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Measuring the efficacy of workplace culture-shift efforts presented a substantial challenge in the author's research exploring how culture shifts during deliberate change initiatives. In response to this challenge this conceptual article proposes that the relative value participants attribute to desired culture outcomes can function as a proxy for measuring culture shift over time, providing applied researchers and practitioners with a simple way to measure efficacy of change initiatives.

This conceptual article reviews the difficulties of defining and measuring workplace culture using widely known, contemporary models and instruments. It then builds an argument for using differential measurement of the relative value attributed to culture shift outcomes (valuing) as a proxy for workplace culture shift, followed by discussion of how to conduct measurement.

This article deductively demonstrates that parsimonious measurement of culture shift is not only simple and feasible, but that practitioners and researchers alike can use a valuing approach to determine the efficacy of efforts to shift workplace culture.

Used to complement existing methods and instruments, or on its own, this approach to measurement can build deeper insights into what is going on during deliberate change initiatives, while answering the reflexive questions “are we doing the right things,” and “are we doing those things the right way?”

[In view of the approaching Conference of the Library Association at Perth, the following note on the Leighton Library may not be inopportune. Dunblane is within an hour's railway journey from Perth and has a magnificent cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, which is well worthy of a visit.]

I HAVE sometimes been asked whether I am conscious, as the present editor of THE LIBRARY WORLD, of the spirit and influence of its founder, James Duff Brown, and of his editorial successors, who included J. D. Stewart and W. C. Berwick Sayers. The answer is that of course I am—how could it be otherwise?

Probably the most interesting public library discussion of last month occurred in the Holborn Borough Council on April 12th. At this meeting the Library Committee reported that they had considered what further economies could be effected during the war in connexion with the Local Government Board circular. They found that no substantial saving could be made by suspending the issue of fiction. On the other hand, the four remaining assistants were either attested, or single men who would be required for military service. In these circumstances they recommended, “That, for the period of the war, or until further order, the Holborn Public Library be closed to the public.” This subject was referred to the Law and Parliamentary Committee, which submitted a report. This report seems to us to be so logical and important in its arguments and decisions that we are giving it a place in these editorial columns, as we believe it will be of value not only to London librarians but to others throughout the country, who are faced with similar issues :—

The very large number of books at present being issued relating to, or connected with the War, conclusively shows to what a great extent the intellectual as well as the material strength of the nation is engrossed by the terrible struggle in which we are engaged. But without abating any of our own interest in the supreme events now taking place, we may well pause to remember that things will not always be thus, and consider carefully before we crowd our shelves with works that are in many cases of very ephemeral value.

MANY and sundry are the worries which fall to the lot of the librarian, and the matter of book‐repair is not the least among them. The very limited book‐fund at the disposal of most public library authorities makes it imperative on the part of the librarian to keep the books in his charge in circulation as long as possible, and to do this at a comparatively small cost, in spite of poor paper, poor binding, careless repairing, and unqualified assistants. This presents a problem which to some extent can be solved by the establishment of a small bindery or repairing department, under the control of an assistant who understands the technique of bookbinding.

Concomitant with the trend towards specialisation in UK accountancy and the rise of relatively separate formal spheres of professional work along formal specialisms such as tax, audit and management consultancy, women entered the profession in unprecedented numbers, but not evenly distributed across those specialisms. This paper aims to draw on the sociology of accountancy and feminist studies of the professions to show that specialisms have emerged through and, in turn, have been shaped and recreated by gender as well as other processes.

The paper's research approach combines the sociology of professions with critical gender studies. It draws on interviews, brochures, web pages, and results from a questionnaire survey to investigate professional identities within UK accountancy.

Accountants' self-articulated notions of professionalism in the different specialisms are gendered and ordered hierarchically. Gender is an encompassing conceptual frame for ordering discursive attributes of the different specialisms. Working long and unpredictable hours was central to accountants' understandings of their professional life. Socialising with clients was seen as functional in bringing new opportunities to the firm. Socialising with peers also was deemed important, especially in solving internal frictions and in controlling new entrants' behaviour in firms. The more “public” the ideology of a specialism, the more masculine it was perceived to be.

This study challenges the uniform representations of professional identities offered by previous studies. It suggests that gender offers a discursive and ideological frame of reference for accountancy whose relevance extends beyond the working practices of men and women to the very constitution of the profession. It does so with reference to an original mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Prominence is given in this issue to the interesting Diamond Jubilee celebration held last month in connection with the Norwich Public Library. It was a courageous but entirely proper thing to hold this celebration in war time, because although it was calculated to raise opposition from short‐sighted people, at the same time it was good policy to affirm that the Public Library is an essential part of national economy even in the greatest of wars. Excellent arguments on behalf of this last proposition were advanced at that meeting in the happy speech made by Mr. L. Stanley Jast, which we hope to see published in even fuller form sooner or later, and equally in the letter from Sir Frederic Kenyon. This gains greatly in force from the fact that Sir Frederic is not only an officer in the Army, but is, we believe, at this moment serving in France. If any of our readers have had doubts about the present seasonableness of their work, and there may conceivably be such, they may wisely ponder the letter and again take heart of grace. As for the celebration as a whole, it was, as we have said, opportune; it was also skilfully engineered and advertised, and was an undoubted success upon which the Norwich Library Committee and Mr. G. A. Stephen have every reason to congratulate themselves.

THERE is no doubt that a lot of literary rubbish is current under the name of children's books; there always was; but it has become rather more apparent in recent times. Mr. McColvin, in a useful article in The Library Review, presents a nostalgic sigh for the days of Henty and Fenn and even of the earlier Ballantyne and upon that builds a somewhat severe criticism of the modern children's library. As so often with writers on this theme, he uses no half‐tones and points a rather dismal scene in primary black and white, and his moral is that it would be better to be without these libraries than that they should supply ill‐written, badly devised and quite useless slush which makes no demands upon the child. If this were a complete picture we should agree. It is not; in the first place, it is based mainly on fiction, a very incomplete view of children's books. But, even considering fiction only, while such writers as Noel Streatfeild, Elizabeth Goudge, Arthur Ransome and David Severn (and a dozen others come to the pen) are supplying us with books, it cannot be wholly true. Then, as one of our correspondents implies elsewhere in these pages, children are of many ages and stages, and it is not wrong to give little ones simple things. It is vain to long for the return of the days when the Pilgrim's Progress, Foxe's Martyrs and the Dore editions of Paradise Lost and the Cary translation of Dante's Inferno adorned, and required dusting weekly, on every parlour table, and to many subsequent readers Ballantyne, except for Coral Island, is as dead as the Pharaohs. We do thank Mr. McColvin, however, for bringing children's librarians to that state of vexed irritation which will induce them to reconsider their work, increase their standards and recall the commonplace that their almost entire purpose is to produce intelligent adult readers. The T.L.S., in an appreciation of Mr. McColvin's article, suggests that the influence of the children's librarian can be even greater in this direction than the teacher's, but, if what he asserts is true, through our libraries many children may be deprived of the intellectual capacity to read anything worth while. Does Mr. McColvin really believe that?

IN the death of Mr. JAMES DUFF BROWN, the library profession loses one of its most striking personalities and librarianship its most powerful influence for progress. Any attempt at present to estimate the extent of his influence upon the modern public library must necessarily be inadequate, because not only are some of the movements he started only beginning to gather force, but his retiring nature made him refrain from labelling many things as his own. With the possible reservation that he was unable to do himself justice on the platform, he was the ideal born public librarian. As an organiser and teacher of librarianship, as a keen and discerning student and critic of tendencies, methods and results, and as an expounder of professional knowledge through the medium of the written page, he was without an equal. Like all pioneers and men of strong opinions, he did not make only friends ; but he had world‐wide friendships, and he forced the attention and respect of all library workers. On another page of this issue an old friend and one‐time colleague of his gives a brief outline of his life and works, and we need not do the same again here. But as his successors in the editorship of THE LIBRARY WORLD, which he founded and edited until a year or two ago, we cannot refrain from adding our tribute to his memory. Representing the best type of efficiency and progress in librarianship, he was a real friend and teacher, and his death leaves a sad gap in our ranks.