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While behaviour sequence analysis (BSA) is popular, it is not without limitations, namely, the level of detail required and time taken to run analyses; therefore, this paper aims to outline a novel method, using 30 serial homicide cases as a worked example.

Temporal analysis methods are becoming increasingly popular in applied forensic and criminological research. In recent years, BSA has become a widely used approach.

Waypoint sequencing provides a streamlined version of the traditional BSA approach, allowing for fewer behaviours to be included and providing a clearer overview of the main behaviours of interest.

Waypoint sequencing is shown in the current paper through serial killer research to show how to conduct the analyses and how it is effective in current investigations by expediting the process and allowing quicker analysis to facilitate current investigations.

The current research provides a novel approach to sequence analysis that is more useful in applied settings as it requires fewer behaviours or events than traditional BSA.

The purpose of this paper is to address the complexity of missing persons cases and highlight the linguistic differences that arise in this type of crime. Missing persons cases are typically very complex investigations. Without a body, crime scene forensics is not possible, and police are often left only with witness and suspect statements. Forensic linguistics methods may help investigators to prioritise or remove suspects. There are many competing approaches in forensic linguistic analysis; however, there is limited empirical research available on emerging methods.

This research investigates Statement Analysis, a recent development in linguistic analysis that has practical applications in criminal investigations. Real-world statements of individuals convicted of or found to be not guilty of their involvement in missing persons cases were used in the analyses. In addition, Behaviour Sequence Analysis was used to map the progressions of language in the suspects' statements.

Results indicated differences between the guilty and innocent individuals based on their language choices, for example, guilty suspects in missing [alive] cases were found more likely to use passive language and vague words because of high levels of cognitive load associated with the several types of guilty knowledge suspects in missing persons cases possess. Of particular interest is the use of untruthful words in the innocent suspects’ statements in missing [murdered] cases. While typically seen in deceptive statements, untruthful words in innocent statements may result because of false acquittals.

This research provides some support for Statement Analysis as a suitable approach to analysing linguistic statements in missing persons cases.

When investigating missing persons cases, witness and suspect statements are often the only available evidence to investigators. As such, forensic linguistics can be useful to police when seeking information from individuals during investigative interviews. The presumption of innocence must be maintained in an investigation, and therefore this study aims to use a method focused on veracity detection, rather than the majority of studies using deception detection approaches.

The current research uses criteria-based content analysis (CBCA), a method that has been applied to a variety of criminal cases. Real-world statements of individuals convicted or found innocent of their involvement in missing persons cases were used in the analyses. Additionally, behaviour sequence analysis (BSA) was used to map language patterns within individuals’ statements.

Results indicated that two individual markers occurred at a high frequency across all four groups (the guilty and innocent statements of both case types); however, differences were noted in the sequences based on an individual’s ability to provide experiential details.

The current research contributes to the growing literature that aims to test CBCA in adult samples across crimes that do not pertain to sexual abuse, in addition to aiding researchers and practitioners to understand better the linguistic differences that occur in missing persons cases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this type of research, using CBCA to assist with missing person's cases with a temporal method (BSA), has never before been tested. BSA has previously been used in forensic linguistics, and shown support for the method. The current research builds on this in terms of missing persons cases.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a variety of related methods for helping with criminal (cold) case investigations. Despite the best efforts of police investigations, many cases around the world run out of leads and go cold. While many police departments around the world have developed specialist groups and task forces, academics have also been developing new methods that can assist with investigations.

Cold cases, by their very nature, typically comprise incomplete data sets that many traditional statistical methods are not suited to. Groups of researchers have therefore developed temporal, dynamic analysis methods to offer new insights into criminal investigations. These methods are combined into a timeline toolkit and are outlined in the current paper.

Methods from the timeline toolkit have already been successfully applied to many cold cases, turning them back into current cases. In this paper, two real-world cold cases are analysed with methods from the timeline toolkit to provide examples of how these methods can be applied in further cold cases.

Methods from the timeline toolkit provide a novel approach to investigating current and cold cases. This review provides academics and practitioners with a guide to begin using and developing these methods and forming successful collaborations with police departments and cold case task forces. The methods are also suitable for wider groups and to use in their investigations.

Cold case review teams and the processes that they adopt in their endeavour to solve historic crimes are varied and largely underreported. Of the limited literature surrounding the topic of cold case reviews, the focus is on clearance rates and the selection of cases for review. While multiple reports and reviews have been undertaken and recommend that the interface between investigators and forensic scientists be improved, there is little evidence of cold case teams comprised of a mixture of investigators and scientists or experts. With the growing reliance on forensic science as an aide to solvability, the authors propose that the inclusion of forensic scientists to the central cold case investigation may be a critical factor in future success. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To support the proposed approach, the authors conducted a review of the current literature seeking insight into the reported make-up of cold case teams. In conjunction with this, the authors reviewed a number of commissioned reports intended to improve cold case reviews and forensic services.

While many of the reviewed reports and recommendations suggested better integration with scientists and external expertise, little evidence of this in practice was reported within published literature. Open dialogue and cross pollination between police investigators and forensic scientists are likely to mitigate biases, inform case file triage and better equip investigations with contemporary and cutting-edge scientific solutions to the evidence analysis for cold cases. Furthermore, with respect to scientists within academia, large pools of resources by way of student interns or researchers may be available to assist resource-sparse policing jurisdictions.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed recommendation for the consideration of integrated forensic scientists within a cold case review team. Multiple reports suggest the need for closer ties, but it is the anecdotal experience of the authors that the benefits of a blended task force approach may yield greater success.

We are informed that at a recent meeting of representatives of some important learned societies a resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority that Public Libraries should have no connection with the custody of Local Records.

Marischal College Buildings, i.e. the second and more modern portion of the University are situated in Broad Street; Aberdeen. Their site is the same as that which they originally occupied, viz.: the conventual buildings and grounds of the Grey Friars or Franciscan Monastery, which accounts for the proximity of the Grey‐friar's Church within what is now the College Quadrangle. The Library of this Quadrangle, entering the central door of the Mitchell Tower, thus reaching the vestibule in which the famous stone (the only remnant of the original College Buildings in the new Town) with the inscription passing up the flight of stairs leading to the Picture Gallery and Mitchell —“they haif said : quhat say they: let them say,” is to be seen, thence Hall—the latter being a piece of architectural excellence well worth a visit. The library door is on the left of the landing at the head of the stairs already mentioned, and the books contained in it belong to the Departments of Agriculture, Law, Medicine, and Natural Science.

“WE come now to another aspect of the question, and it must be admitted that the resource and ingenuity of the opposition have left nothing unnoticed. This is the common and constantly repeated assertion that novels are so cheap that every working man in the country can buy all he needs for less than the annual library rate. This statement was first made some years ago when publishers commenced to issue cheap reprints of non‐copyright novels at 1s. and 6d. each. Previous to this the halfpenny evening paper had been relied upon as affording sufficient literary entertainment for the working man, but when it was found to work out at 13s. per annum, as against a library rate of 1od. or 1s. 4d., the cheap newspaper argument was dropped like a hot cinder. We doubt if the cheap paper‐covered novel is any better. Suppose a workman pays £20 per annum for his house, and is rated at £16, he will pay 1s. 4d. as library rate, or not much more than 1¼d. per month for an unlimited choice of books, newspapers and magazines. But suppose he has to depend on cheap literature. The lowest price at which he can purchase a complete novel of high quality by any author of repute is 3d., but more likely 4½d. or 6d. However, we will take 3d. as an average rate, and assume that our man has leisure to read one book every fortnight. Well, at the end of one year he will have paid 6s. 6d. for a small library by a restricted number of authors, and it will cost him an additional 4s. or 5s. if he contemplates binding his tattered array of books for future preservation. Besides this, he will be practically shut off from all the current literature on topics of the day, as his 3d. a fortnight will hardly enable him to get copyright books by the best living authors. With a Public Library at his command he can get all these, and still afford to buy an occasional poet or essayist, or novel, or technical book, well bound and printed on good paper, such as his friend who would protect him against an iniquitous library rate would not blush to see on his own shelves. It seems hard that the working men of the country should be condemned to the mental entertainment afforded by an accumulation of pamphlets. Literature clothed in such a dress as gaudy paper covers is not very inspiring or elevating, and even the most contented mind would revolt against the possession of mere reading matter in its cheapest and least durable form. The amount of variety and interest existing among cheap reprints of novels is not enough, even if the form of such books were better. It is well known to readers of wide scope that something more than mere pastime can be had out of novels. Take, for example, the splendid array of historical novels which have been written during the present century. No one can read a few of these books without consciously or unconsciously acquiring historical and political knowledge of much value. The amount of pains taken by the authors in the preparation of historical novels is enormous, and their researches extend not only to the political movements of the period, but to the geography, social state, costume, language and contemporary biography of the time. Thus it is utterly impossible for even a careless reader to escape noticing facts when presented in an environment which fixes them in the memory. For example, the average school history gives a digest of the Peninsular War, but in such brief and matter of fact terms as to scarcely leave any impression. On the other hand, certain novels by Lever and Grant, slipshod and inaccurate as they may be in many respects, give the dates and sequence of events and battles in the Peninsula in such a picturesque and detailed manner, that a better general idea is given of the history of the period than could possibly be acquired without hard study of a heavy work like Napier's History. It is hardly necessary to do more than name Scott, James, Cooper, Kingsley, Hugo, Lytton, Dumas, Ainsworth, Reade, G. Eliot, Short‐house, Blackmore, Doyle, Crockett and Weyman in support of this claim. Again, no stranger can gain an inkling of the many‐sided characteristics of the Scot, without reading the works of Scott, Ferrier, Galt, Moir, Macdonald, Black, Oliphant, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Annie Swan and Ian Maclaren. And how many works by these authors can be had for 3d. each? The only way in which a stay‐at‐home Briton can hope to acquire a knowledge of the people and scenery of India is by reading the works of Kipling, Mrs. Steel, Cunningham, Meadows Taylor, and others. Probably a more vivid and memory‐haunting picture of Indian life and Indian scenery can be obtained by reading these authors than by reading laboriously through Hunter's huge gazetteer. In short, novels are to the teaching of general knowledge what illustrations are to books, or diagrams to engineers, they show things as they are and give information about all things which are beyond the reach of ordinary experience or means. It is just the same with juvenile literature, which is usually classed with fiction, and gives to that much‐maligned class a very large percentage of its turnover. The adventure stories of Ballantyne, Fenn, Mayne Reid, Henty, Kingston, Verne and others of the same class are positive mines of topographical and scientific information. Such works represent more than paste and scissors industry in connection with gazetteers, books of travel and historical works; they represent actual observation on the part of the authors. A better idea of Northern Canada can be derived from some of Ballantyne's works than from formal topographical works; while the same may be said of Mexico and South America as portrayed by Captain Mayne Reid, and the West Indies by Michael Scott. The volume of Personal Reminiscences written by R. M. Ballantyne before he died will give some idea of the labour spent in the preparation of books for the young. The life of the navy at various periods can only be learned from the books of Smollett, Marryat and James Hannay, as that of the modern army is only to be got in the works of Lever, Grant, Kipling, Jephson, “John Strange Winter” and Robert Blatchford.

SEPTEMBER sees most librarians again at the daily round, although some, including those of the universities and schools, are still scattered on mountains, golf‐courses, beaches and oceans for a short while yet. To older men there is a curious feeling aroused by the knowledge that there is no Library Association Conference this month. They may, in a measure, find compensation in attending the annual meeting of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Association, which will be at St. Albans, or that of A.S.L.I.B., which has Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as its venue. Both, by some lack of care which might have been avoided, occur on the same week‐end, September 24–26. Quite clearly the special problems of librarianship technique, such as processes, book‐selection and purchase, classification, catalogues, fines, publicity, salaries, hours, and so on almost infinitely, can no longer be discussed profitably at the Annual Meeting of the Library Association; smaller gatherings, such as these, are their fitting place. We make a suggestion to the L.A. Council, for what it is worth and without pretence to being original. It is that it should indicate to all its branches and sections the main questions to which they should devote attention, and that in due course they should produce their conclusions on them. These, being pooled, would form the basis of the L.A. Annual Meeting. This would make a purposeful programme for all, and the results of the Conference might then be considered definite and practical.