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A MAIN purpose behind adopting a policy of bookstock categorisation is to reduce the problem of bookstock supply (which equals customer choice), to understandable terms. If it is possible to determine a working ratio of shelf titles per topic/category to a given community of users a number of possibilities become available. A primary advantage is the determination of the minimum number of titles sufficient to meet a community of users' demand in each interest area. Increasing the range of titles can be seen as improving quality. A cost and quantity factor can be determined for an economic provision of bookstock and a cost factor placed on a stepped improvement in quality. By amalgamating these factors for a number of libraries a minimum economic provision can be determined for a county. The process of finding the minimum required bookstock will automatically, since the community of users is identified, identify both the timescale and the chance of finding a title by the user in which s/he is interested, has not already been read and is on the shelves, and will also identify the level of stock input and extraction that is required to maintain the quality of choice in any one library.

LAST WEEK I gave myself a nasty shock. I had been spending an afternoon in another town doing some research in the central reference library there. I went on till past seven in the evening, rushing at the end to get through all I wanted, then dashing to catch my train home. On the train I opened my briefcase; to discover that I'd come away with an envelope of unissued and strictly ‘confined’ material from the library's local collection.