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Successful employee development is about changing attitudes and motivation before changing behaviour. The performing arts at their best can move an audience towards a particular state of mind; by adapting drama and music techniques for corporate training, they can be used to influence attitude and motivation, as well as develop core skills. In practice, various arts‐based training methods have been used to develop key communication skills, to examine sensitive issues which might otherwise be difficult to bring into the open, and to dramatically represent complex business issues. For those companies prepared to invest in it, arts‐based training can also be a catalyst for creativity in business. In an environment where creative advantage can increasingly be equated with competitive advantage, this is significant.

As our correspondent on another page suggests, the economic crisis may have reactions upon libraries. The most obvious one he mentions is the increased difficulty we shall experience in obtaining American books. Not all libraries, public or private, make any special collection of books published in the United States, although there has been an increasing tendency to buy more as the relations of the two countries have grown closer through their common struggle; in fact, we know libraries which have spent many hundreds of pounds in the course of the past year or two on the select lists of books which have been made for us by American librarians. It is most unfortunate that the manipulation of dollar currency should have brought about a situation in which even the exchange of ideas between the countries becomes more difficult. One suggestion might be made and that is that our American colleagues should continue to sift the literature of this time of famine for us, so that further select lists may be available in better days.