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In the fall of 1987, the first of three volumes of a scholarly research atlas—The Historical Atlas of Canada—was published to great acclaim. Describing the Atlas as “the most innovative, beautiful and successful single volume on the history of Canada, and indeed the most ambitious cartographic venture ever attempted in this country,” the Royal Canadian Geographic Society awarded gold medals to the volume's editor, R.C. Harris, and cartographer/designer, Geoffrey J. Matthews, as well as to the director of the whole Atlas project, W.G. Dean. The volume received many honors, including the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for the best book of the year on Early Canada from the Canadian Historical Association and the George Perkins Marsh Award in Environmental History from the University of Utah. Reviewers described the volume in superlatives. American reviewers were equally generous in their praise. Petchenik (herself the editor of the Historical Atlas of Early American History) described the volume as “an amazing accomplishment” and commented that “Not only a country but a civilization has been enriched by this publication.” Konrad assessed the volume as “a unique statement unrivaled in its potential impact.” Shuman, a professor of library science, noted that “this atlas, when complete, should stand as a model to be emulated by all other nations, whenever possible.” Pye, writing in the [British] Geographical Journal stated that “it is difficult to imagine that it could be even remotely paralleled in the foreseeable future.” Volume III of the Atlas appeared in 1990 and again won plaudits. Reviewers obviously felt that the high standards set by the first volume had been maintained.

A checklist of functions and capabilities of online searching systems has been compiled, from experience, and from a study of some of the major vendor systems. The checklist attempts to cover all system features, and is not restricted to the searching functions. It is offered as a tool for checking features of a new system which is being learned, as a framework for comparison of systems, and as a source of suggestions for functions and capabilities which might be incorporated into new and developing online systems such as OPACs. It could also serve as a ‘snapshot’, permitting a comparison of functions and capabilities currently available with those which may become available on future systems.

Vocabularies such as thesauri and lists of subject headings have tended in the past to have been regarded as ‘indexing vocabularies’ rather than ‘searching vocabularies.’ Online searching, which requires input of search terms before any part of the database can be scanned, and which usually permits searching on ‘free’ terms as well as controlled terms, has placed emphasis on the need for vocabularies for searching. The term ‘searching vocabularies’ has been used to describe vocabularies produced with the searcher, rather than primarily the indexer, in mind. Such vocabularies are categorized as: enhanced thesauri and lists of subject headings, term listings, synonym listings and merged vocabularies.

Any system of making scientific and technical articles available must meet a reasonable number of the requirements of the main players in the system: authors, publishers, libraries and consumers. Among the requirements are high visibility (authors), profit (publishers) and affordable costs (libraries). Consumers need inter alia exposure, ready access and ease and flexibility of use. They have most requirements but least power. Needs differ for current and older journals. Of the various single modes of publication none performs very well for all parties. Combinations of modes are more effective but payment has to be made twice. Much depends on authors' willingness to accept less visible forms of publication, but the ultimate deciding factor is publishers' assessment of the economics.

Progress in Europe between 1973 and 1978 is reviewed mainly in the context of the LIBER Seminar on International Interlibrary Lending held in Florence in 1978. The Danish interlending system is considered separately. Attention is given to a theoretical on‐line system in Belgium and actual on‐line methods in the USA and recent articles from the USA, especially on the National Periodicals Center, are presented. Articles on developments in Scotland, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand are reviewed. Finally payment for loans and the effects of copyright legislation are considered.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

The following is an address made by Professor C. A. Brockley at the ASME/ASLE Joint Lubrication Conference held in Montreal last October. Professor Brockley is Chairman of the Associate Committee on Tribology of the National Research Council of Canada, and Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. It Is reprinted by kind permission of the American Society of Lubrication Engineers. The problems associated with tribology education in Canada, and the methods adopted to overcome them are very similar to those we have experienced in this country. Joint co‐operation between the ASLE, the ASME's Tribology section, the Canadian Committee on Tribology and our own Committee on Tribology will hasten worldwide appreciation of our subject.

Is there a sound philosophical foundation in the nature of professional activity for resolving the tension between altruism and self‐interest in favor of virtue and character? I believe there is, and I ground my proposal in six characteristics of the relationship of professionals to those who seek their help. Considered individually, none of these phenomena is unique in kind or degree. They may exist individually in other human relationships and occupations. But as a moral cluster they are, in fact, unique; they generate a kind of “internal morality”—a grounding for the ethics of the professions that is in some way impervious to vacillations in philosophical fashions, as well as social, economic, or political change. This internal morality explains why the ethics of medicine, for example, remained until two decades ago firmly rooted in the ethics of character and virtue, as were the ethics of the Hippocratic and Stoic schools. It is found in the seminal texts of Moslem, Jewish, and Christian medical moralists. It persisted in the eighteenth century in the writings of John Gregory, Thomas Percival, and Samuel Bard, who, although cognizant of the philosophies of Hobbes, Adam Smith, and Hume, nonetheless maintained the traditional dedication of the profession to the welfare of the patient and to a certain set of values. Only in the last two decades has there been—to use Hume's terms—a “sentiment of approbation” regarding self‐interest.

Faced with the obvious impossibility of remaining totally self‐sufficient whilst trying to maintain collections and services in difficult economic times, many librarians have turned to resource sharing as the answer to their problems. This article aims to review the ever growing field of literature on resource sharing in order to try to discover what resource sharing is, what need there is for it, what it is intended or hoped to achieve, what sort of resource sharing plans and schemes have been implemented, and in particular to try to find any evidence in the literature on the real benefits and actual costs involved in resource sharing which could be used as justification for such schemes in comparison with other methods of maximizing access to resources.

Imagine you are working at the reference desk of a major university library on a busy weekday afternoon. As you say, “How may I help you?” to your next client, you notice that he is wearing a high school letterman's jacket and is sporting fuzz on his upper lip that he would proudly call a mustache.