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Recent college graduates weighing job opportunities, persons about to retire, and professional people considering relocation are among the library users who seek descriptions of American cities and towns. Information services librarian Mary Ellen Huls evaluates four books intended to aid in the city selection process.

The consumption of alcoholic beverages has been a social custom throughout the world since the beginning of recorded history. Various wines, beers, and liquors have been a part of almost every culture since ancient times. The modern cocktail originated in Elizabethan England and quickly spread throughout the world. And just as new experiments continually add to the variety of known alcoholic beverages, new books appear describing these drinks and the recipes required to mix them. From yesterday's mulled wine and cider to today's Mai Tai, Margarita, and Tequila Sunrise, bartenders and home party planners refer to these sources when making both traditional and exotic drink recipes. This review is a comparison of thirteen currently available commercial bar guides. While libraries have not traditionally collected in the bar guide genre, every library should have at least one in its collection for use as a reference source or for patrons to use in their homes.

This index accompanies the index that appeared in Reference Services Review 16:4 (1988). As noted in the introduction to that index, the articles in RSR that deal with specific reference titles can be grouped into two categories: those that review specific titles (to a maximum of three) and those that review titles pertinent to a specific subject or discipline. The index in RSR 16:4 covered the first category; it indexed, by title, all titles that had been reviewed in the “Reference Serials” and the “Landmarks of Reference” columns, as well as selected titles from the “Indexes and Indexers,” “Government Publications,” and “Special Feature” columns of the journal.

No milk to be sold from newly‐calved cows, nor until three days after the calf has been removed.

It is apparently becoming the fashion among certain types of self‐sufficient persons in this country to endeavour to bring discredit upon the scientific expert, and—whenever the practice can be indulged in with impunity—to snub and to insult him as far as possible. While this course of procedure is particularly to be observed when the expert is called upon to give evidence in a Court of Law, or to explain technical points before some highly inexpert body, it is not only in these circumstances that he is subjected to misrepresentation, discourtesy, and downright insult. Whenever a case occurs which appears to afford pabulum capable of being twisted into shape for the purpose, certain newspapers— generally, we are glad to say, of the lower class—are invariably ready to publish cheap sneers at science and scientific men, frequently accompanied by insulting suggestions. Other journals of a better class do not indulge in abuse and insulting suggestions, but confine themselves to lecturing the expert or experts with all that assurance which is characteristic of blatant ignorance. Accusations of incompetence and of culpable negligence are common in the gutter Press and in some so‐called Courts of Justice. Even suggestions of bad faith and of failure to honourably discharge duties undertaken are sometimes to be met with. It cannot be supposed that the reason for all this is to be found in the conduct of some very few persons who, in the eyes of all right‐thinking people, have brought discredit on themselves by appearing as “ advocate‐witnesses ” to defend the indefensible. At any rate, the conduct of such individuals affords no justification for tarring everybody with the same brush. The hostile, acidly‐cantankerous, and frequently grossly insolent attitude adopted by certain persons and in certain quarters towards those experts whose duties are of a public character and connected with legal or semi‐legal proceedings, is due to a reason which is not far to seek. It is due, in the first place, to the disgraceful ignorance in regard to scientific matters, even of the most elementary kind, which unhappily pervades all classes of the community;' and, secondly, to that form of jealousy peculiar to the small and mean mind which detests and kicks at anything and everything beyond its power of comprehension. When apparently contradictory evidence is given by scientific witnesses—appearing on opposite sides in a case—it is obviously far more easy and satisfactory to shriek about the “ differing of doctors ” than to admit that one's own miserable ignorance prevents one from seeing the points and from ascertaining whether there is any real contradiction or not. It is far more convenient to suggest that the public analyst, for instance, does not know what he is about, has made some absurd mistake, or has been guilty of scandalous negligence, than to admit that one does not understand his certificate owing to one's own defective education or inferior intellectual capacity.

We've been living in a homogenous world, you know a world centered on and seen through the language perceptions of men. The consequences of this for everything that we take for granted, for all our assumptions are very deep. Feminism, in the sense I use it, is a radical complexity thought in the process of transforming itself. It is a kind of breaking open of not only the oversimplification but of the lies and the silence in which so much of human experience has been cloaked. Too much has been left out, too much has been unmentioned, too much has been made taboo. Too many connections have been disguised or denied. (Interview with Adrienne Rich, Christopher Street, Jan. 1977, pp. 9–16.)

In a circular letter, addressed to local authorities by the Board of Agriculture on December 28, 1901, with reference to the Milk Regulations, the Board suggested that in the absence of any special circumstances indicating the commission of fraud, the local authority might in the first instance call the attention of the vendor to the adverse report of the analyst, and afford him an opportunity of submitting any explanation he might desire to offer on the subject. The Board further expressed the opinion that if the explanation were one which the local authority “felt able” to accept, they might, in the exercise of their discretion, refrain from the institution of proceedings, or withdraw any summons which it might have been necessary to take out in order to avoid the failure of proceedings, at the same time making arrangements for the taking of further samples of the milk supplied, in order that a satisfactory conclusion as to its character might be arrived at. The issue of this letter was obviously a retrograde step, which could only be taken to indicate that the Board were “wobbling” over the milk standards—standards laid down by themselves on the strength of the overwhelming evidence in favour of the institution of those standards as absolute minima, which was laid before the Board's Departmental Milk Committee in 1900. If any proof were wanting that this is a correct view of the case, that proof would be afforded by the issue, on March 27 last, of a further circular letter from the Board, in which the views expressed in the former letter are reiterated, and the study of which can only produce amazement, not unmingled with disgust, among those who have had any experience worthy of the name as regards the working of the Adulteration Acts in this country. Presumably the Regulations were laid down upon due and proper cause shown. By issuing the documents referred to the Board have called the validity of their own Regulations in question, and have suggested that public authorities should base no action upon those Regulations in the absence of other evidence, the nature of which is not stated, indicating “the commission of fraud.” The action of the Board amounts to a smack in the face for the producer of honest and genuine milk such as the purchaser is entitled to get, and can only tend to the introduction of additional loopholes of escape for the dishonest and incompetent.

Inspections have been made during the year at the majority of the principal food importing ports in England and Wales in connection with the administration of the Public Health (Foreign Meat) and the Public Health (Unsound Food) Regulations, 1908.

The causes that have produced the revolting state of affairs in the matter of the “canned” food and meat scandals in the United States are of interest chiefly to the student of social pathology. The fact of the existence of the abuses referred to, however, appeals to us in this country in a different and more practical way, and demands careful consideration.