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This paper surveys theoretical and practical issues associated with a particular type of information retrieval problem, namely that where the information need is pictorial. The paper is contextualised by the notion of a visually stimulated society, in which the ease of record creation and transmission in the visual medium is contrasted with the difficulty of gaining effective subject access to the world's stores of such records. The technological developments which, in casting the visual image in electronic form, have contributed so significantly to its availability are reviewed briefly, as a prelude to the main thrust of the paper. Concentrating on still and moving pictorial forms of the visual image, the paper dwells on issues related to the subject indexing of pictorial material and discusses four models of pictorial information retrieval corresponding with permutations of the verbal and visual modes for the representation of picture content and of information need.

Introduction FEW librarians have had the good fortune to plan and classify a large library from the ground up, so to speak. Most of us have to take over going concerns, repair deficient concerns, or rebuild on other people's foundations. In the particular case in question I had the rare opportunity to plan a ‘library’ of pictorial material with every possible help and consideration from those who commissioned me.

In addition to providing a review of the literature recently published in the librarianship of non‐book materials this survey aims to draw attention to the characteristics, problems and achievements particular to the documentation and handling of non‐book materials (NBM) in many types of libraries. The materials are briefly described and considerations of selection, acquisition, organization, storage and in particular bibliographic control are dealt with in some detail. Other areas of concern to the librarian dealing with media resources, including the organization and training of staff, planning, equipment, exploitation and copyright, are also discussed. The past decade has seen the widespread introduction of NBM into libraries as additional or alternative sources of information. Librarians have been given an opportunity to rethink many basic principles and adapt existing practice to encompass the new materials. The survey reflects the achievements and some of the failures or problems remaining to be solved in this rapidly expanding area of library work.

This is the third volume of the series directed specifically to the field of aeronautical sciences, but exclu‐ding propulsion and combustion. The present four papers arc concerned with advances in aerodynamics, the first of which ‘Some Aerodynamic Principles for the Design of Swept Wings’ is by J. A. Bagley of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, summarizing the aerodynamic principles and methods for designing wings of high efficiency at subsonic and, subsequently, supersonic speeds.

The title of this volume is one that should bring an eager sparkle to the eyes of your aerodynamic friends. Both turbulence and heat transfer are topics of major practical importance, and for engineering purposes they share a common basis of empiricisms, regarded with justifiable suspicion by fundamental research workers, but on which useful working formulae have been developed. Meanwhile, the said research workers have pursued thoroughgoing scientific investigations into the phenomenon of turbulence and although as yet no important practical applications appear to have resulted from their work they have built up a body of knowledge which has its own intrinsic value and which will undoubtedly have important applications in the future. Good books on these topics are very rare, hence the interest which this title will arouse in aerodynamic circles. An optimist will expect the book to provide him with a complete and ordered survey of both the fundamental and applied lines of development, with appropriate critical comments, and he will expect to find the answers to many of the current problems with which he may be concerned. His expectations will not be entirely fulfilled, the arrangement is not as well ordered as it might be and the writing was largely completed in 1956, so that more recent developments and problems are not dealt with. Such defects are however inevitable in a collection of articles of this kind dealing with a rapidly developing group of subjects, and there is much of value in the book.

THE London and Home Counties Branch is fortunate in having close at hand watering places which can house its Autumn or other Conferences conveniently. Hove in fair weather in October is a place of considerable charm; it has many varieties of hotel, from the very expensive to the modest; it is used to conferences and the hospitality of the Town Hall is widely known. This year's conference was focused in the main on problems of book‐selection which, as one writer truly says, is the main purpose of the librarian because all his possibilities hang upon it. The papers read are valuable because they appear to be quite unvarnished accounts of the individual practice of their writers. Of its kind that of Mr. Frank M. Gardner is a model and a careful study of it by the library worker who is in actual contact with the public might be useful. For his methods the paper must be read; they are a clever up‐to‐minute expansion of those laid down in Brown's Manual with several local checks and variations. Their defects are explained most usefully; there is no examination of actual books before purchase and bookshops are not visited, both of which defects are due to the absence in Luton of well‐stocked bookshops; a defect which many sizeable towns share. We find this remark significant: “The librarian of Luton in 1911 had a book‐fund of £280 a year for 30,000 people. I have nearly £9,000 for 110,000. But the Librarian in 1911 was a better book‐selector than we are. He had to be, to give a library service at all. Every possible purchase had to be looked at, every doubt eliminated.” We deprecate the word “better”; in 1911 book‐selection was not always well done, but Brown's methods could be carried out if it was thought expedient to do the work as well as it could be done. The modern librarian and his employers seem to have determined that the whole of the people shall be served by the library; that books shall be made available hot from the press, with as few exclusions as possible. No librarian willingly buys rubbish; but only in the largest libraries can a completely comprehensive selection practice be maintained. Few librarians can be quite satisfied to acquire their books from lists made by other people although they may use them for suggestions. How difficult is the problem Mr. Gardner demonstrates in connexion with books on Bridge; a shelf of apparently authoritative books might possibly contain not one that actually met the conditions of today. If this could be so in one very small subject, what might be the condition of a collection covering, or intended to cover, all subjects? Librarians have to be realists; orthodox methods do not always avail to deal with the cataract of modern books; but gradually, by cooperative methods, mechanical aids and an ever‐increasing staff devoted to this, the principal library job, much more may be done than is now possible.

Two types of manoeuvre, in one of which lift coefficient and excess thrust are constant, and in the other of which speed is constant, are analysed. The analysis leads to simple methods of estimating take‐off and landing airborne paths, and may be useful in the study of some other flight manoeuvres.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the treatment of relationships, relationship expressions and the ways in which they manifest themselves in image descriptions.

The term “relationship” is construed in the broadest possible way to include spatial relationships (“to the right of”), temporal (“in 1936,” “at noon”), meronymic (“part of”), and attributive (“has color,” “has dimension”). The intentions of these vaguely delimited categories with image information, image creation, and description in libraries and archives is complex and in need of explanation.

The review brings into question many generally held beliefs about the relationship problem such as the belief that the semantics of relationships are somehow embedded in the relationship term itself and that image search and retrieval solutions can be found through refinement of word-matching systems.

This review has no hope of systematically examining all evidence in all disciplines pertaining to this topic. It instead focusses on a general description of a theoretical treatment in Library and Information Science.