poor background? All the sociological evidence suggests that a working‐class background is still a formidable obstacle to upward social mobility. The children seem as aware of this as the social scientists. A London Youth Employment Officer told me that high ambitions expressed by school‐leavers on written questionnaires are almost always replaced by down‐to‐earth job requests in interviews.

MEMBERS of the Aslib Economic and Business Information Group heard something of the objects and activities of Counter Information Services (producers of ‘anti‐reports’ on rtz, British Leyland, etc) in November. The scheduled speaker having had to withdraw at short notice, Mr Lepper manfully stepped in with a straightforward account of the origins of the organisation in a group of ‘like‐minded’ individuals with diverse backgrounds. No particular organisation was behind it, he said, and those backing it at any given time varied with the subject currently under investigation, as did the personnel—staff and volunteers— undertaking the research.