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US librarians and library supporters have very little to lift their spirits these days. Reading the library press is a very depressing pastime. The news is wide‐scale cuts in library funding at all levels of government as fiscal conservatives hold the power in the congress and in state governments.

The following annotated bibliography of materials on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources covers publications from 1980. Several items from 1979 were included because information about them had not been available in time for the 1980 listing. Some entries were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the item.

On its stated terms as “a descriptive conspectus” of the 550 titles registered in British Library publications 1988, together with the many newsletters and priced and unpriced ephemeral literature emanating from its multifarious services and agencies, this careful compilation will no doubt fulfil a need for students and teachers of librarianship and information science here and abroad. There is a select bibliography of two pages and a 28‐page index. Proof reading is excellent, just a few slips, e.g. the Dainton Committee was set up in 1967 not 1957, IOLR had c.400,00 books ands serials, not 4 million.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

The Public Health (Meat) Regulations, 1924 have at last been replaced. At the time of their making, they were hailed as a great advance towards an adequate meat inspection service; that they have lasted for almost forty years is not an indication, however, of their success in meeting the needs of the situation. They were too much of a compromise with vested interests; the great obstacle was the private slaughterhouse and complete freedom of action by the butcher. Notices and hours of slaughter and removal of carcases were all designed to help the butcher and not the inspector. In districts with many private slaughterhouses, widely scattered, they made the work of an inspector honestly trying to inspect all animals slaughtered very hard indeed. These difficulties made certain that inspection at the time of slaughter or immediately after of all animals slaughtered for food could only be practicable in the larger centres.