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APART FROM FRANCE, Great Britain is one of the most centralised states of the Western European democracies; all roads lead to Whitehall and Westminster, and the pattern is repeated in town halls at the lower tier of local government. However, as a contrast, and perhaps as compensation for this centralism, British society has completely contradictory and counter‐vailing tendencies. At the grass roots Britain is a nation of associations, clubs, fellowships, societies and local organisaitions of various kinds. For the purposes of this article I will call them all societies. We are all familiar with national societies through G P Henderson and S P A Henderson's book, Directory of British associations (edition 6, cbd Research Ltd, Beckenham, Kent, 1980), but almost nothing is heard of their local equivalents. It is this phenomenon, and its implication for libraries, that I want to discuss.

Positive cash flow ‐ LAMSAC, which is an acronym denoting Local Authorities Management Services & Computer Committee—an odd bird, by the sound of it, is to carry out a ‘major research study into income generation in public libraries in England’ for the Arts Minister.