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Lack of shelf room is no new problem to the librarian. In the past, relief for overcrowded shelves has traditionally been sought in the extension of existing buildings, or the construction of new ones. Where neither method could be adopted to provide for the normal growth of stocks or where accessions were unexpectedly and greatly augmented, for example by the receipt of a large collection of books, severe difficulties often resulted, and the annals of libraries refer often enough to material lying unshelved or housed in totally unsatisfactory quarters. Once the shelf had evolved from the book‐rests of the medieval library nearly four centuries were to pass before any further significant step was taken in storage methods.

The newer conception of the library as a documentation centre involves the librarian in communication which in our time has become inseparably linked with reproduction. This is a field in which there have been technical advances, revolutionary in their potentialities but still largely unrealized owing partly to their novelty and partly to the absence of adequate synthesis. The American scene is strewn with a large number of excellent scientific aids to learning, ranging from microfilm to microprint and minicopy, from hand‐sorted McBee cards to elaborate I.B.M. punched cards combined with micro‐film, from offset lithography of the printed page to the brilliant achievement of the Science and Technology Project of the Library of Congress in their Technical Information Pilot, from the Rapid Selector to Ultrafax. To what extent are these inventions and devices being used in practice and how far are they modifying traditional methods of documentation?

MY THEME affects all of the community who live with or by books. This theme is that all of the book community, but most particularly librarians, have given priority to the exploitation of library materials over their conservation in use to such an extent that accumulated neglect is almost irrecoverable in economic terms. Particularly is this the case with modern books, say those published from the middle of the nineteenth century. Within them the seeds of destruction in the form of lignin and the acidic content of paper, sizing, adhesives, leather and even the ink upon the pages could condemn them to an unusable state in less that a lifetime even if kept in reasonable conditions.

There are two factors essential to collection development and management in any library or information center. The first is an explicit statement of the organization's goals. The second is the size of the materials budget—the financial resources provided to achieve the goals. Professional literature includes a profusion of information dealing with the selection process for school library media centers, but very little is available about materials budgets. A clear, practical and rational procedure needs to be developed to help school librarians determine how much funding is necessary to fulfill the school library media center's goals.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

Members of the Classification Research Group have made a number of specialist schemes which are now successfully in operation, and a symposium of users' opinions, shortly to appear in the Journal of Documentation, shows that they are well satisfied. The CRG discussions over ten years have centred mainly on this type of scheme, but lately we have spent a lot of time on the problems posed by a general scheme and its relation to these specialist ones. We have keenly felt the need for a general scheme, mainly because all of our own schemes have to cater for marginal fields and related subjects outside the special field, but also because many of us are continually asked for advice on the choice of a classification by the librarians of newly‐established libraries. This puts us in the very difficult position of not wishing to recommend anything already existing, but having nothing to offer in its place.

SOME time has elapsed since the publication of Mr. Fremont Rider's article on Microcards in this Journal, but now, with the issue of The Microcard Bulletin, some interesting facts have become available. Technical development of these cards has reached a stage where they can be mass‐produced at a much lower cost than either books or microfilms, and this form of documentary reproduction has left the realms of theory for those of practical achievement.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

The aim of this paper is to focus on the history of cost accounting, costing, and time and motion studies, which were initially developed for industry and private sector organisations, in libraries. At the same time, the article attempts to deal with the question of when and why the need for the evaluation of costs and the standardisation of different library work processes emerged.

The data used in this paper are based on reviewing and summarising relevant studies, which have been conducted in libraries, and was inspired by the ideas of scientific management and cost accounting.

The implementation of cost accounting systems and scientific management ideas in libraries has historically been treated as a technical innovation rather than an organisational or management innovation. The most important consideration is that librarians are not machines, which can be set at a given speed and expected to produce a uniform product. Fortunately, there is no indication that production standards for libraries are going to be set up.

This article raises a perspective in library management that has not been dealt with before. Namely, it explores how the profession of a librarian as an erudite scholar changed into a profession requiring routine work and considers the impact that the ideas of scientific management and cost accounting research had on library employees when they reached libraries.

My recent book, The Scholar and the future of the research library, discussed the great problem that research libraries the world over have to face to‐day, growth, and suggested a possible solution, microcards. A microcard, as those who have read the book know, is simply a standard size library catalogue card, with a microprint text on its back of the item catalogued on its front. In the current issue of College and research libraries there is appearing an article, ‘Microcards—the next steps’, which summarizes the development of the microcard proposal since the book appeared; but there was no space in it to discuss a phase of the proposal which is of especial interest, viz. the international aspects of microcard publication, and to this particular phase most of this paper will be devoted.