Search results

The author provides an analysis of the underlying structural liability in the banking business by analysing balance sheets across the banking industry. He shows that the structural liability of different banks varies enormously. He argues that asset and liability management professionals need to have a deep understanding of the financial markets and of the many lines that their banks will be running. Even then he suggests that liquidity crises are very difficult to predict or control.

HERALDED by a leading article in The Times which appeared on the morning of its publication, the Report on the Public Libraries System of Great Britain by Mr. Lionel R. McColvin is now available. It will, without doubt, be the most carefully read current work in its own field, and its suggestions will be subjected to the closest scrutiny. Our correspondent in “Letters on Our Affairs” makes the first step in our pages in this direction, although, as he indicates, his views are merely preliminary. Last month we suggested that if such a report were issued by the Library Association, it should be made quite clear that it is the pronouncement of an individual and not an official document in the strict sense. Already, of course, as The Times leader seems to suggest, the distinction between Mr. McColvin's work and the views of the Library Association have been confused in the public mind. That was inevitable. But we understand that the Association at a later time will issue its own considered statement of what it thinks to be necessary and practicable in the re‐construction of the library service—if, indeed, it is reconstructed—to meet after‐war needs. On the whole, the book is quite readable and betrays very little of the hurry in which it must have been written: its facts seem to be sound and marshalled with considerable skill; its general outlook is generous. With much of it there will not only be agreement; there will be enthusiastic agreement. In so far as it is a proposed system for post‐war organization, it follows the lines already suggested by the Regional Systems created for Civil Defence, involving larger library areas administered from what Mr. McColvin believes to be the central town or other focus of each area. The counties as such disappear, the smaller towns and villages merge into the central town, and so we get in one way or another a cohesive, self‐sufficient and mutually supporting set of libraries in each area. It is around the choice of area and all its implications that discussion will rage and upon which it will be most difficult to obtain general consent. These units, however, while essential to Mr. McColvin's scheme, cannot be regarded other than as proposals to be discussed. Librarians will be quick to see that many of them will become branch librarians if the scheme matures, but in every one of the many schemes we have seen for post‐war re‐construction, larger units than the present ones are invariably implied, and this of necessity means the disappearance as chief officers of many now holding office. This is only one item in a whole series of discussable proposals. We hope that every one or our readers will study the Report and will bring to the common discussions that must be forthcoming a complete and, we hope, impartial understanding of what is involved.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

I sometimes wonder if the love of books is not distinct from the love of reading. We insatiable readers hold that the things are intertwined inextricably, but there are surely those who acquire books that they never hope to be able to read. The glamour is something beyond the merely intellectual, but it may possibly rest upon unconscious recognition of the fact that books are the repositories of mind and spirit. It will be recalled that in his The Backs of Books, 1926, we are told delightfully by Dr. Warner Bishop that he has known librarians who carried in their minds the names of at least a hundred thousand books, and further he tells us that such knowledge springs from our familiarity with the outsides of books: “how well do little matters of shape, size, colour, location, impress themselves indelibly upon us and aid us to earn our living!” Just so. Every book, too, has an individuality—even when it is one of a series. It is quite a satisfying sensation just to feel some books. I know I can recognize in the dark any book of mine, wherever I may have shed it in the house, by the mere handling, and I have no doubt that many others share this faculty.