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Describes competence modelling at Tioxide, UK. Dissatisfied with using models of specific management competences solely for assessment and selection Tioxide transformed it into a tool to develop greater flexibility among managers. Beginning with four days of modelling skills uptake participants went on to model as many management competences as they could in the next three weeks. The outcome was a group of individuals who could elicit, model and develop their own new skills as well as being able to teach these new skills.

THE summer is not a good time for writing editorials. In the first place it has been too warm, but more particularly, no matter how hot the topic at the time of writing, it will be cold as mutton before it eventually reaches its readers. Secondly our thoughts seem to have been devoted to anything except libraries: a little light reading perhaps, or a gentle discussion of next season's lecture programme? So now, not an editorial proper (or improper), but some editorial miscellany, beginning with the late but unregretted printing dispute. The LIBRARY WORLD has not been affected as much as some periodicals, and this issue makes its appearance only some three weeks later than planned. We have occasionally encountered comments which suggest that our journal is not anticipated each month with undue pleasure, and is quickly placed on the Chief Librarian's desk, from which honourable position its subsequent circulation is frequently delayed. Many libraries do not appear to have a professional journal circulation scheme, and this is a regrettable state of affairs. It is important that the younger members of the profession should be well informed about library affairs, and only the regular perusal of periodicals can achieve this. May we recommend that Chiefs institute and maintain a circulation programme in their libraries; we hear that it is much appreciated in those libraries which already do so.

THIS issue forms the conclusion of Volume LX of THE LIBRARY WORLD, and from the editorial point of view we regard the last issue as the final stage in the completion of an entirely separate undertaking—in much the same way that we regard December 31st as completing an independent calendar episode—for in one moment a whole present period of time suddenly becomes a part of the past; and we incline to review this (no longer current) volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD in brief fashion, and to mention the considerable changes which it has witnessed, not only in its own make‐up, but also in the make‐up of the library world.

MR. Frederick Niven's recent references in these pages to the Canterbury Poets anthology of ballades and rondeaus suddenly reminded me that a rondeau of my own was printed in the little book. Although the year 1887, when the book, which is now rather difficult to pick up, appeared, is a long way off, I do not in the least feel like Methuselah. What, however, does lend a sense of the passing years is the change in literary taste, and the humpty‐dumptying by one generation of critics of the heroes of an older group. We have had a good opportunity of witnessing the process on a wholesale scale in the belittling of the Victorians, and Henley himself is a peculiarly ironic example of the process, for, having bludgeoned many literary reputations, his own has slumped, for the collected edition of his work which appeared a few years ago left the younger school of critics cold, while the influence of his rather truculent “young men” on the Scots Observer has faded.

THE problem that Dr. E.A. Savage introduced in our last issue may well be one of the crucial debates of this winter. When it is remembered that there was a time, as our writer in Letters on Our Affairs asserts, when it was thought inadvisable for a public librarian to be Hon. Secretary of the Library Association, we can see that times have changed. There is no doubt that the Brighton Conference showed the impossibility of adequate discussion of purely professional matters when authority members are present. The manner of achieving what many desire, and yet to retain the goodwill' of intelligent authority members, is what has to be determined.

ONCE more a New Year, after a year of dramatic public events, finds librarians as other people settling down to what it is hoped will be twelve months of peace and prosperity. It is really remarkable how libraries reflect the happenings of the time; it would not, for example, seem that the burning of the Crystal Palace would affect the issues of all South London libraries but it did very heavily for a day or two. When the public mind is occupied with an idea it is well known that this is reflected in reduced, and occasionally increased, issues. The Jubilee of King George V. reduced reference issues everywhere; and it is to be expected that the Coronation of King George VI. will have a like effect. These efforts however are transient, and are only felt during the few days of the happenings in question.. On the larger count we find at the beginning of 1937 that all but new libraries have now reached a position in which they can assess the results of other competition. It is alleged that the loss of readers who have seceded to the “twopennies” is about 4 per cent. on the peak year of 1932–3, but the gains are considerably in advance of 1930. That is to say, solid progress has been regular.

THE library year ends in no spectacular way. If posterity has any cause to remember 1932 it will probably be as of a year when the doctrine of economy was raised to the rank of a divine dogma by a world of debtors and creditors all crazed with fear over international debts. A year of hurried committees producing reports for the reduction of expenditures, beneficient or otherwise; especially, in this last month, a report which if implemented would cripple almost every local activity, and set back the clock of social effort at least thirty years. The intention of such reports is no doubt good; their effects are yet to be seen. So far, the increased parsimony in national and local affairs seems only to have intensified unemployment without bettering the general situation. A reaction against all this is beginning, not a moment too soon, and all who care for the finer things in our civilisation will be compelled to stand against the more unsocial recommendations of these reports.

LIBRARIANS in Britain stand at the threshold of great possibilities. Having passed through the ages of the ecclesiastical library, the rich collector's private library, the academic institutional library, and the rate‐supported public library—all general libraries —they have reached the age of the special library. The next will be that of the co‐ordinated, co‐operative library service.

To provide a list of non‐fictional books, as published for the use of Librarians and Book‐buyers generally, arranged so as to serve as a continuous catalogue of new books ; an aid to exact classification and annotation ; and a select list of new books proposed to be purchased. Novels, school books, ordinary reprints and strictly official publications will not be included in the meantime.

IDEAL methods of Library service; this, in simple translation is the purpose before the Library Association Conference at Manchester this year. The first thing that strikes any observer is the great variety of current library work. There was a day, so recent that fairly young men can remember it, when a Library Association Conference could focus its attention upon such matters as public library charging systems, open access versus the indicator, the annotated versus the title‐a‐line catalogue, the imposition of fines and penalties; in short, on those details of working which are now settled in the main and do not admit of general discussion. All of them, too, it will be observed, are problems of the public library. When those of other libraries came into view in those days they were seen only on the horizon. It was believed that there was no nexus of interest in libraries other than the municipal variety. Each of the others was a law unto itself, and its problems concerned no one else. The provision of books for villages, it is true, was always before the public librarian; he knew the problem. In this journal James Duff Brown wrote frequently concerning it; before the Library Assistants' Association, Mr. Harry Farr, then Deputy Librarian of Cardiff, wrote an admirable plea for its development. Wyndham Hulme once addressed an annual dinner suggesting it as the problem for the younger librarians. Carnegie money made the scheme possible. But contemporaneously with the development of the Rural Library system, which now calls itself the County Library system as an earnest of its ultimate intentions, there has been a coming together of the librarians of research and similar libraries. We have a section for them in the Library Association.