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Recently, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have begun to study the influence of attention, mimicry, and social context on emotional contagion. In this chapter, we will review the classic evidence documenting the role of these factors in sparking primitive emotional contagion, especially in occupational settings. Then we will discuss the new evidence, which scholars have amassed to help us better understand the role of culture in fostering the ability to read others’ thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Finally, we will briefly speculate as to where future research might be headed.

Joanne Abbey

The National Centre for Information Media and Technology (CIMTECH) is developing a full text database of optical disc trade literature and journal articles. The database will be held on a WORM (write once, read many) disc and it will be used to investigate the economic, technical and administrative issues associated with the application of writable discs in library and information sciences. There will be opportunities to see demonstrations of the system throughout the course of the project. Contact: Tony Hendley, CIMTECH, Hatfield Polytechnic, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB (Tel. 07072 79691).

Tuesday, 7 September 1993 and I am experiencing the different levels of investment by British Rail on its West Coast and East Coast routes as I travel from the North‐West of England to the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield for the ninth International Library Technology Fair (renamed from this year as Libtech International). Catching up with the Times Higher Education Supplement of 20 August on the train I am pleasantly surprised to see a note about Libtech '93 and Hans Geleijnse's guest lecture on page 20.

I SYMPATHISE with the decision to invite commercial advertising into Scoclis news, the thrice‐yearly sheet issued by the Standing Conference of Co‐operative Library & Information Services, but even though the rate is modest, I should think they will have to ‘professionalise’ the present stencilled format if they are to get much custom. You have got to make an advertiser feel he is getting value for money, not just providing a sub. Perhaps if Scoclis news doesn't have much success in ‘inviting’ advertising, it will try selling advertising instead. Some bodies, not necessarily SCOCLIS, which solicit commercial funding for their activities don't always seem clear just who is doing whom the favour.

THOSE FEW OF YOU, comparatively, on the receiving end of the much‐heralded £1000m cuts in government spending announced in mid‐July needn't feel lonely for long. The cuts were cosmetic in relation to the problem, like a smatter of eye‐black to prepare Edith Evans to play Ophelia, and there will be more in the annual November budget, and again next year. I have long reckoned that recession hits the world of books 1½‐2 years after the mainstream industrial economy, and the first sign of upturn in the latter means a bumpy ride still to come for us. So keep the purse‐strings tied up tight yet awhile.

IT IS PERHAPS with wry understatement that the recent public declaration by the Library Association Council on the subject of library expenditure includes the remark that ‘The Library Association does not claim that libraries should be exempt from the economies which must now be borne by all’, for it has been manifestly apparent, since some dim realisation of national economic crisis first began to seep into the quasi‐cerebral thought processes of those who conduct government and local government, that the first neck upon which the sharpness of the axe would be tested has been library services everywhere.

Ninety per cent of information handled within libraries, information units and offices is printed on paper. This comes in the form of books, journals, newsprint and miscellaneous documents including letters. At the same time information originating within organisations is increasingly generated on computers and is displayed and read via electronic screens. Libraries, information units and offices are becoming a mix of the automated and the unautomated. In the past, integrating printed material with computer stored material was impractical. The electronic storage of documents as images rather than computer coded text required storage capacity beyond the scope of many computer systems.