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Examines the effects of a three‐year mentoring programme on the academic achievement of high ability year 13 students at a New Zealand high school. The programme’s purpose was to improve the academic results in the university bursary examination. The study covered a period of six years. The programme matched each selected student with a staff member in a flexible mentoring arrangement which focused on generic skills such as study skills, goal setting and time management. Protégés and mentors felt that the programme was enjoyable and successful. Protégés felt that they gained from the skills they were taught. Statistical analysis indicates that the programme did not have a measurable effect on the academic achievement of the mentored students. Reasons for this and implications for programmes of this kind are discussed.

IF SONS DID NOT EXTOL, many a worthy father would sink into oblivion and forever go unsung. As filial biographers, however, sons customarily meet with intimidating scorn and derision. There is a generally accepted notion that consanguineous biography is fraught more with fealty and filial frailty than with disinterested depiction. The best way to disprove this false assumption is to muster meritorious biographies written by scions and compare them with representative biographies of the ‘blame and blemish’ variety. Sympathetic assessment always stands up stronger than ostensible objectivity, for writers of the ‘warts and all’ kind of biography lose track of virtues and nearly always become engrossed in the imperfections of their victims.

THE Fifty‐First Conference of the Library Association takes place in the most modern type of British town. Blackpool is a typical growth of the past fifty years or so, rising from the greater value placed upon the recreations of the people in recent decades. It has the name of the pleasure city of the north, a huge caravansary into which the large industrial cities empty themselves at the holiday seasons. But Blackpool is more than that; it is a town with a vibrating local life of its own; it has its intellectual side even if the casual visitor does not always see it as readily as he does the attractions of the front. A week can be spent profitably there even by the mere intellectualist.

THE enterprise of two London newspapers, the Tribune (for the second time) and the Daily Chronicle, in organizing exhibitions of books affords a convenient excuse for once again bringing forward proposals for a more permanent exhibition. On many occasions during the past twenty years the writer has made suggestions for the establishment of a central book bazaar, to which every kind of book‐buyer could resort in order to see and handle the latest literature on every subject. An experiment on wrong lines was made by the Library Bureau about fifteen years ago, but here, as in the exhibitions above mentioned, the arrangement was radically bad. Visiting the Daily Chronicle show in company with other librarians, and taking careful note of the planning, one was struck by the inutility of having the books arranged by publishers and not by subjects. Not one visitor in a hundred cares twopence whether books on electricity, biography, history, travel, or even fairy tales, are issued by Longmans, Heinemann, Macmillan, Dent or any other firm. What everyone wants to see is all the recent and latest books on definite subjects collected together in one place. The arrangements at the Chronicle and Tribune shows are just a jumble of old and new books placed in show‐cases by publishers' names, similar to the abortive exhibition held years ago in Bloomsbury Street. What the book‐buyer wants is not a miscellaneous assemblage of books of all periods, from 1877 to date, arranged in an artistic show‐case and placed in charge of a polite youth who only knows his own books—and not too much about them—but a properly classified and arranged collection of the newest books only, which could be expounded by a few experts versed in literature and bibliography. What is the use of salesmen in an exhibition where books are not sold outright? If these exhibitions were strictly limited to the newest books only, there would be much less need for salesmen to be retained as amateur detectives. Another decided blemish on such an exhibition is the absence of a general catalogue. Imagine any exhibition on business lines in which visitors are expected to cart away a load of catalogues issued separately by the various exhibitors and all on entirely different plans of arrangement! The British publisher in nearly everything he does is one of the most hopeless Conservatives in existence. He will not try anything which has not been done by his grandfather or someone even more remote, so that publishing methods remain crystallized almost on eighteenth century lines. The proposal about to be made is perhaps far too revolutionary for the careful consideration of present‐day publishers, but it is made in the sincere hope that it may one day be realized. It has been made before without any definite details, but its general lines have been discussed among librarians for years past.

Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

The following list of titles was compiled by the Library Journal List Committee of the Reference and Adult Services Division, American Library Association. Committee members include Larry Earl Bone, Memphis Public Library and Information Center, Chairman; Lynn Cochran, Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Carl T. Cox, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Laurel Grotzinger, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo; John Larsen, Columbia University, New York, New York; Wilbur McGill, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland; Mary Jean Nottviet, Iowa City, Iowa; Lelia B. Saunders, Arlington County Department of Libraries, Virginia; Paul Spence, University of Alabama in Birmingham. The 63 titles on this list represent in the opinion of the Committee, a selection of outstanding reference books published in 1973 and late 1972 for small and medium‐sized public and college libraries.