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One of the positive developments created by an era of grim economics in industry at large, is a phenomenally enhanced awareness of the need to be market rather than product driven. Financial pressure has forced companies and organisations urgently to seek ways and means to broaden and deepen their customer bases. Out of this has arisen not only the need to reassess market targeting. It has also led to a need to record, track and respond to the business and human needs of their potential customers. This emphasises the importance of two parallel activities: Continually finding new target markets, and developing sophistication in client contact skills.

Before this great innovation assaults the long‐suffering British public in mind and matter, in the retailer's cash register and the spender's pocket, a brief comparison between the present coinage and the promised decimal one might not be amiss. The £sd system has its faults and understandably is difficult for the foreigner, but no more so than the language and the weather. Like many things British it is so haphazard: why should there be 240 pennies to the pound? Why 12 pennies to the shilling? One thing, however, about this awkward currency is that it is amazingly well‐adapted to price variations at the lower level, and most commodities are in this range. Whether prices have adapted themselves to the flexibility of the coinage or the other way round is immaterial but the centuries have well and truly married the two. As a lowly coin such as the farthing has ceased to have commercial use with the falling value of money, it has disappeared and its place has been taken by the next larger, the halfpenny and then by the penny, and this must surely be the one great advantage of the £sd system.

The following report was brought up by Dr. P. Brouardel, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, President of the Commission, and was submitted for the approval of the Congress:

Publication of the Aslib Year Book is to be discontinued. A full and up‐to‐date list of Aslib members will be published in 1963.

Fumes, grit, dust, dirt—all have long been recognized as occupational hazards, their seriousness depending on their nature and how they assail the human body, by ingestion, absorption, inhalation, the last being considered the most likely to cause permanent damage. It would not be an exaggeration to state that National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) provisions, now contained in the Social Security Act, 1975, with all the regulations made to implement the law, had their birth in compensating victims of lung disease from inhalation of dust. Over the years, the range of recognized dust disease, prescribed under regulations, has grown, but there are other recognized risks to human life and health from dusts of various kinds, produced not from the manufacturing, mining and quarrying, &c. industries; but from a number of areas where it can contaminate and constitute a hazard to vulnerable products and persons. An early intervention by legislation concerned exposed foods, e.g. uncovered meat on open shop fronts, to dust and in narrow streets, mud splashed from road surfaces. The composition of dust varies with its sources—external, atmospheric, seasonal or interior sources, uses and occupations, comings and goings, and in particular, the standards of cleaning and, where necessary, precautions to prevent dust accumulation. One area for long under constant scrutiny and a subject of considerable research is the interior of hospital wards, treatment rooms and operating theatres.

September TUE.8. Aslib Chemical Group/Technical Translation Group Joint Evening Meeting. ‘Technical translations: meeting the need’, by Paul H. Scott (BP Research). Aslib. 5 for 5.30 p.m.

It was a rough crossing and the last thing we wished to be reminded of was food. The word had an almost repulsive sound. The stomach, however, is a long‐suffering organ. The cruel writhings of its muscle layers, at loggerheads with each other, gradually ceased and the organ returned to its pre‐crossing quiescence.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

A case which because of its far‐reaching implications attracted considerable interest (see report on p. 91) was recently heard at Highgate. It was alleged that ice lollies were “unfit for human consumption” because of the temperature at which they were sold. Because the lollies were too cold, one stuck to a boy's lips and chin and another to a boy's tongue, peeling off skin when they were removed. The prosecution's case was that on the evidence, the vendors should be convicted of selling food unfit for human consumption, but the magistrates did not accept this contention and dismissed the case. The mishap was an unfortunate one, and Counsel's submissions for the defence notwith‐standing, it is difficult to see how the case could have been decided otherwise. There was never any suggestion of inferior ingredients being used in the manufacture of the lollies.