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One of the advantages of Festschriften according to a recent correspondent in the Times Literary Supplement is that ‘they help us to find out what the middle‐aged are thinking’. This welcome ‘Festschrift number’ of the Journal of Documentation for Miss Barbara Kyle provides me at any rate with an opportunity to explore further the theme which I touched on in my Presidential Address to the Library Association at Harrogate and which has most recently been taken up in a long leading article in Nature entitled ‘The plight of library services in Britain’. This theme is the evident need at the present time, in this country, for the development of a national library service in which the responsibilities for different kinds of library activities can be properly allocated, and adequately financed. There can be no doubt that the need is deeply felt for strong, informed central direction or leadership. The lack of it has led to the proliferation of committees and groups all dabbling in the study of information and documentation problems, many of them duplicating work which is being done elsewhere. This wasteful proliferation has, however, the valuable result of bringing to a head the urgency of the need for action. I am sure that this strong central direction and leadership can only come from those engaged in the actual provision of a national library service.

The economic and financial picture of the whole world in the early 1980s does not look at all good despite the optimistic rhetoric used by the leaders of the seven major industrial democracies during the May 1983 Summit Conference held in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. Almost everywhere there are artificial monetary injections to produce another problematic boom with the well‐known residual effects, negative social and financial consequences. But beyond there are no visible signs that on this road the prevailing conditions of disequilibrium embedded in contemporary economies will vanish and a new, better international economic and financial order will emerge.