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Topics concerned with key areas of personal life, like marriage, parenthood and personal relationships, occur in a wide range of subjects across the secondary school curriculum. What these topics are and, in particular, how teachers deal with them in the classroom has been studied in the course of a three‐year research project which has looked at school‐based education for parenthood. Over one hundred teachers representing ninety subjects in five schools identified aspects of their work as relevant to the theme of the research. On the basis of this, teachers were interviewed, usually more than once, in order to learn as much as possible about their perceptions of concepts like marriage, the family and parenthood, and their approach tho this area of their teaching.

ANDRE DEUTSCH has sold his library science imprint Grafton Books, which he acquired in 1961 along with the services of myself, to Gower Press.

THE relinquishing of the Presidency of the Library Association by Dr. Arundell Esdaile must of course receive the attention it deserves. This will probably be when the new President, Mr. Cashmore, is inducted into the office at Birmingham—an event which we understand will take place early in February.

AFTER some unsuccessful negotiations during the period when the first full‐time schools of librarianship were being established, the Birmingham School was founded in the autumn of 1950. Circumstances were not entirely favourable—the immediate post‐war generation of enthusiastic ex‐service students had already passed through other schools; the accommodation available was indifferent; the administrative support was bad; resources were weak, both in books and in equipment. There was, more importantly, a strong local tradition of part‐time classes in librarianship and little or no conviction that full‐time study was necessary or desirable.

The critical budgetting month of March is over, and we are at liberty to glance at the general position of libraries in regard to finance. As we anticipated, certain retrenchments have been effected in the form of reduced contributions from municipal rates, but while these have been regrettable they have in no case been so drastic as utterly to cripple the libraries involved. The unfortunate circumstance in the matter is the haphazard way in which reductions are made. An example worth quoting of this kind occurred at Ealing, where a councillor moved successfully that the appropriation for libraries be reduced to £1,500, without specifying in what directions economies were to be effected, or troubling himself about the working of a system of libraries upon this manifestly inadequate sum; but, after all, to tilt at haphazard methods is to tilt at British character. Naturally, the old exploded arguments against public libraries were advanced in various discussions, as at Croydon, where a councillor stated that the librarian's hours were spent “in handing novels to servant girls, who had nothing better to do,” a statement which he must have known to be untrue; but such arguments have met with small success, and on the whole the libraries have been supported.

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between performance measurement systems (PMSs) and organizational learning (OL) and the impact on firm human capital building.

Data were collected using a survey instrument. Then, a structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the proposed model.

The results reveal that PMS, which is designed with three main qualities – valid, comprehensive, and coherent with its environment – has an overall positive relationship with OL and firm's human capital (employee satisfaction and work‐related competencies). First, the validity of the individual performance measure is found to be positively linked to employee satisfaction. Second, the comprehensiveness of the PMS and work‐related competencies are positively associated. Third, the coherence of the PMS with its environment has a positive relationship with OL but not directly with the human capital indicators. Thus, OL, which is positively associated with both work‐related competencies and employee satisfaction, mediates the relationship between the coherence of the PMS and the work‐related competencies.

There are some linkages among these three concepts (PMS, OL and human capital) that have not been specifically explored in the existing relevant studies. Previous studies have asserted that human capital could not be utilized and nurtured without supporting infrastructure. Therefore, this study explores the relationships among the three constructs to uncover the additional benefits of PMS and OL for different purposes such as building firm's human capital. This could help firms to improve the utilization of their existing management tools and their competitiveness.

Religious censorship has always brought together important social, moral and artistic issues in challenging conjunctions. In a modern world often described as post‐Christian, controversy remains active in areas from education to advertising and on subjects from abortion to Satanism. Historical concerns about blasphemy have taken on special moral and legal dimensions in today′s community. Offending reasonable people and harming the innocent are matters of majority rather than sectarian concern. Discusses representative issues and arguments and presents contemporary examples.