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The purpose of this paper is to determine how we ought to distinguish between reference and readers' advisory (RA) service, given the latter’s turn toward a whole collection approach. In other words, the paper answers this question: If both reference and RA librarians aim to meet patrons’ information needs and may theoretically do so using the same materials, then how are we to differentiate the two services conceptually?

In this conceptual paper, we posit that we can distinguish between RA and reference using Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of the aesthetic transaction. With this theory in hand, we can redefine the service distinction in terms of the stance – aesthetic or efferent – that the patron expects to take toward the material they seek.

On our account, the reader’s desired stance becomes a kind of hermeneutical lens through which a library worker may productively evaluate plausible pathways and materials. An aesthetic lens is characteristic of RA; it makes features of potential aesthetic transactions between a particular reader and a particular text (or genre or author’s oeuvre) salient.

The proposed account constitutes a novel application of Rosenblattian response theory, one that grounds and refines the going view that RA’s proper focus is on supporting a particular sort of experience rather than providing particular sorts of texts. This theoretical emendation also better aligns the service distinction with contemporary conceptualizations of RA as a “whole collection” service. Important practical and philosophical implications follow from the new account.

It is said that travel broadens the mind, deepens the understanding and refreshes the spirit. Judging by the amount of long distance travel undertaken nowadays by more people than ever before, it may also be said to widen the beam! However, this brief article is mainly concerned with the scope and benefits of the Library Association's programme of internships.

IT is said that travel broadens the mind, deepens the understanding and refreshes the spirit. Judging by the amount of long distance travel undertaken nowadays by more people than ever before, it may also be said to widen the beam! However, this brief article is mainly concerned with the scope and benefits of the Library Association's programme of internships.

Purpose ‐ This annotated bibliography serves as a guide for collection development and evaluation and readers' advisory tools for librarians and for any interested reader. The purpose of this paper is to locate and describe print and electronic resources pertaining to the horror genre for scholars and patrons, as well as librarians collecting in this area.Design/methodology/approach ‐ This bibliography surveys reference sources published in the past ten years, in order to provide an overview of publications focusing on the horror genre, and serves as a guide to understand this genre.Findings ‐ Reference resources in horror encompass the genre specifically and broadly, usually focusing on classic fiction and short stories in earlier years and fiction novels, magazines and online magazines in recent years.Originality/value ‐ The resources covered in this article survey both long‐standing reference resources as well as newer publications in the field. While not necessarily comprehensive, it provides patrons, researchers and librarians with a survey of useful resources, with factual information as well as a critical perspective in the discipline.

LIBRARIES in War have, alas, been too often the theme of this and other library magazines owing to the times in which men and women of middle age have had to live. To‐day, even younger ones can see some reflection of the atmosphere, because they have been brought up in a pervading spirit of threats and preparations; insomuch—and this is the tragedy of i t—they ask “What is the good of preparing for life in this world when we are likely to be bombed out of it at any moment?” There is much good, because, even if the ultimate tragedy came, England and the majority of us would survive; and the world must go on. It is a descent from this perhaps grand attitude to the thought that less money may be available for libraries for the time being. We know that rates are rising in many places, owing to unemployment relief needs and A.R.P. demands, but there is the consolation that last year many new libraries were opened. It may be a result of the truth that never are libraries more needed than in hours of stress.

To argue that library web sites embedded in a new media environment initiate and demand new kinds of communication and new communication skills.

The paper is a short version of findings related to the author's research of the internet as a medium in libraries, especially in the domain of imaginative literature. The paper is based theoretically on findings of new media research. The approach is a theoretical clarification of what is new about new media and why new media may move librarians to new kinds of publicity and communication. This is illustrated by a presentation of the Danish library web site litteratursiden.dk, produced by librarians to inspire readers of fiction among library patrons.

Theoretical and practical findings by new media research have indicated several new media features concerning the internet and the web. The web is a hypertextual media environment – all web sites are part of a global media environment, a global publicity. Local web communication is already a global communication. The web interface is also a multimedia interface, and it gives the possibility of interactive, dialogic communication. Further web sites are “remediations” of media types and genres from other media. These features must be considered when analysing library web sites, and they must be considered in the education of librarians in the future. The Danish library web site litteratursiden.dk is used to demonstrate how a literary library web site may use the web as a medium, and how new skills are needed and developed. The site gives access to the fiction of library catalogues, but at the same time it is a literary magazine with news, essays and recommendations. The librarians operate in two kinds of space – the library space and the literary public space. The addressee is both the library patron and the common reader. This duplicity may be seen as an expansion of the reader advisory service and may be compared with similar advisory services in reader development programmes.

The world wide web and new media may change the roles of the librarian in public libraries. The library web site is embedded in a general media environment, which may demand new skills of media communication.

The paper aims to focus on the public librarian as a new media producer and communication expert.

NOW removed to Chaucer House, Malet Place, London, W.O., the Library Association is in its permanent home adjoining University College and the new National Central Library. Some strenuous work has yet to be done by the secretary and his staff before the ceremonial opening, but when Chaucer House is completed it should not only facilitate and permit the growth of the work of the Library Association; it should also form a meeting place of great value. We refer not only to meetings of a formal character, although room for these, for council and committee meetings and for examinations will, for the first time in our record, be adequate; we refer rather to the clubbable meetings that have hitherto been rather difficult. For many years librarians have advocated a professional club, where meals might be taken, friends might meet, and some of the social amenities generally be possible. There seems to be an opportunity here; but, clearly, no such club idea can be realized unless there is a definite desire for it, and, what is more, practical use made of it. If the London members dropped in regularly some catering scheme could be arranged which the provincial members could take advantage of too whenever they visited London. Can this be done? Other professions have managed it. It is merely sense to recognise that the provision of refreshments and other necessaries can only be made if there is a regular demand for them which will at least pay their cost.

THE COMMENT by Don Revill in the August issue of NEW LIBRARY WORLD raises a number of interesting points. The allocation of library book funds between departments or between site libraries has always proved a sticky problem, and, as Revill points out, a variety of solutions have been advocated. Of course, the actual division of the funds presents no real problem (everyone is willing to spend the money!) once the bases on which this division is to be made have been decided. Thus the real decisions boil down to judgements of the relative value (to the university? to the state? to the librarian?) of such factors as:

THE recruitment, training and payment of librarians are matters of import, not only to the youngest entrant into this work, but also to established librarians and to the public. Although training was initiated forty years ago by the then chief librarians of libraries, it has in recent years become a very intimate concern of library assistants and of parents and others in charge of young folk who are considering librarianship as their possible career. After thirty years of experiment, with minor changes, the Library Association syllabus has now been completely remodelled. We have also reached a stage when we can consider to some extent, although not adequately, the effect upon the profession of our whole‐time library school of university rank. The various phases of the work must therefore be of great interest to every reader of The Library World; and this is sufficient justification for the special attention which the subject receives in this number. The first question must always be the economic and human one. Is the profession sufficiently large, and of enough importance, to justify parents in allowing lads or girls, who have gone through a secondary or even university training, to devote themselves to the somewhat protracted study which is prescribed for the work? Then, again, is the training now placed before the would‐be aspirant to library work a wise training? Is it too special, too technical, too scholarly; indeed, is the library authority, whoever and wherever it may be, asking too much for what most people regard as the very simple work of managing and distributing and exploiting books?