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SHIRLEY WILLIAMS rounds the corner of the narrow country lane looking like someone in that TV advertisement for drinking chocolate; chin tucked into a yellow roll‐neck sweater, and the rest of her face pinched and red from chill winds and sporadic drizzle.

The effect that a computer can have on your daily life as a library worker can be, if you're lucky, as little or as much as you like. Or so you'd like to think. How many senior managers in public and academic libraries have a computer terminal or personal computer in their offices? How many have it on their desks? Would somebody at the next meeting of the Society of County Librarians, Metropolitan Librarians, University Librarians or whatever please ask for a show of hands — which of you personally use a computer at work? My guess is less than half. Perhaps. On the other hand, how many readers' advisers, reference librarians, subject specialists, administrative officers, circulation desk or Saturday casual staff use one every day of their working lives? No doubt a majority where issues, orders and the catalogue are controlled by a computer. As far as the bread and butter is concerned, their view of information technology is likely to be coloured as much by its reliability as by what it can do. In a profession dedicated to information skills, why then do the benefits of office automation — communications, data, information and the organisation of knowledge — seem so thinly spread? Do the libraries and their parent organisations lack the funds, the vision or the will to grasp the new technologies in order to improve the way libraries are managed and therefore presumably enhance the services they offer? One information systems manager I know speaks of introducing office automation in order to get managers to speak to each other! Librarians I'd have thought would have been quite good at that and would welcome another, electronic way of doing it. Or is the implication of a decision support system, that decisions based on facts might actually have to be made, too difficult a concept for our library leaders? As an editorial in Computer Weekly said: “in exploring executive's information needs, you are exploring their mental model of the business. The result can be to challenge long held assumptions and provoke radical change”. Perhaps the information professional can have a key organisational role in the development, regulation and promotion of information systems technology, through applying his/her skills in information handling and the organisation of knowledge; and if this be the case, what evidence do you see at work of planning for this role? A terminal on every chief's desk might be a start.

1989 was designated Museums Year to commemorate the centenary of the Museums Association, and unlike many of these PR exercises this one resulted in museums (especially national museums based in London) receiving an unusual amount of coverage in the qualities. Whether stories of protests and problems would have the desired positive effect on actual attendances has not yet been calculated. The unusually sunny weather cannot have helped much either. But the Museums Association itself produced a series of 11 regional guides which if read on the beach or in the pool would have enabled the readers almost to think that they had actually visited the collections described in considerable detail. Too many to note here but a list of all the titles is available from the MA or the Museums and Galleries Commission. Simon Olding's Exploring Museums: London (ISBN 0 11 2904653) and Arnold Wilson's Exploring Museums: The South West (ISBN 0 11 2904696) tackle their areas entertainingly, but their step‐by‐step guides to some of their subjects may soon be outdated as many existing museums are currently undergoing major rearrangements or refurbishments.

A major international conference “Information Technology and the Research Process” sponsored by BLRDD, the University of Pittsburgh and the Computer Board for Universities and Research Councils took place in mid‐July at Cranfield Institute of Technology, UK. Delegates from all over the world gathered to hear how information technology (IT) is transforming the traditional research process. Twenty speakers provided their individual views on how IT is opening up types of analysis hitherto impossible, providing alternative methods of investigation and supporting new ways of communicating the results of research. The conduct of research in all disciplines including science, technology and the humanities and how IT enhances the outcome was debated during the lively meeting of minds at Cranfield. The proceedings are to be published this winter.

This book by Rod Cowley — ALS: A Guide for Librarians and System Managers — plunges me into some perplexity. For what is the object of this series of which we seem to have here the first volume? According to the back cover, it is to help librarians or system managers — a frightful term. I do hope that the “managers” are also librarians and not upper echelon bureaucrats with their eyes firmly fixed on the statistics produced by computers. However, the book seeks to help them choose an automated system by examining the different products now available. A good move, for librarians wishing to automate their systems often have great difficulty in making a choice in the face of commercial‐cum‐technical engineers well versed in the techniques of salesmanship. Often there is a risky choice — that of one system rather than another based on hazardous rule of thumb and word of mouth. This indicates the potential value of a series which should enable us to form an opinion of different systems by an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. Rod Cowley is a former assistant librarian at Bromley Public Library which has an ALS system and former Secretary of the ALS Users Group. Today, he is UK Sales Manager of Automated Library Systems Ltd.

The National Centre for Information Media and Technology (CIMTECH) is developing a full text database of optical disc trade literature and journal articles. The database will be held on a WORM (write once, read many) disc and it will be used to investigate the economic, technical and administrative issues associated with the application of writable discs in library and information sciences. There will be opportunities to see demonstrations of the system throughout the course of the project. Contact: Tony Hendley, CIMTECH, Hatfield Polytechnic, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB (Tel. 07072 79691).

I enclose a letter |published below. Ed.| written in reply to an article in your journal “Libraries and Education in Black South Africa”.

March 1989 has been designated Library Promotion Month with the intention of promoting the positive side of the library service at a time when it might be said to be under threat from more negative forces. The idea is to involve as many people as possible — library workers, councillors, authors, trade unionists, and the general public, of course — in activities and events at local, national, and regional levels. These would include theme days on specific subjects (local history, services for the under‐fives etc.), lobbying, letter‐writing campaigns, public meetings and so forth. What we would hope for is that this combination of activities will focus the eyes and ears of the nation on the potential of libraries (or the potential that exists given a positive approach on the part of those in control of the coffers). We are given to understand that the Minister's long‐awaited response to the Green Paper and the comments it has provoked will be due round about the same period. With this in mind we want to be sure that libraries are higher up the agenda than usual when the Parliamentary implementation of whatever it is the Minister has in mind for libraries begins its process. (At the time of writing — Christmas Eve 1988 — it seems that enabling legislation will be tacked on to the next Housing Bill with secondary legislation in the form of Statutory Instruments being put before Parliament in the autumn. In other words, there is no time to lose.)

Ninety per cent of information handled within libraries, information units and offices is printed on paper. This comes in the form of books, journals, newsprint and miscellaneous documents including letters. At the same time information originating within organisations is increasingly generated on computers and is displayed and read via electronic screens. Libraries, information units and offices are becoming a mix of the automated and the unautomated. In the past, integrating printed material with computer stored material was impractical. The electronic storage of documents as images rather than computer coded text required storage capacity beyond the scope of many computer systems.