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Quality figures large in the lexicon of today′s management. And so it should. For many, however, the use of buzzwords such as “commitment to quality” can suggest a case of all form and no content. Suggestion schemes, properly constituted and managed, offer real opportunities to achieve employee involvement and empowerment, key elements of quality management. Rewards need not be large, but the benefits in terms of motivation and increased employee morale can be considerable. Offers a model scheme for consideration, adapted from the commercial sector in both the United Kingdom and South Africa; it is suggested for use in the library and information sector.

WHAT is this thing called… accountability?

I became editor of The library world at a funeral. It was October 1960 and W C Berwick Sayers, former chief librarian of Croydon, had died, aged 80 or thereabouts. I joined a large congregation at a Croydon church to pay my last respects to one I had known and admired. Impossible to get a seat, so I stood at the back, finding myself cheek‐by‐jowl with Clive Bingley, then a friend of two years’ standing.

The absence of a formal code of ethics for librarians in Britain until 1983 meant that ethical values were passed on by example rather than precept. Increased interest in ethical issues in the 1970s, when the profession was seen as in crisis, resulted in discussions within the Library Association and a draft code was issued in 1981. Despite strong criticism of the draft, it became the basis of the formal Library Association code. It has seldom been tested as a disciplinary instrument. Renewed interest in ethical issues and the need for a Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) code, after the creation of the new organisation in 2002, have returned codes into the area of debate. It is suggested that a new code, rather than standing alone, might form part of a group of related codes from other organisations, all of which could be endorsed by CILIP. This would be intended to encourage ethical maturity in the profession, rather than simply acting as a basis for professional discipline.

This work was originally commissioned during 1982, the year that was designated Information Technology Year; the year that the personal computer replaced the space invader machine as a focus for teenage obsession; the year of the library symbol, the Hunt Report on cable TV; the year the US Post Office issued two stamps celebrating American libraries, and the British Post Office issued a stamp for IT year suggesting that libraries were a thing of the past. The work was intended to look at “the background to the IT revolution, the benefits of applying technology to library services and the reasons for its relatively slow progress”. It was envisaged at the time that what would have been effectively a state‐of‐the‐art report on the technology available to libraries, and who was doing what with it, would be a useful tool for library managers introducing or extending library technical services. It might usefully have complemented the LA publication, The impact of new technology on libraries and information centres (LA, 1982). However, for a variety of reasons it was not possible to produce the publication in 1983 as intended; the person commissioned to write it was unable to do so; and eventually, in 1984, it was realised that the speed of development and availability of technology was such that any such work would be useless as a practical guide within months of publication. The growth, during the period, of journals on the subject of library applications of IT of all kinds; the appearance of regular updates in the generalist professional press; the formation of, for example, the Library Association IT Group: all these developments clearly offered better opportunities of current awareness to the library manager than could be achieved by a single monograph.

I DON'T feel the lack of it, but it is a fact that I have not got a life‐style. There's not a lot wrong with the way I live; it's a busy—but passive— sort of existence. Although there is a bit too much of the fisherman's socks and woolly dressing gown about it for the taste of natty dressers and outgoing types like my friend John Fines, it suits me well enough. But it could never be elevated to a life‐style and, certainly, I would never describe it so.

“I'll make what haste I can to be gone.”But haste with me tends to be slow. If you're a speed reader, I may just, like Groucho said in “Duck Soup”, leave “in a minute and a huff”. At least in a huff.