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BIBBLEOGRAPHIC Services, Inc have now been in business for over a year, and we wondered if readers of New library world might like to share some more unpublicised information. It should be emphasised that our service is strictly supplementary to and not in competition with those already in existence. Indeed we believe ourselves to be in what the philosopher O F Windegger called ‘a mutually exclusive category’.

BROWSING in a new edition of Sequels remains a stable and unceasing pleasure in an unstable world. Nevertheless there is cause for disquiet at the way it is evolving, there is a distinct change of emphasis, a clear difference in direction, and this is not just a nostalgic regret that things are not what they used to be.

IN THESE recessionary times it is encouraging to be able to record some library expansion. After several years of anticipation (by turns eager and nervous, according to the state of rumour at both the national and local levels in the higher education world), the City University Business School moved into imposing new premises on the uppermost floors of the emerging Barbican Arts Centre.

A WIDE RANGE of further and higher education colleges offer courses to a varied section of the public of mixed ages and abilities. Originally established to provide the vocational and technical training necessary for a new diversity of trades, they offered subjects not within the scope of the established school system. Today, this function is maintained, with considerable expansion in their general educational work, and most offer comprehensive GCE O and A level studies, in a choice of more subjects than available in local schools.

REGULAR READERS of this column will have noted, perhaps with relief, the self‐restraint I have applied in recent months in connection with the game of cricket, not a word about which have I imparted to you throughout the summer.

‘WITH HIS hundred up, CB lifted his cap for a moment and turned again quickly to get on with his task.’ Do any of you, Dear Readers, remember C B Fry's 144 against the Australians at the Oval in 1905? It does not matter really because it is Clive Bingley's 100 for NLW which is my concern here. To score a hundred runs at cricket is success indeed, but to buy a professional periodical in declining economic conditions and still to breathe more life into it again is quite phenomenal. And that is no criticism of previous editors, Roy McColvin and Ken Harrison, without whom LW would probably have collapsed altogether!

WHEN YOU meet people for the first time and they ask what you do, do you ever hesitate about telling them you're a librarian? Do you ever qualify your self‐description with some such phrase as ‘can't you tell by looking at me?’ or ‘I don't just stamp books you know’? Do you sometimes feel diffident about describing your work? I do. The reason I react in this way is that I know people outside our information world think they know very well what we do, but in fact have very little idea. We seem to have a very strong popular image which it is difficult if not impossible to shake off.

ONE OF the most fallacious arguments in local history librarianship is the suggestion that ‘To start a local collection costs nothing’. It costs staff time, energy, thought, equipment, training, and the materials—book and non‐book—which comprise the collection. Even if items are donated or collected free of charge there is a cost in storing and housing, and it would be naive to think otherwise. And worse, the public—ever ready to make a quick buck—have been saturated with propaganda about ‘antique’ values, and every day that passes makes ‘free’ donations unlikely; it is not enough to appeal to local patriotism any more, and palms have to be crossed with silver (more likely notes—strictly cash!). Beware rapacious postcard salesmen. However, after that bout of cynical—but accurate—perception that everything in librarianship has to be bought and paid for in ratepayers' cash, it is possible to say that most local ephemera can be had for nothing, as distinct from staff, processing and storage costs.

OF THE desultory correspondence in the Times provoked by the announcement in March of the go‐ahead for the new British Library building next to St. Pancras railway station—a gentle lap‐dog to lie down along‐side a portly crinolined Victorian lady—the most interesting to my mind was a letter pointing out that because of the impending electrification of an ancillary line, that particular railway station would in due course be surplus to British Rail's requirements. Why not, asked the correspondent, build a bridge from the new library across Midland Road to the old station, and convert the train shed into a magnificent reading‐room?

I DRAW, respectfully of course, the attention of the Chairman of the British Library Board to the fact that, notwithstanding his belief that the new BL building in the Euston Road will, in the fullness of time, upstage such other mighty institutions as the Library of Congress, the latter has in the meantime upstaged the BL.