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The purpose of this research is to study the impact of the Spoleto, USA festival on the Charleston, SC hotel industry. Anecdotal evidence indicates that, while the highly successful event has benefited the community as a whole, hotels have not shared in the good fortune festival organizers and university‐sponsored economic studies indicate should have accrued.

Secondary data, obtained from Smith Travel Research, spanning four festival periods (2000‐2003), have been analyzed, comparing festival‐period hotel occupancy rates and average daily rates (ADRs) with non‐festival periods.

Neither Spoleto‐period hotel occupancy nor ADR were enhanced by the festival. Analysis indicated that local hotels are not receiving the expected festival‐driven benefits. The numbers indicate that Spoleto has caused more potential visitors to avoid the city than it has attracted.

On a micro‐level, Charleston hotel and tourism officials learn about a festival's impact on their city. On a macro‐level, other cities and festival organizers may be encouraged to review their events to determine whether they are contributing to their local economy as expected. There is no suggestion that what has occurred in Charleston would necessarily occur elsewhere.

The paper is quite practical and should be of significant value to industry and governmental officials. The most significant contribution is making the stakeholders aware of an issue of importance that is easily overlooked.

This research offers a fresh look at an issue not previously specifically addressed. While a healthy body of research speaks to the positive benefits of festivals and special events, looking at the potential shortfalls from the hotel's perspective makes this paper of significant value.

Reproduces the main texts of hitherto unpublished reminiscences of the style and influence, as a teacher, of Allyn Abbott Young (1876‐1929) by 17 of his distinguished students. They include Bertil Ohlin, Nicholas Kaldor, James Angell, Lauchlin Currie, Colin Clark, Howard Ellis, Frank Fetter, Earl Hamilton, and Melvin Knight (brother of Frank Knight who, with Edward Chamberlin, was perhaps Young’s most famous PhD student). There has recently been a revival of interest in Young’s influence on US monetary thought and in his theory of economic growth based on endogenous increasing returns. These recollections of his students (addressed to Young’s biographer, Charles Blitch) shed light on why Young has, at least until recently, been renowned more for his massive erudition than for his published writings.

Previously, there have been few attempts to explore fully the concept of monopoly as it existed prior to the eighteenth century. The concept of monopoly as presently defined, namely that situation where there exists only one seller in the market, could not be applied evenly to monopolies existing in sixteenth and seventeenth century Great Britain. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, there existed the “tendency to extend the concept of monopoly beyond the case of a single seller.” In addition, monopoly as a tool of public policy proved to be ineffective. Not only was the Crown inconsistent in its treatment of monopoly, but public opinion was against any policy that appeared to impinge upon the rights of Englishmen as defined by Common Law.

THERE has quite recently occurred among professional and other periodicals a sort of epidemic of comparisons between the work of European and American libraries, some of which are more or less misleading and calculated to stir up national annoyance. The Transatlantic journals are particularly condescending in tone, and arrogant in their claims, and some statements in the New York Nation and Chicago Dial are not only written with a most lofty sense of American superiority, but are manifestly based on ignorance of library conditions in Europe. They are indeed typical of the attitude of the average American librarian towards library work outside the borders of the United States. With a few notable exceptions, American librarians are a somewhat narrow‐minded, self‐sufficient and wilfully‐ignorant class of public officials; but more especially the younger generation. They are eternally shutting their eyes to the accomplishments of other nations, and assuming that the last word on all library matters has been spoken in America. They are, for the most part, ignorant of European library literature, as none save the largest libraries ever purchase anything but American professional books. This is further proved by the absence of such works from their catalogues and from among the text‐books prescribed for the various library schools; while in all their select bibliographies or lists of “best” books the most notice‐able feature is this studied omission of European books. In the proceedings of British professional associations the work of American libraries is frequently referred to in the most appreciative and broad‐minded manner; but at similar meetings in America, European library work, if not entirely ignored, is most often casually mentioned as something quite obsolete, and a legitimate target for oblique criticism. It is difficult to understand why American librarians will not study library questions from both the historical and international standpoints, because it is such an obvious and interesting manner of freeing the mind from the fetters of a cock‐sure provincialism. That it is true no such attempt is made by the average American librarian to attain knowledge of foreign conditions, is proved by the universally accepted opinion in the United States, that there is no European library work worth attention, in comparison to the immensity of the American achievement in the same field.

IN this number we make some commemoration of the twenty‐five years so happily achieved by the King‐Emperor. As our contributors show, the cardinal event of the whole of the Reign, so far as libraries were concerned, was the passing of the Public Libraries Act of 1919. The generations change rapidly, and there are few to‐day who remember acutely the penury and struggle which were involved in the fact that all public library expenditure had to be kept within “the limit of the penny rate.” It is possibly true that the average community has taken no very intelligent advantage of the breaking of its financial fetters; in no town in the British Empire can it be said that there is anything approaching generosity, let alone extravagance, towards libraries. Even in the greatest cities, where they have built fine buildings and opened them with much ceremony, the rate allocation for their maintenance is not nearly of the scale that finds acceptance, or did find acceptance, in the United States. That is because we are young people in an old country. The tradition dies hard that education is a luxury and that libraries, which in the eyes of many are only remotely related to education, are an even greater luxury. We heard it said recently that many local authorities regarded the libraries as a sort of joke, and delighted to cut down their expenditure upon them. This lugubrious way of opening our remarks upon the Jubilee is only by way of pointing out that to‐day, at any rate, we have the power to go ahead if we convince our authorities that it is desirable to do so.

Miss Elizabeth Petree has been appointed Administrative Assistant to the Director of Aslib, and joined the staff in November. Miss Petree was Deputy Secretary of the College of General Practitioners from 1954 to 1964. She was earlier employed at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.