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THE College of Librarianship is best considered on its own terms, as an institution unique in the history and present pattern of British library education, but its significance and probable future development can best be assessed if two external factors are kept in mind.

DURING some comments on the brain drain last month it was remarked that work study technologists stood on the periphery. Suddenly they have been moved right to the centre as the result of a communication from Dr. Robert N. Lehrer. He is among the six American work study experts best known to the profession in this country, ranking with Barnes and Mundel as having contributed much to a right appreciation of the subject's value and its techniques.

The Barbican Library is the headquarters of the City of London's lending library service. It includes a music library and a children's library as well as a special section devoted to the fine and performing arts. Anyone who lives, works or studies in the City may apply to be a member. Others who wish to join may do so under the interavailability scheme.

The Fifth British Commonwealth and Empire Lecture will be held on Thursday, September 15, 1949, at 6 p.m. at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, Westminster, S.W.1. The lecture will be given by Mr E. H. Atkin, F.R.Ae.S., Chief Designer, Airframe Division, A. V. Roc (Canada) Ltd., on ‘Inter‐City Transport Development on the Commonwealth Routes’.

Reviews past and present research into the role of information as a public good and states that progress in thinking has not kept pace with events that led the New York Times to label the 1980s as “when information accelerated”. Argues that a new perspective on the role of information in the changing extent and pattern of economic growth might be achieved by combining several elements from recent analytical efforts including information as a factor of production, a taxonomy of information, and a broader conceptualization of infrastructure so that it includes institutions and has a focus on competence, both individual and in the learning organization. Warns of a resurgence of Luddism, fuelled by unemployment, in the form of an anti‐change stance which questions whether so much growing inequality is needed to achieve the magical productivity said to give everyone bigger incomes and a better life.

A PROGRESSIVE increase in the standard of living is now widely accepted as both possible and desirable, even if the notion that it can be doubled within the next 25 years is dismissed as an optimistic flight of Butlerian fancy. The prerequisite is a substantial upsurge in the country's production. This was expressed succinctly by Mr. Victor Feather four years ago when, as Assistant Secretary to the Trades Union Congress, he told the Institute of Directors that ‘what can be done by any Government by way of social improvement depends on what Industry can produce and sell. About half the strikes that take place have nothing to do with hours or wages or conditions, but have a great deal to do with human relations. That field is one in which there must be patience, tolerance, concentration and great endeavour, but the rate of progress can and should be accelerated.’