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The article examines a report by an expatriate librarian on the library scene in East Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. According to the author, the report misses the climate of change that was sweeping East Africa at the time. The author provides an alternative interpretation of the struggle for a relevant information service in Kenya, linking it with the political and social struggles. He asserts that the opportunity for making fundamental changes was lost. Instead of challenging the basis on which library services were built, information workers allowed themselves to be manipulated into making cosmetic changes. The classes which were served by the colonial library service continued to be served after independence. The experiences, the cultures, the very language of working people remained outside the walls of library buildings. The struggle for an information system which serves the needs of all continues today. The author urges information workers not to isolate themselves from the broader social struggles taking place in their societies.

Developments in computer and telecommunications technology have pushed information into the forefront of business. Information is now considered the most important factor of production in a world economy that is gradually becoming globalised. These developments are also the principal pillars upon which the change from an industrial age to an information society hinges. This paper spells out the role of information in the new “information society” and how it affects the fortunes of a nation. A historical approach to underdevelopment and poverty is undertaken and applied, by analogy, to the call for African countries to use electronic formats to solve the continent’s myriad problems. A gradual approach to implementing IT is suggested.

The overseas library consultant is not a new phenomenon on the world library scene, but has become increasingly familiar in recent years. Whilst there are earlier isolated examples of the employment of foreign librarians as consultants or advisers, their use on anything like a regular basis was first undertaken in the years between the two world wars by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which sent a number of leading British and American librarians on advisory missions to East, West and Southern Africa, to the West Indies and to Australia and New Zealand in connection with its programme of aid to overseas library development. This programme continued, on a somewhat reduced scale, after the Second World War, when it was gradually overtaken in importance by the work of other agencies such as the British Council, the United States government aid agencies and the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations — in particular, by Unesco.

AFTER MORE THAN 3 years of deliberations, the Committee to consider the Law on Copyright and Designs has reported to the government, and the report (Cmnd 6732) is published by HMSO at £4.10.

K C HARRISON, City Librarian of Westminster, past‐President of the LA and present Chairman of the association's General Purposes Committee, has been invested a Knight (First Class) of the Order of the Lion of Finland for services to Finnish public libraries.

Maintaining an adequate nutritional state, important at all times, is never more so than during the dark days of Winter. The body reserves are then taxed in varying degrees of severity by sudden downward plunges of the thermometer, days when there is no sight of the sun, lashing rains and cold winds, ice, frost, snow, gales and blizzards. The body processes must be maintained against these onslaughts of nature — body temperatures, resistance against infections, a state of well‐being with all systems operating and an ability to “take it”. A sufficient and well balanced diet is vital to all this, most would say, the primarily significant factor. The National Food Surveys do not demonstrate any insufficiency in the national diet in terms of energy values, intake of vitamins, minerals and nutrients, but statistics can be fallacious amd misleading. NFS statistics are no indication of quality of food, its sufficiency for physiological purposes and to meet the economic stresses of the times. The intake of staple foods — bread, milk, butter, meat, &c., — have been slowly declining for years, as their prices rise higher and higher. If the Government had foreseen the massive unemployment problem, it is doubtful if they would have crippled the highly commendable School Meals Service. To have continued this — school milk, school dinners — even with the financial help it would have required would be seen as a “Supplementary Benefit” much better than the uncontrolled cash flow of social security. Child nutrition must be suffering. Stand outside a school at lunch‐time and watch the stream of children trailing along to the “Chippie” for a handfull of chip potatoes; even making a “meal” on an ice lollie.

Consideration of the fast‐growing number of food hygiene prosecutions up and down the country, almost all of them of a most serious nature, shows that it is the food preparing room, the kitchen, which is indeed the hub of the matter. Most of the charges result from its condition and the practices carried on within its walls, all‐too‐often enclosing a cramped space, ill‐equipped and difficult to keep clean. Its state in many prosecutions clearly contrasts badly with the soft lights and alluring elegance of the dining rooms in hotels and catering establishments. Yet, who would say that the kitchen is not the most important room in the home, in the hotel and every food‐preparing place? It has been so from time immemorial. House design has suffered severely with the need to cut building costs and the kitchen has suffered most; in small houses, it seems little more than a cupboard, a box‐room, an alcove. Is it surprising, then, that age‐old kitchen arts have degenerated? In the farmhouse, the country homes of the affluent, the “downstairs” of the town house, the kitchen was among the largest rooms in the house, as befitted all the activity that went on there. In the USA, the modern, comfortable home even of relatively humble folk the kitchen is phenomenally large; room for everything and everyone.

IN all probability it will not cheer the heart of the librarian to know that 1912 has been a record year in British publishing. Nevertheless the “Analysis of books published in 1912,” appearing in The Publishers' Circular, gives many facts that are both interesting and informative. During the year 12,067 books were published, an increase of 1,153 on the figure for 1911 (the previous highest). The totals for the various classes of literature are set forth in a table arranged according to the recommendations of the International Congress of Librarians at Brussels in 1910, and each class is sub‐divided into “new books,” “translations,” pamphlets,” and “new editions.” The totals for the various classes are as follows:—

This paper describes the role of the media in a free society and their impact on civic life. Intellectual rigour in journalism is required to assist media to develop and understand itself.

Legal process by its very nature cannot be swift; step by step, it must be steady and sure and this takes time. There is no room for hasty decisions for these would tend to defeat its purpose. Time, however, is of the essence and this is set for various aspects of legal action by limitation of actions legislation, which sets periods after which the case is no longer actionable. The periods are adequate and in civil law, generous to avoid injustice being done. The one serious complaint against the process of law, however, is the unwarrantable delays which are possible despite limitation. From the far‐off days of Equity, when Dickens' Jarndyce v Jarndyce, caricatured and exaggerated as it was, described the scene down to the present when delays, often spoken of in Court as outrageous are encountered, to say nothing of the crowded lists in the High Courts and Crown Courts; the result of the state of society and not the fault of the judiciary. Early in 1980, it was reported that 14,500 cases were awaiting trial in the Southeastern Circuit Crown Court alone. Outside the Courts legal work hangs on, to the annoyance of those concerned; from house purchase to probate. Here, the solicitor is very much his own master, unhampered by statutory time limits and the only recourse a client has is to change this solicitor, with no certainty that there will be any improvement, or appeal to the Law Society.