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SINCE all the efforts to halt and reduce unemployment have so far signally failed, I would not have been surprised to find a group calling itself Church Action with the Unemployed recommending prayer. But, in fact the kind of help on offer is of a more practical kind, consisting of a series of attractively produced leaflets which ‘contain the most comprehensive description yet published by any organisation about the range of initiatives possible at local level’. Although written from a ‘church angle’, the leaflets also have a universal practical application. Titles include Coping with unemployment, Creating new jobs, Mutual help groups and resource centres, Opportunities for young people, and a list of Contact persons at local level. These contact persons, mostly industrial chaplains, have several years' experience of working with unemployment initiatives and are available for advice, giving talks, etc. CAWTU has also published a book called Action on unemployment: 100 projects with unemployed people which offers essential practical information on working with the Manpower Services Commission, establishing a centre, working with volunteers, fund raising and promoting small business co‐operatives. It incorporates comments and advice from those actually involved in projects. CAWTU is an interdenominational organisation whose objective is to educate church congregations, voluntary organisations and unemployed people about actions which can be undertaken at local level. Copies of the leaflets are free and the book is available at £2.95 (less 10% for libraries) from CAWTU, 146 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4BY. They suggest that the leaflets are displayed ‘in your Local Reference rather than “Religious” section’!

As was predicted, the Patent Office White Paper Intellectual property and innovation (Cmnd 9712, HMSO, £6.70) was published in April. Bold type is used in the White Paper to highlight firm government proposals and I believe these make two very serious threats to the interests of industrialists and the general community, and will make problems for librarians and information officers. In each case the effect of the government's proposals will be to raise costs and create barriers to the flow of much needed information: (1) The fair dealing sections 6 and 7 of the Copyright Act 1956, which has enabled information to be photocopied for ‘research and private study’ will be amended, if the government embody their proposal in legislation ‘to exclude copying for commercial purposes’. Who will decide where the border between commercial and non‐commercial falls? Will the librarian or information officer be expected to give summary judgments all day long on differential charges? And why should commercial enterprises be expected to pay a higher price which will simply be passed on to the public? Will permission have to be sought from the copyright owner? Will separate accounting be required? (2) Earlier in the report when concluding the section commending increased use of computers and online searching, the recommendation includes these words ‘… the government recognises that the charges made for these services will have to be set at a level which does not give rise to unfair competition with the private sector’. Why should the small and medium size businesses (much mentioned as ‘SME's’ in the report) have to pay inflated prices for information the government believes they should be using? The much talked about ‘efficiency’ which means not using two people where one will suffice and thus reducing costs, is deliberately rejected by the government who are in effect saying, ‘if you have access to our data bases you must pay the equivalent of a hefty profit to an unnecessary middle man, as well as the basic costs of our service’.

STORIES circulating in July that copies of the Touche Ross report into the affairs of the Library Association—distribution of which was initially restricted to members of LA Council—were to be had in the Charing Cross Road at thirty quid a go proved unfounded when I spent a morning poking about the bookshops there. True, one LA councillor told me that for a fiver he would wave his copy briefly in front of my face so that I could claim to have ‘seen’ it, but I declined on the ground that an aesthetic visual experience would butter no parsnips in this column.

In the spring this year, the new Registrar of Companies, Stephen Curtis (NLW, December 1985) wrote to all, or nearly all, the public libraries which subscribe to the CRO microfiche directory of companies registered in Great Britain, offering to supply order forms and pre‐paid envelopes to obtain company records by post. As I understand the offer, the pre‐paid envelopes would be included for carriage to and from Cardiff. The letter said, ‘Part of CRO's marketing strategy is to improve the service available to users of the directory of British companies…I envisage supplying you initially with 100–150 order forms plus pre‐paid envelopes as soon as possible’. I understand a number of libraries have already replied positively to the proposal. This is along the lines I suggested first in this column in February 1984.

I WAS perturbed by a ‘kite’ flown in a national newspaper recently that in its search for economies in public expenditure, the new Conservative government might wield its axe on the British Library's proposed erection in the Euston Road. The current cost of the new building is informally judged to have climbed to a total of £300m, but as this expenditure is to be deployed over a decade and more, abandonment is hardly likely to make serious inroads into government expenditure curently running at more than £50,000m annually.

TOP TITLES, measured by the number of loans from Dumbarton District Libraries last year, were newish books by the following ten authors: Wilbur Smith, Jeffrey Archer, Catherine Cookson, Virginia Andrews, Danielle Steel, C McCullough, Susan Howatch, Desmond Bagley, Belva Plain, Douglas Reeman. (How can anyone be willing to go through life called ‘Belva Plain’?) The most popular non‐fiction writer was James Herriot, and for children (can you guess?), Enid Blyton.

ANDRE DEUTSCH has sold his library science imprint Grafton Books, which he acquired in 1961 along with the services of myself, to Gower Press.

I SUPPOSE THERE is a degree of risibility about the suggestion—mine own—that 1983 should be the year of Touche Ross.

THE ON‐GOING of Liverpool City Libraries and Companies House has now arrived at a final satisfactory conclusion it is hoped. Since last month's comments in this column, the new (or by now not so new) minister, Reginald Eyre, has given his approval to the restoration of the postal sales service with Liverpool. It is expected that at the Liverpool end the charge per company will be 50p. As during the six months of the original pilot scheme in 1978, Liverpool City Libraries will be willing to do business on behalf of any who contact the Commercial Library. For further details contact by telephone 051–207 2147 or by telex 629500.

The Microelectronics Education Support Unit (MESU) is funding an investigation into the dissemination of Information Technology information in local education authorities.