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This paper details a free image analysis and software development environment for machine vision application development. The environment provides high‐level access to over 300 image manipulation, processing and analysis algorithms through a well‐defined and easy to use graphical interface. Users can extend the core library using the developer's interface via a plug‐in which features automatic source code generation, compilation with full error feedback and dynamic algorithm updates. Also discusses key issues associated with the environment and outline the advantages in adopting such a system for machine vision application development.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

This paper aims to show how the concept of “Bibliography” has changed since the late nineteenth century. It proposes discussing what “Bibliography” did and did not include in the various stages of its development; how the study of “Bibliography” moved from the UK to the USA; how it narrowed down from an originally much wider concept and how, under the influence of French historians over the past three decades, it has widened out again, reaching a better synthesis of the study of books as material objects with the study of the history of the book.

A discussion and critical assessment of the writings of the major main stream bibliographers and book historians is presented.

From an original (nineteenth century) emphasis on enumerative bibliography, the concept of “Bibliography” widened out (from the end of the nineteenth century) to include historical bibliography and the study of books as material objects; in the mid‐twentieth century this wider approach narrowed down, as a consequence of much emphasis being placed on descriptive, analytical, critical and textual bibliography. Under influence of French book historians the emphasis has changed again and the value of a wider historical approach and greater inclusivity in subjects has brought the study of historical bibliography and that of the history of the book much closer together.

This research looks only at Western Europe and the USA.

Practical implications of this study are: the widening‐out of the subject to include all physical manifestations of the book; the dimension of creative reading; and the emphasis on the importance of artifactual evidence for correct establishment and interpretation of texts has had implications for preservation.

This paper is a critical assessment of the literature, drawing the logical consequences of its findings. It presents an argument for the inclusion of all aspects of the book as a physical object, as well as for the importance of using all available evidence.

IN The verdict of you all, Rupert Croft‐Cooke has some uncomplimentary things to say about novel readers as a class, which is at least an unusual look at his public by a practitioner whose income for many years was provided by those he denigrates.

THIS month usually sees the estimates adopted that must govern public library spending for the year to come. It is likely to be a testing time for many librarians and we look forward with much interest to their experiences this year. The international rearmament programme, which authority has told us will not radically change our economic position, must have its repercussions on all municipal activities; expansion, so badly needed and so often deferred, is not likely to come immediately. However, as we remarked last month, dismal prophecies have so often been confounded by the subsequent facts that we hope 1951 will not be an exception. The defence programme may have some Staff effects, especially if the Z reserves are called again to the Colours. There is much that we may hope and much we should plan for in the months immediately ahead.

A NEW YEAR is a season of Stocktaking in normal times; this year it is especially so. The library journals of the world all fill their pages with discussions on libraries in a time of economic depression and financial stringency; and in America this note is even more Stressed than in any country, and we trust that some good may come of it seeing that America has proved more helpless in the face of world depression than any nation had thought possible. That, however, is by the way. The immediate problem of the New Year is how to ensure that in the general reductions of expenditure that are being made the expenditure on libraries is reduced as little as possible.

OUR publication date precludes more than the beginning of our study on the Library Association Conference which, from the point of view of numbers, has been one of the largest. We shall continue in our next issue such comment upon it as the importance of the subjects under discussion would seem to warrant.