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When his first full‐length book Libraries and cultural change, was published, Ronald Benge stepped forward as the compulsive conscience of our time, a happy worrier about virtually all things in heaven or hell, libraries providing a convenient locus for his professional and personal experience. Three further books written by him have been essentially a continuation of the same anxious questioning about the world in which he and his profession stand. There seems no reason why the tetralogy completed to date, Libraries and cultural change (1970); Communication and identity (1972); Cultural crisis and libraries in the Third World (1980) and the last, here reviewed, Confessions of a lapsed librarian. should not continue further as from his unquiet retirement in Barcelona he surveys the condition of his profession.

MR RONALD BENGE, distinguished penseur, tutor in philosophy both classical and homespun, self‐confessed ‘lapsed librarian’ and ‘detached insider’ has written a book about himself—a point which it is desirable to state because not all autobiographies are in truth about their subjects—and since more or less everyone within his peripatetic physical and spiritual ambits has heard rumours for some years that this oeuvre was in progress, there will be general relief that it has now appeared in published form (Confessions of a lapsed librarian, Scarecrow Press 1984, $16; UK, Bailey Bros), so that we can all look up our own names in the index and, perhaps, elsewhere. (I may say at once that the index itself is a predictable short masterpiece of oblique priorities. I have an entry all to myself, as does Rudyard Kipling, but luminaries such as Edward Dudley, Frank Hogg and Philip Sewell appear only under the entry ‘Colleagues’, while others like Sergeant Bruce Copp aren't indexed at all, which is frightfully irritating because one would love to try to learn more about Ronald's near half‐century friendship with that delightful man other than by wading—in vain—through every word of the text with such an end in view.)

I HAVE had a soft spot for the Bibliotheca Britannica ever since Ronald Benge recounted to us, his students of historical bibliography at the Northwestern Polytechnic, the tribulations of the compiler, Dr Robert Watt, during the final stages of that great work.

LOOKING BACKWARDS IN 1986 That this editorial is almost wholly serious must not be taken as heralding a change in the editorial tone of voice for 1986. Normal demotic style will resume in February.

NORMAN ROBERTS, Senior Lecturer at Sheffield University school of librarianship, spent three weeks in Nigeria in November/December, running a British Council‐sponsored library management seminar at Ibadan University Department of Library Studies. Other travellers to Nigeria a week or two earlier were K C Harrison and Hugh Barry, for the inaugural meeting of the Commonwealth Library Association in Lagos. A visitor of longer standing, Ronald Benge, was due back at College of Librarianship Wales before Christmas, after spending last term as visiting Reader at Ahmadu Bello University Department of Librarianship in Zaria, northern Nigeria.

Unless LR editorial policies have changed, I believe that it will be appropriate to make a contribution based on personal experience which, in my case, includes fourteen years spent overseas. These notes, therefore, if they fall within a subject field at all can be regarded as comparative librarianship, the comparison being mainly with Britain. What, I have asked myself, are the main areas of difference in our teaching experiences? I am writing as an expatriate in post‐independence countries who has been responsible for setting up library schools.

IT SEEMS THAT librarians, in common with many other forms of mankind, do not learn from history. One of the more interesting sessions of the recent La Public Librarians' Conference in Aberdeen dealt with the need for many more librarians in school libraries, and the kind of qualifications which would best fit them for the work. Clearly, professional training in librarianship and knowledge of the educational process are both relevant and valuable.

‘EVERY patron of a public library is an individual endowed with free choice. But to what extent is the public library acting as an effective neutraliser of individuality?’

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!’

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