Search results

Signode Industries, Inc., is the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of strapping systems for use in packaging and materials handling. The company also manufactures and sells bar code equipment and other products for both industrial and commercial markets in more than 100 countries. The company has 6,000 employees and 35 manufacturing locations worldwide.

THE following abstract in tabular form has been prepared by some junior members of the Islington Public Libraries staff for the use of candidates in Section V. of the Library Association Examination. It does not pretend to do more than set out the chief provisions of the various Public Libraries Acts in a clear manner, as an aid to the memorization of the principal powers and duties conferred upon library authorities. The whole of the Acts can be purchased through any bookseller for 1s. 4½d., and every student of librarianship is advised to procure them.

Environmental engineering is primarily concerned with the application of technology to the urgent tasks of cleaning up our environment. Its practitioners generally attempt to cope with the problems of streams and waterways polluted by sewage and industrial waste, oceans damaged by oil spills and sewage sludge dumpings, air polluted with noxious fumes and land abused by solid waste disposal. But that is not all that they do. The recent energy crisis has sharply brought into focus the need for alternate energy strategies, including energy extraction from solid waste. Under current estimates, the United States will produce approximately 340 million tons of solid waste by 1980. This is equivalent to one ton of solid waste per person per year. The most widely used methods of waste disposal right now are dumping, incineration and sanitary landfill. They are expensive and they cause pollution. Instead, solid waste can be burned to produce steam which can be used for heating or to generate electricity. It can also be converted to pyrolysis gas or oil, which can be stored or transported. It is from this standpoint that environmental engineering assumes considerable importance. A report which presents an overview of the state of the art in this area is the Resource Recovery from Municipal Solid Waste. Other pertinent guides include Energy from Solid Waste, Conversion of Refuse to Energy, Recycling and Reclaiming of Municipal Solid Wastes, Resource Recovery and Recycling Handbook of Industrial Wastes, and Wasteheat Management Guidebook. No project of this nature can be undertaken without government assistance. A description of the activities of the Federal Solid Waste Management Program is available from EPA's Solid Waste Recycling Projects: A National Directory.

By these we mean the parliamentary counsel responsible for drafting the many statutes and statutory instruments of every kind, against whom there has been much criticism in recent years for the mass of indigestible legislation, a little of it almost incomprehensible, inflicted on society generally. What prompts us to return to the subject, after so recently castigating it as “hurry scurry” law, is the Labelling of Food Regulations, 1970. Not that this particular measure is anything but good, but looking at it, one cannot help wondering what was the purpose of the 1967 Regulations; a useless exercise in law‐making, since they will never come into force, being precipitately revoked by the new ones. Nor does it seem to have been hurried legislation, since it followed the reports of the Food Standards Committee after a lapse of several years. However, instances in which measures have been rushed through the legislative process, to prove subsequently inadequate, perhaps unworkable in parts, and sometimes completely disastrous, are multiplying during the life of the last Parliament. This may not always be the fault of the ligislature, for sometimes a new problem emerges or grows so rapidly that the law cannot keep up with it; then there is excuse for measures being rushed through to cope.

THE other day my attention was arrested by a statement from one of our younger critics. “Mr. Auden,” he said, “makes Mr. Yeats's isolation guilty as a trance.” Not a particularly earth‐shaking statement, perhaps; but, when one thinks of it, a startling and significant one. I had not thought to live to see Mr. Yeats receiving the public sneer. Only a year or two ago Mr. Yeats was the doyen, the inerrable loadstar, of the young poets. Of all the older school of living poets, him alone they delighted to honour. They guffawed at Sir William Watson; spoke with amused irony of Laurence Binyon's epics; and the very mention of Alfred Noyes's name was enough to send them off into explosions of fierce anger. But Mr. Yeats was—Mr. Yeats. They found in him profundity, marvellous technical skill, flexibility of outlook, nobleness of aspiration. His reputation appeared to be solid and deep‐founded. And then came his anthology of modern verse, in which Mr. Yeats, with more enthusiasm than discretion, admitted a host of the young poets to the O.U.P.'s pantheon of fame. The book was a bad one—inexplicably bad for a man of Mr. Yeats's eminence. Even his reputation could not stand the strain of such a performance. “If,” argued the young, “Mr. Yeats's judgment is so ludicrously bad, how can it be that he is a good poet?” A strange dualism, they remarked: fine creativeness, weak critical sense. Then there were whispers. Was Mr. Yeats really so—? Could it be possible that—? The doubts grew. The young critics took courage from each other. The loadstar was dimming a little. And now Mr. Dylan Thomas has come into the open. Mr. Yeats's isolation is as guilty as a trance. The meaning is not very clear, but the implication is. “Isolation” is a bogey to the younger school. Once let Mr. Yeats be labelled with that dreadful word and he is as good as damned. Mr. Thomas will be listened to, for the intestinal raptures of his poetry are much admired. I foresee that in a year or so Mr. Yeats's prestige among the young will lose much of its impressiveness.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

At each New Year we stand at the threshold of fresh scenes and hopes, of opportunities and pastures new. It is the time for casting off shackles and burdens that have weighed us down in the old year; almost a new chapter of life. We scan the prevailing scene for signs that will chart the year's unrolling and beyond, and hope profoundly for a smooth passage. The present is largely the product of the past, but of the future, who knows? Man therefore forever seems to be entering upon something new—a change, a challenge, events of great portent. This, of course, is what life is all about. Trends usually precede events, often by a decade or more, yet it is a paradox that so many are taken by surprise when they occur. Trends there have been and well marked; signs, too, for the discerning. In fields particular, they portend overall progress; in general, not a few bode ill.

WITH eloquence which we cannot imitate, or repeat, the national loss has been sufficiently expressed by others. It is true, Kipling and William Watson being dead, and Alfred Noyes silent, the poets have not risen to the height of a great occasion, but that is by the way. Our own tribute to the late King must be based on his work for libraries, since any other tribute is general to a whole Empire. Kings can have few hours in which to read and yet some of the stories, true or apocryphal, of King George V. touch upon his reading. He showed, however, a closer interest of late years in libraries than any other of our monarchs has done, and at the opening ceremonies of the National Central Library and the Manchester Public Library he uttered words which are the best slogans that libraries have received. Even if he did not write them—a matter which we have no right to affirm or deny—his utterance of them gave them the royal superscription. We repeat them, as they cannot be too often repeated:—