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Outlines various positive achievements by the British Library during 1994. Suggests that for the British Library, 1994 was marked by continuing controversies over the new St Pancras building. Discusses the arguments surrounding the St Pancras development in relation to three documents issued during 1994. The hostility of the British Library Regular Readers Group to losing the Round Reading Room in Bloomsbury was reexpressed in a new edition of its pamphlet. The whole project was examined by the National Heritage Committee; discusses its conclusions. Finally, the chairman of the British Library Board, Sir Anthony Kenny, produced a pamphlet outlining the background to the development of the new British Library building, its present state and future prospects. Discusses this in relation to the other documents and development of British Library policy.

The British Library has been in existence for just over one year. It is organized in three operational divisions—reference, lending and bibliographic services—together with a central research and development department. The new library includes the former British Museum Library, National Reference Library for Science and Invention, National Lending Library of Science and Technology, National Central Library, British National Bibliography and the Office for Scientific and Technical Information. It has been planned to be at the hub of the United Kingdom's library services. The now important activities of the Library are described and an indication given of how these activities help to make the services of other libraries and information services more effective.

Perhaps the marvel is that there should exist at all a department in a British official body at national level dedicated to the support of research into information needs and the problems of providing and operating library and information services. That it does exist may be regarded as the product of a typically British combination of conscious decision‐making and historical accident.

At the outset, let it be said clearly that criticism of the British Library Bibliographic Services Division (BSD) should not obscure its distinctive origins, achievements and successes.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

In his Presidential Address to the Library Association Conference at Eastbourne, in May 1949, Sir Ronald Adam, Chairman of the British Council, included a comprehensive description of the Council's library work in various parts of the world. This address, which also covered the other related activities, such as book‐exhibitions, book‐reviews, presentations of periodicals, and bibliographical publications, was printed in full in the Library Association Record of June 1949 and also in the Library Association's Papers and summaries of discussions at the Eastbourne conference. A reasonably up‐to‐date survey of the Council's libraries overseas is thus available in print, and the present article is accordingly more in the nature of footnotes to Sir Ronald's text than a repetition of the facts given by him. A conspectus of the system of Council libraries as of the end of 1950 is provided as an appendix to this article. Since the Eastbourne Conference there have, of course, been some developments, not all of them, unhappily, forward. There have been new libraries in India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and Indonesia. There has been a decrease in the work in West Africa, due to the transfer, as planned, of the library at Accra to an independent board. There has been a decrease in Europe, owing to the withdrawal, unplanned, of Council libraries, with the rest of the Council's activities, from Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia. There have been one or two smaller libraries closed in other parts of the world, due entirely to cuts in the Council's budget. The year 1951/2 will almost certainly witness further, perhaps major, cessations of library work in several areas; and the general tempo of development is likely to be severely curtailed almost everywhere, simply because of sheer lack of financial means to carry on. In view of the peculiar financial relations which ultimately determine the library development of the Council, as they determine its every other activity, it may be helpful to place the Council's libraries in the setting of the Council's general structure.

Viewdata was a British invention. The inventor, Sam Fedida, came to work at the Post Office research centre in 1970, on a “viewphone” project. Apart from providing television pictures of the caller and recipient involved in a telephone conversation, the viewphone was also to allow transmission of computer data. Such a piece of equipment would, it was hoped, increase telephone network use during off‐peak periods.

This paper is about the British Library's free Internet access service, British Library Net, launched in September 1999 as the first ISP by a public sector body. The paper explores the rationale behind the development of the service, the work involved in both its creation and ongoing development and takes a look at future trends in the ISP market. The contents of this article had their genesis in a presentation given by Brian Kefford of the British Library at the Public Sector Online 2000 conference.

In the bright summer of 1945 history lay with a heavy weight on the library of the British Museum.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.