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THE curtain has now been rung down on the Jubilee of the Library Association and all who witnessed or took part in the performance will agree that the show was good. The setting of the scene in so beautiful a city, the lavish and dignified hospitality, the fine and sympathetic chairmanship of the new President, the general good‐humoured seriousness of the discussions—all these things will remain to make the Edinburgh Conference the most memorable in our annals. The Conference was not only nation‐wide and empire‐wide—it was world‐wide; and several languages and many accents were heard. Librarians of great fame, who hitherto have been names only, became known friends within the week.

THE publication last month of the long‐anticipated Report of the Departmental Public Libraries Committee is, of course, the principal recent event. It is too long to allow us to give a full account of its arguments and conclusions, and in common with all who work for libraries we must return to it again and again in the future. It may be said, however, that it will allay the fears of those who thought that one result of the Committee's deliberations would be to support and to suggest the implementing of the Report of the Adult Education Committee of the lamented Ministry of Reconstruction, which would have handed over the public libraries of the country as a gift to the directors of education. This report does nothing of the kind; it even suggests that as public opinion is clearly opposed to such a course, the libraries should remain in the hands of those who made them an admitted success even under the adverse conditions of the limited rate. Thus the way is open to real progress, and the very confined conditions which would be a necessary result of the absorption of libraries in the official education machinery are not immediately to be dreaded.

I AM a Canadian. I belong to that land of which His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is now a land holder and a citizen, and we hope that as a result of the recent happy visit of the Prime Minister to our country he may emulate the example of His Royal Highness and settle among us, even though temporarily. Everybody liked him, and we may be able to get a government job for him!—we need such men.

WITH the passing of Easier the British librarian enters upon summer arrangements and a new financial year at the same time. There have been no severe complaints of undue financial “cutting” from public librarians; but there has been no very lusty jubilation caused by undue amplitude in appropriations. We may be grateful that in the general Stringency matters are not worse than they are. Our time will come. As for the summer work of libraries: of late there has been a tendency for the issues, during what are usually thought to be the slacker months, to approximate to those of winter time. This is not wholly, or even largely, due to the organization of holiday literature exhibitions and similar “added” activities, but it appears to be the result of increased reading habit. At the same time it must be remembered that last summer was not an out‐door one.

OUR ISSUES DO NOT PROVE ANYTHING? “READING is finished” is the portentious quotation from Richard Hoggart's address to the School Libraries Association which we find in small type at the foot of a column of the American L.A. Bulletin. A year or two ago, with apprehension and gravity, an American writer asserted that one of the darker signs of life in the U.S.A. was that a generation had arrived that had lost not only the art but the willing power to read, or perhaps never had them to lose. The first American report we have opened this year is The Brooklyn Public Library Salutes its Readers, its 61st annual one. Mr. Francis R. St. John, the chief librarian, says in his first paragraph “this has been a record year” and continues, “This year readers were responsible for the greatest circulation in our history”. Yes, 9½ millions of it. The question occurs: if no one reads and books are finished, how can these statements and figures be reconciled?

The authors reflect on the academic bachelor and master programs of architecture. From the perspective of higher education policy in Flanders, Belgium, they examine the intrinsic challenges of the academic educational setting, and the way architectural education can fit in and benefit from it, without losing its specific design oriented qualities. Therefore, they unravel the process of architectural design research, as a discipline-authentic way of knowledge production, leading to the identification of a number of implicit features of an academic architectural learning environment. The disquisition is based on educational arguments pointed out by literature and theory. Furthermore, the authors analyze whether this learning environment can comply with general standards of external quality assurance and accreditation systems. Doing so, they reveal the Achilles’ heel of architectural education: the incompatibility of the design jury with formalized assessment frameworks. Finally, the authors conclude with an advocacy for academic freedom. To assure the quality of academic architectural programs, it is necessary that universities maintain a critical attitude towards standardized policy frameworks.

This research seeks to examine police use of force from a smaller police agency perspective in comparison with what is known from previous research using data from larger‐scale agencies.

Using police use of force reports involving arrests (n=3,264) over a three‐year period (2002‐2004) from a small police agency located in the upper‐Midwest, this study utilizes descriptive and multivariate analyses to examine how and why officers use force.

While officers resorted to physical force (beyond handcuffing) in 18 percent of the arrest encounters, the majority of force is located at the lower end of the force continuum (e.g. soft hand control). However, unlike officer behavior, much of the resistant behavior displayed by suspects is toward the upper end of the spectrum (e.g. defensive/active). The results also indicate that the most powerful predictor of force is the presence and level of suspect resistance presented to officers. These findings are placed within the context of prior work.

Since the current study relies on official data from a single police agency, the findings come with caution in terms of generalizability.

This study contributes to the literature on police use of force by examining everyday force usage in a small police department.

Applying Lundman’s organizational product thesis in explaining citizen complaints against police use of excessive physical force, the current study tests several hypotheses with a national data set. Tobit regression analyses of the data show that Lundman’s thesis is partially supported. Both organizational behavior and organizational characteristics are important covariates of the complaint rate against police use of excessive physical force. Although generalization is limited, police departments need to actively recruit more mature persons into the police force, reinforce field training officer programs, and continually provide more in‐service training programs for its members if they are serious in reducing citizens’ complaints.

IT is always safe to criticise our educational system. What you publicly charge against it may have no foundation in fact; but that will not affect your reputation in the least; and if you can manage to suggest as well that the schools in Latvia or Liberia have introduced a great “novelty” (which our own schools have been practising without advertisement for years) the news will be headed “Great Educational Innovation,” and there will probably be an editorial asking whether it is not time this country began to wake up and take lessons from young and adventurous territories.