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Criticisms of business schools for their MBA and other provision have resulted in leading members of schools collaborating with human resource professionals in redefining corporate requirements for management development. They are creating a programme which is innovative, international, practical and reflective, embodying collaboration both between sponsoring companies and between five leading business schools spanning three continents.

The origins of total quality management (TQM) in manufacturing and its popular adoption as a panacea or fad have combined to limit its acceptability in higher education institutions (HEIs). A brief analysis of the characteristics of TQM shows the extent to which it can be implemented in HEIs. Many objectives of TQM are compatible with the work of HEIs which have used them – consciously or unconsciously – in their operations and in response to external quality assessment and audit. Nevertheless, TQM continues to be viewed by many as inappropriate to the culture of HEIs. A case study of one faculty – the Management School of Lancaster University – shows that successful academic innovation can be compatible with TQ principles. Such principles were not applied rigidly or in ways which ran counter to the established culture of an academic organization.

ONE of the pressing problems that faces the public librarian of to‐day is the finding of adequate protection for the property committed to his care. The open‐access library loses books; at any rate now‐a‐days. But there is no means of prosecuting borrowers who take an extra book from the library in their pockets. There are model standing orders which may be adopted, which regulate the conduct of readers in reference libraries and reading rooms, but a book‐thief may plead that he meant only to borrow a book that has been found in his possession, and his offence will be treated merely as a technical breach of the rule that a book must be “charged” before it is taken from the library. When a clear case has been made, as in the notorious Walthamstow case, a foolishly sentimental Bench will refuse to help the libraries. We would urge the Library Association to give some consideration to the drafting of model standing orders which will give legal effect to the present “rules” under which libraries work, rules which the vicious may defy almost with impunity. The safety of the books in most libraries depends, actually, on public ignorance of the fact that most of our rules have no legal authority behind them.

Food administrators engrossed in their own problems of protecting the consumer under the various Acts, Orders, Regulations and other Statutory Instruments tend to forget that there is another side to the law relating to the sale of food (and of goods generally). Our branch of the law is all statute‐made; the other branch is certainly expressed in statute, chiefly the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, but it merely gives expression to selling and buying principles that reach far back into the recesses of legal history and not a few of them have come down to us, practically unaltered, from the Roman jurists. The Food and Drugs Act, 1955, is a measure by which the State seeks to protect the consumer by imposing penalties on the wrongdoer—a branch of Criminal Law. The Sale of Goods Act, 1893, represents a code of conduct as between buyer and seller—a branch of Civil Law, giving to the buyer a right of private action for damages in certain circumstances. In the first, the State looks after the consumer; in the latter, he must take care of himself.

This is indeed the age of revolution, when timeless attitudes are changing and new ways of living being born. To most it is a bewildering complex, with uneasy forbodirtgs of the outcome. Improvement and change, there must always be—although change is not necessarily progress—but with unrest in the schools, universities and industry, one naturally questions if this is the right time for such sweeping reorganization as now seems certain to take place in local government and in the structure of the national health service. These services have so far escaped the destructive influences working havoc in other spheres. Area health boards to administer all branches of the national health service, including those which the National Health Service Act, 1946 allowed local health authorities to retain, were recommended by the Porritt Committee a number of years ago, when it reviewed the working of the service.

Drawing on literature and the evaluation of a UK community Arts in Health project, this article aims first to demonstrate that, in spite of the common association in mental health practice between art and the use of psychotherapeutic techniques, involvement in art creation can, in itself, have a sustained and positive impact on the mental and social wellbeing of participants and, second, to give an analysis of the different forms of arts involvement in health.

A qualitative evaluation of a successful process‐based arts in health‐care provision to existing vulnerable mental health community groups is discussed.

While the implementation of traditional forms of art therapy tends to be the preserve of those with specialist training, process‐orientated art for health projects have been found to be more versatile and are developments in which many practitioners potentially play an important part. Arts in Health provision in a community setting can offer positive health benefits, and aid health promotion.

More widespread, sustained funding and further evaluation and research for this accessible, cost‐effective means of health promotion in a community setting are needed.

Arts in Health, in institutions (such as prison and hospital) as well as community, is a rapidly expanding, successful and attractive, yet severely under‐funded provision. Descriptive in‐depth evaluations and critical analyses of the field, such as that presented here, need to be made available in order to develop the field practically and theoretically.

OMI International (GB) have announced that Allan Murray, one of the leading UK technologists in the field of plating through hole systems for the printed circuit industry, has recently joined the Company.

We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special article, “Libraries in Birmingham,” by Mr. Walter Powell, Chief Librarian of Birmingham Public Libraries. He has endeavoured to combine in it the subject of Special Library collections, and libraries other than the Municipal Libraries in the City. Another article entitled “Some Memories of Birmingham” is by Mr. Richard W. Mould, Chief Librarian and Curator of Southwark Public Libraries and Cuming Museum. We understand that a very full programme has been arranged for the Conference, and we have already published such details as are now available in our July number.

I WAS perturbed by a ‘kite’ flown in a national newspaper recently that in its search for economies in public expenditure, the new Conservative government might wield its axe on the British Library's proposed erection in the Euston Road. The current cost of the new building is informally judged to have climbed to a total of £300m, but as this expenditure is to be deployed over a decade and more, abandonment is hardly likely to make serious inroads into government expenditure curently running at more than £50,000m annually.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.