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Looks at the types of published material available through libraries, museums, art galleries and records offices under the direction of local authorities. Examines the importance of publishing material, and investigates the marketing strategies for these publications. Concludes that, with an increase in pressure on local authorities to provide recreational and leisure activities such publishing has great importance in the survival of just such activities.

About a year ago at a meeting of English Electric librarians at our Dunchurch Staff Training Centre the problem of the increasing number of firms marketing trade literature retrieval and dissemination systems was raised in the ‘any other business’. As there was little time at that stage to discuss the problem in detail, I was asked to produce with some urgency a brief report on the existing situation. It was realized that many in the company, both in libraries and outside them, were being pestered by salesmen with requests to be allowed to demonstrate their product. Although the decentralization of the company meant that any such report could only be a recommending document it was felt by all present at the meeting that it would be extremely helpful in giving the facts as clearly and in an unbiased way as possible. The report was completed in late June and led to the publication of an article based on it in the Electrical Review, 20th September 1969.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Faced with the obvious impossibility of remaining totally self‐sufficient whilst trying to maintain collections and services in difficult economic times, many librarians have turned to resource sharing as the answer to their problems. This article aims to review the ever growing field of literature on resource sharing in order to try to discover what resource sharing is, what need there is for it, what it is intended or hoped to achieve, what sort of resource sharing plans and schemes have been implemented, and in particular to try to find any evidence in the literature on the real benefits and actual costs involved in resource sharing which could be used as justification for such schemes in comparison with other methods of maximizing access to resources.

Resource sharing is an important element in the national planning of library and information services to meet the needs of information, education and culture of the whole community at all levels. An overview of resource sharing practices is presented, with particular reference to the British scene. It is also argued that, with the approach of the Single Market in 1992, resource sharing should now be considered on a European scale. In conclusion, some problems associated with the practice of resource sharing are considered.

The theme of this conference is information in a changing world. I think I was asked to contribute because, for the last six years or so, I have been fortunate to be placed in a very important sector of this changing world—local government. Both in this country and abroad the changes taking place, particularly in urban areas, have created vast new problems for urban managers and, as a result, they and their professional advisers from a wide range of disciplines are demanding better access to information.

Reports on a survey of charging policies and practices in London‐based public, academic and special libraries and information services with the object of establishing which pricing mechanisms are in operation and which services are being provided at a fee. The pricing mechanism cited by most respondents was “what the market will bear” rather than a direct adherence to cost‐based prices. The majority of libraries of all types have formalized some sort of differential pricing scheme in relation to user type and type of usage. There is a high commitment in academic and public libraries to a basic free level of service. Regulatory charges are largely the domain of public and academic libraries. Services acting as candidates for the generation of income differ between library types, but are mostly concerned with products rather than ideas/advice. “Value‐added” work is largely conducted by special and academic libraries.

With the increasing development of small firms, a greater emphasis is now being placed on their information requirements. Detailed official studies into the situation have revealed the deficiencies which appear to exist in meeting these requirements, especially in those agencies which specialise in servicing small firms. Recommendations for improvements are examined, the conclusion being that it behoves information specialists to address the special needs of small firms more sympathetically.

In this country local authorities perform many tasks in society, from keeping an eye on the quality of goods, through the maintenance of parks and other amenities, to the provision of basic services in education and social welfare. In doing all of this, those concerned get very little in the way of thanks — more often there are brickbats from the monetarist politicians seeking to control public expenditure and from the ratepayers who bear the consequences.

NBL branches ‐ The National Book League's pilot attempt to establish a regional branch, master‐minded by Peter Labdon and taking the form of the Ipswich & Suffolk Book League, is already judged sufficiently encouraging for the NBL to seek to spread the process elsewhere in Britain. To which end there has been published a booklet called Branching Out—setting up National Book League local branches: a working handbook, which is obtainable without charge from the Director, Martyn Goff, at the NBL, Book House, 45 East Hill, Wandsworth, London SW18.