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THIS issue opens the new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD and it is natural that we should pause to glance at the long road we have travelled. For over forty years our pages have been open to the most progressive and practical facts, theories and methods of librarianship; our contributors have included almost every librarian who has held an important office; and we have always welcomed the work of younger, untried men who seemed to have promise— many of whom have indeed fulfilled it. In the strain and stress of the First World War we maintained interest and forwarded the revisions in library methods which adapted them to the after‐war order. Today we have similar, even severer, problems before us, and we hope to repeat the service we were then able to give. In this we trust that librarians, who have always regarded THE LIBRARY WORLD with affection, will continue to support us and be not tempted because of temporary stringency, to make a victim of a journal which has given so long and so independent a service.

The word documentation, by which this journal describes its scope, is a partial synonym of bibliography, and the history of both words, through eighty years in one case and through four hundred in the other, reflects the development of highly significant ideas. This paper begins by discussing bibliography in the light of R. Blum's exhaustively learned treatise, and continues with an original exposition of documentation, which cannot claim to reach Blum's standard of thoroughness but does, it is hoped, set out correctly the important things.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

Thirty‐seven years as a member of the Editorial Board of a learned journal is a remarkable record in any circumstances. To have served in that capacity in a field which has undergone such rapid and spectacular development as library and information management, and to have exerted upon it a consistently constructive influence for so long, is cause for celebration beyond the normal. It is fitting, therefore, that his colleagues should offer this Festschrift issue of the Journal of Documentation to Geoffrey Woledge as a tribute not only to his part in maintaining the high academic standards which Aslib has always prescribed for its premier journal, but also to his distinguished career in librarianship which has had a lasting effect upon many aspects of our professional scene. Having worked harmoniously with him as my principal guide and mentor for some fifteen of the twenty‐eight years of my directorship of Aslib, I am delighted to be associated with this acknowledgement of his work.

Edith Margaret Robertson Ditmas — ‘E.D.’ to her staff and many colleagues, ‘Edith’ to her family and friends — was appointed General Secretary of Aslib in May 1933 in succession to Mr S. S. Bullock, and was redesignated Director in 1946. She retired from that post on 28 February 1950, being succeeded by Leslie Wilson. In June 1947 she took over the editorship of the Journal of Documentation with effect from the beginning of volume three, following the appointment of the founder editor, Theodore Besterman, as Counsellor, Bibliographical and Library Centre, Unesco. She continued this work until 1962. A note by Geoffrey Woledge in the June 1962 issue of the Journal informed readers that Miss Ditmas was being succeeded as Managing Editor by Miss Barbara Kyle ‘who has contributed to the Journal in the past and is now taking up a full‐time post on the Aslib staff’. It reminded readers that Aslib's establishment of the Editorial Board in 1947 had only been intended as a temporary measure (its membership in 1947 comprised F. C. Francis, D.J. Urquhart and G. Woledge) and with reference to Miss Ditmas continued:

The British Library of Political and Economic Science, of which Geoffrey Woledge was Librarian from 1944 to 1966, and which was the major interest and achievement of his professional life, was from the outset intended to serve as a national collection of materials for research in the social sciences, serving all who need this material, while also acting as the working library of the London School of Economics.

Report of the Council for the year ended 31 December, 1952, presented at the Annual General Meeting on 13 May, 1953, held at the Incorporated Society of Auctioneers and Landed Property Agents, 34 Queen's Gate, London, S.W.7. The Chairman was Mr. G. Woledge.

The meeting was opened by the Chairman, Miss E. M. R. Ditmas, who reminded those present that the Unesco/Library of Congress Bibliographical Survey had been in progress for some considerable time. It had been hoped that the survey would have been discussed at an international conference which the International Federation of Library Associations had planned to organize in the U.S.A. during the autumn of 1950. In preparation for this conference various documents had been prepared, notably the First and Second Interim Reports, compiled by Mrs. Kathrine O. Murra, which had been discussed by an Aslib meeting on 2nd December, 1949,1 and subsequently by various other British organizations. At the same time similar discussions were being held in other countries and, as a result, a modified survey, compiled by Mr. Verner Clapp, was prepared and circulated to the national bodies co‐operating with Unesco in the spring of 1950. When it became apparent that, for economic reasons, it would not be possible to hold this conference, Unesco organized a smaller meeting, which was held in Paris during November, 1950.

The formation, in May, 1949, of the new Aslib, incorporating the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux and the British Society for International Bibliography, led to a change in the dating of Aslib's financial year, which will now run from January to December instead of from July to June. This report, therefore, extends over eighteen months and links the activities of the old organization with those of its successor.

By the death on 23 August 1956 of Arthur Denis Roberts, the world of bibliography has lost the author of important works which it might have been hoped he would have added to for many years to come; and The Journal of Documentation a valued contributor.