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Major trends in the PWB industry and the requirements from the manufacturers to reduce reject rates at the imaging and chemical process stages have demanded a new generation of dry film photoresists. Details are given of the requirements laid down by the industry, how the dry film resist manufacturers have responded, and how the improved resist technology meets these demands. These latest products are extensively available in Europe and resist improvements have been welcomed by the board manufacturers.

Presents a review on implementing finite element methods on supercomputers, workstations and PCs and gives main trends in hardware and software developments. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on the subjects retrospectively to 1985 and approximately 1,100 references are listed.

Sane and civilised people, capable of thinking clearly, now recognise that if the peace of the world is to be secured, and that if another and even greater cataclysm is to be prevented, the Huns and their accomplices must be crushed, and crushed so completely that their recovery of the power to do evil shall be rendered utterly impossible. The persons who are “Pro‐German” for reasons at present best known to themselves, and the peace‐at‐any‐price cranks, may be left out of consideration except in so far as the advisability of placing the former under lock and key and the latter in lunatic asylums demands attention. A premature and inconclusive peace which would make it possible for our abominable enemies to rise again and threaten civilised mankind is unthinkable, and the Allied Powers must of necessity carry on the war until the Thugs of Europe have bitten the dust and have been compelled to sue for peace without terms or conditions. When the “Central Powers” have been forced to their knees, and the Allied armies of occupation have made them taste the bitterness and humiliation of invasion, the surviving criminals will be placed at the bar to receive the sentence of their judges, while the populations who have approved and applauded their hideous acts must also have adequate punishment meted out to them. What form is that punishment to take? The long and ghastly account has got to be read out and settled—so far as it can be settled in this world. What is to be the settlement?

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

It must be difficult for many to contemplate the numerous changes in progress and projected without wondering why it all has to happen now. Of course, there have always been with us those who would change everything, even those who would spoil; all seemingly unable to leave anything alone; unwillingly to let us be for what we are. Then there are those who dislike change of any kind in their familiar environment and strangely, children are the most conservative of us all, and others who do not object to change when it is necessary, but only when it is change merely for the sake of change. The changeover to the metric system, or to use one of the grating terms of the new technological language, metrication, must be accepted as a natural sequence to decimal currency and advances in industry. A revolution in weights and measures, it will indeed present very great problems throughout the country and at all levels, which will dwarf those presented by the switch to decimal coinage, for at worst, these may be just confusing to the general public and a price‐raiser in small‐value commodities, despite assurances to the contrary.

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.

SEPTEMBER this year will be unique in the history of the librarian in England in that for the first time in nearly sixty years the annual conference of the Library Association has already become a memory only. There are those who profess to believe that the conference should be restored to the autumn months. It may be suggested on the other hand that the attendance at Margate lent no assistance to that point of view; indeed, the Margate conference was one of the most pleasant, one of the most successful, of which we have record. Nevertheless, if it can be proved that any large body of librarians was unable to be present owing to the change of month, it appears to us that the matter should be considered sympathetically. Although no one holds any longer the view that one week's attendance at a conference will teach more than many months' study in hermit‐like seclusion—the words and sentiments are those of James Duff Brown—because to‐day there is much more intimate communication between librarians than there was when that sentiment was expressed, there is enormous value, and the adjective is not an exaggeration, in one large meeting of librarians in body in the year. It is an event to which every young librarian looks forward as the privilege to be his when he reaches a high enough position in the service; attendance is a privilege that no librarian anywhere would forego. And this, in spite of the fact that there is usually a grumble because the day is so full of meetings that there is very little chance of such recreation as a seaside, or indeed any other, place visited, usually provides for the delegates.

Qualitative, case study methods were used to examine students’ expectations of and experiences with studying women and leadership. Participants were 48 undergraduate students enrolled in an elective course titled Women and Leadership offered in the Leadership Studies minor curriculum at a liberal arts institution. Students perceived women and leadership as a sensitive subject fraught with potential struggles for learners, but were willing to engage in the subject in pursuit of both meaningful learning and their own utilitarian-oriented leadership development. Their experiences show the potential for transformative learning if the course content, structure, and learning environment are purposefully crafted to enable students to deal with anticipated or experienced struggles and engage in rather than resist the learning experience. The findings have implications for leadership curriculum design, course design, and pedagogy. Although this study focused on undergraduate learners in a traditional college classroom, the implications may also be relevant to a range of leadership educators and learners in various educational contexts both within and outside of academe.

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.

This study confirms and extends previous research by providing a detailed longitudinal examination of the strategic group and performance relationship in the hospital industry from 1983 to 1993. Based on a deductive approach using Porter's (1980) typology, we find that matching strategy to environment affects hospital performance, that the appropriate match between strategy and environment changed over the 1983 to 1993 time period, and that hospitals combining a low cost and differentiation strategy (i.e., a best‐cost approach) performed well during most of the time period examined. We also find significant movement between strategic groups, thus calling into question the degree to which mobility barriers affect between group performance differences. Finally, our research suggests the existence of multiple groups following the same strategic approach, a result that calls into question the view that groups within an industry are monolithic.