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Medievalists have such reason to be grateful to the makers of manuscript catalogues in the last half century that any criticism of the products of their labours must inevitably sound ungracious. M. l'Abbé Leroquais may deny that the cataloguer, engaged on work ‘so varied and rich in surprises’, needs our pity, but he is, after all, speaking of France, where such work is sponsored by the State. The British cataloguer, frequently prompted only by his own urge, defraying often the expenses of his visits to the collections, hampered by shortness of time and lack of funds both for the work and for publication, must be revered as a pioneer. He ploughs a lone furrow, frequently self‐taught.

As a longstanding fellow-traveler and occasional critic of symbolic interaction, I read Dave Snow's paper with the following five basic Scientific Interest (S.I.) assumptions in mind: (1) there are no immaculate perceptions; (2) no object, actor, action, or situation has intrinsic stimulus properties; (3) therefore there are no inherent meanings for any object, actor, action, or situation; (4) the meaning of any object, actor, action, or situation is the response made to it; (5) therefore, there are as many meanings for any object, actor, action, or situation as there are responses made to it. In other words, meanings are constructed. Hence the different responses – the different meanings for or meanings of – the Fall 2005 Paris Riots and the current Spring 2006 Paris protests. I am also mindful of William I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas's (1928) statement of what has come to be known as the Thomas theorem: “Whatever men [sic] define to be real is real in its consequences.”

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.