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The training challenges facing organisations resulting from changes over the next several decades are described. These include a decreasing number of persons available for entry level positions including a growing proportion of undereducated young people. Also, jobs will become more complex as a result of technological developments and yet will require more interpersonal interaction between individuals who have different values and who come from different cultures. These changes will result in the need for training systems to maximise the potential of each individual, including basic skill and support programmes for unskilled young people who will need to perform more cognitively complex tasks. Training will also be necessary to help managers work with a more diverse workforce including helping individuals understand how to provide support for persons who have not traditionally been a part of their work organisation.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

Dealing with the subject of the artificial bleaching of flour, The Lancet observes that the public criterion of quality in respect of foods and beverages shows some interesting anomalies. Appreciation is often based, for example, on appearance, on how things look, and it is in this direction that conclusions often and obviously become illogical. In some instances the article demanded must be spotlessly white, while in others, if naturally white, it must be artificially coloured. The white loaf is a popular fancy, but white milk is suspected, and yet natural flour may be of a rich golden colour, while rich milk may have only a shade of brownish colour which is supposed to connote cream. The result is that in the one case flour is often deprived of its colour by a process of chemical bleaching, and that in the other an artificial colouring is added. Natural colour is objected to on the one hand, and on the other an artificial addition is demanded. It may be urged that both expedients are justifiable inasmuch as they meet a popular fancy, and that this counts in the enjoyment and even digestibility of the foods. If artificial means are employed to adjust the appearance of food to a popular standard, the proceeding can clearly only be allowed when it has been proved beyond all doubt that the products are not dietetically impaired or that they do not masquerade as something which they are not.

The term “medical” will be interpreted broadly to include both basic and clinical sciences, related health fields, and some “medical” elements of biology and chemistry. A reference book is here defined as any book that is likely to be consulted for factual information more frequently than it will be picked up and read through in sequential order. Medical reference books have a place in public, school, college, and other non‐medical libraries as well as in the wide variety of medical libraries. All of these libraries will be considered in this column. A basic starting collection of medical material for a public library is outlined and described in an article by William and Virginia Beatty that appeared in the May, 1974, issue of American Libraries.

Chemistry as an applied science suffers from the fact that its necessarily close connection with various branches of industry is ill defined and generally very unsatisfactory in character. One result of this is that those who have made chemistry their profession find themselves more often than not in the position of having to subordinate their professional instincts to the temporary exigencies of some particular branch of trade and to find their professional status called in question and criticised by those who are not in the profession itself and who have no right to criticise.

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

The degree of integration among different economies is an important issue in international economics and finance. This article employs daily stock market data for the period 1988 through 1999 to investigate the return dynamics and the extent of the stock market linkages across six newly industrialized countries (NIC’s) of Asia, and documents the role of Japan and the US in this region. Primarily, the study finds that there are significant stock market linkages among the emerging equity markets of Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. While dominant relationships do exist, no country is totally insulated from market movements that emanate from other countries in the region. Furthermore, the study documents the presence of temporal instability in the transmission mechanism that coincides with the Asian economic crisis. During the period in which the NIC’s experienced rapidly rising stock valuations, Singapore and the US had dominant causal influences on these Asian markets. However, in the period of financial crisis during the latter part of the 1990s decade, Singapore’s influence is greatly diminished while shocks from other countries, most notably India, play a more dominant role. Several important policy implications are derived from the results.