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As our correspondent on another page suggests, the economic crisis may have reactions upon libraries. The most obvious one he mentions is the increased difficulty we shall experience in obtaining American books. Not all libraries, public or private, make any special collection of books published in the United States, although there has been an increasing tendency to buy more as the relations of the two countries have grown closer through their common struggle; in fact, we know libraries which have spent many hundreds of pounds in the course of the past year or two on the select lists of books which have been made for us by American librarians. It is most unfortunate that the manipulation of dollar currency should have brought about a situation in which even the exchange of ideas between the countries becomes more difficult. One suggestion might be made and that is that our American colleagues should continue to sift the literature of this time of famine for us, so that further select lists may be available in better days.

When this book is filmed, as assuredly it must be filmed, Sir Barnes will take his rightful place as a household name along with R. J. Mitchell after “The First of the Few” and Douglas Bader after “Reach for the Sky”.

FROM 5th to 8th October, 1951, Aslib was fortunate in holding its Annual Conference again at Ashorne Hill, near Leamington Spa, and our thanks are due for the third time to Colonel and Mrs. J. H. Alexander and their staff for the excellence of the catering and domestic arrangements. The weather also co‐operated and sunshine displayed all the autumn beauties of the garden and countryside.

OUR publication date precludes more than the beginning of our study on the Library Association Conference which, from the point of view of numbers, has been one of the largest. We shall continue in our next issue such comment upon it as the importance of the subjects under discussion would seem to warrant.

In a paper by a then prominent member of the Northern Branch of Aslib, who is not unknown to many of us here, given to the Scottish Branch in 1953, the author deplored the use of what he called ‘a starting rail’ in the writing of papers and reports, alluding metaphorically to the early aeroplanes, to enable the writers to get off the ground, before embarking on what they hoped would be steady, level flight of fact or fancy. This he would probably apply to speakers as well, but I make no excuse for building for myself what almost amounts to a launching platform, and extending the metaphor to the more up‐to‐date rocket and IRBM and ICBM rather than the early aeroplanes, before letting go and venturing into unexplored space, which is in this case ‘The use of Trade Literature’, for that is the region I have been told to explore this morning. Unexplored it certainly is for, like all good research workers, my first reaction in starting to prepare the paper was to examine what others had written about the subject. Precious little! I found that most of the works on special library technique dealt with the subject in a paragraph at best and in two or three lines at worst. If I had strung all the extracts together and amplified and extended them I should not have occupied more than about five minutes of your time. So most of what follows is either original, empirical, borrowed from other practitioners, pinched in other words, or ad hoc. For the benefit of those who have not had a classical education, I will explain that ad hoc means in effect designed to fit a particular or peculiar set of conditions.

Sir Raymond Streat, C.B.E., Director of The Cotton Board, Manchester, accompanied by Lady Streat. A Vice‐President: F. C. Francis, M.A., F.S.A., Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, British Museum. Honorary Treasurer: J.E.Wright. Honorary Secretary: Mrs. J. Lancaster‐Jones, B.Sc., Science Librarian, British Council. Chairman of Council: Miss Barbara Kyle, Research Worker, Social Sciences Documentation. Director: Leslie Wilson, M.A.

Love of the past is one of the key features of the British character. Tourists who flock to our shores see it in our carefully‐preserved archaeological sites, ancient monuments, churches, castles, palaces and timbered buildings. During their visit they may even learn from the guides that tradition is so important to us that its continuance may acquire legal force. If an individual can prove that he and his predecessors have enjoyed a privilege for a certain length of time he may be granted leave to enjoy it in perpetuity, as, for example, by our laws of ancient lights and right of way. In spite of evidence of this kind foreigners usually still fail to understand how fundamental tradition is to our nature and how much we respect our long‐standing institutions. Thus, in order properly to understand the present state of the information industry in Great Britain it will be necessary to examine its historical growth. As with most British institutions it owes much to the circumstances of its development.

In this issue of Aslib Proceedings we are glad to be able to include papers from two of the series of winter meetings held in London by Aslib, papers given at the Annual General Meetings of the Northern and Scottish Branches, and three contributions to MEMBERS' FORUM.

Serial offenders have been described as more forensically aware, better able to control their victim, and ultimately, more adept at eluding detection. Despite these assertions, there is a lack of research examining differences in “criminal expertise” (i.e. offense-related skills and competencies) between serial and non-serial offenders. The purpose of the current study is to address this empirical research gap.

The current study uses binary logistic regression to examine a sample of 83 serial offenses and 322 offenses involving “novices” (i.e. offenders without a previous criminal history) to determine whether criminal expertise is a distinctive feature of the crime-commission process of serial offenders, compared to novices.

Binary logistic regression findings indicated that offenders who did not verbally reassure their victim, who brought a weapon to the offense and who selected a victim who was walking were more likely to be serial. Taken together, these behaviors do not suggest that serial offenders are “experts” at avoiding detection, but rather, indicate some general offense competencies and skills related to violent offending.

The current study offers the first direct application of the criminal expertise framework to serial sexual offending. The findings offer new insights for the treatment and management of offenders who possess offense-related competencies and skills, which can offer a complementary view to more deficit-based models.

This paper aims to explore the presence of overkill in sexual homicide. More specifically, the study examines whether overkill is a valid indicator of an organized or disorganized sexual homicide. Moreover, the study tests the presence of various patterns of sexual homicide involving overkill.

The sample used in this study consists of 662 cases of extrafamilial SHs with (n = 145) and without (n = 517) evidence of overkill, respectively. A binomial regression was used to compare at the multivariate level the two groups of crimes, while a latent class analysis was used to determine whether overkill could be associated with different patterns of sexual homicide.

Findings from bivariate and logistic regression analyses show that the presence of overkill may be associated with both organized and disorganized sexual homicides. Moreover, latent class analysis suggests that there are three distinct patterns of overkill in sexual homicide: impulsive, sadistic and personal.

This study is the first to empirically analyze overkill in sexual homicides and to propose a classification using crime-commission process characteristics.