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ABOVE the bar in the Merchant Navy Officers' Club in Gibraltar there is a card upon which are printed Dr. Johnson's words: “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of being drowned.” It is well for this country that, in spite of these words, there are men still beating west and south in search of cargoes in all seas and in all kinds of ships. For five years during the late war I was in their company in stress of weather and in moments of danger at the hands of the enemy. In place of my pre‐war ignorance and a slight contempt there is now a profound and sincere appreciation of their real qualities.

Distribution and logistics management is constantly on the lookout for new ways of both reducing cost and improving service. One of the key factors in achieving this over recent years has been the successful application of computer technology in providing better information and a greater degree of support for the physical operation.

BROWSING in a new edition of Sequels remains a stable and unceasing pleasure in an unstable world. Nevertheless there is cause for disquiet at the way it is evolving, there is a distinct change of emphasis, a clear difference in direction, and this is not just a nostalgic regret that things are not what they used to be.

The last two years have witnessed what may justly be described as a revolutionary change in the packaging and marketing of goods, of which pre‐packed food constitutes a substantial part, but as far as public reaction goes, it has largely been a silent witness. There has been none of the outcry such as accompanied metrication, sufficient to call a halt to the process, and especially to the introduction of the decimal currency, of which most shoppers are convinced they were misled, “conned”. Every effort to make the changeover as smooth as possible was made; included was the setting up within the Department of Trade of a National Metrological Co‐ordinating Unit charged with co‐ordinating the work of 91 local weights and measures authorities in Great Britain in enforcing the new law, the Weights and Measures Act, 1979. This Act replaced the net or minimum system of the old law, the traditional system, re‐enacted in the Weights and Measures Act, 1963 with the average system, implementing EEC Directives and bringing weights and measures into line with Member‐states of the European Community.

THERE is a danger in reviewing developments in the reprographic field that one will merely degenerate into giving a catalogue of the recent hardware. Yet the hardware is important. One is reminded of Verner W. Clapp's remark regarding the effectiveness of the American Council on Library Resources that at the end of 11 years, $10 million and 413 grants, contracts and projects, the work of the Council on Library Resources had brought about a great many improvements but that, on the whole, the state of the art was just about where it was when they started!.

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.

I was not in the library seeking help on the subject of Art, but the long row of books about pictures stopped me; and, not in the hope that I might learn to paint, I dipped into the volumes, and wondered. Would an artist who attended earnestly to the experts on the mortal parts of truth and beauty ever go near an easel? I think he might be in danger of paralysis through doubt. Perhaps he would turn to criticism. Of course the man who can do it, and knows he can, the fellow whose child‐like innocence is favoured now and then with what has been called the instant apprehension of totality (let nobody, please, ask what that means), that man, presumably, attends to the experts only on wet and blank days when he needs cheering up.

THE story of the B.A.O.R. Mobile Libraries starts in July, 1945, when the N.A.A.F.I. agreed to send a W.V.S. mobile library to Germany filled with what was then thought to be enough books for three months, and manned by one W.V.S. helper. Members of the Women's Voluntary Services had been in the B.A.O.R. for some time, working on services' welfare in the N.A.A.F.I. clubs and mobile canteens, but this was the first time that the thought of a mobile library had been entertained. The whole thing was to be an experiment and if it proved successful more libraries were to follow.

NUMBERS of the public need education not only in the use of a library, but in the very facilities provided by the library service. Numbers of teachers up and down the country, with the co‐operation of the librarians, have done much to bring the library to the knowledge of school children, but there are still too many people who imagine that the facilities which the library provides end with their school‐days. There are still vast numbers of young and old who imagine that the library service after school‐days is not free, or else “not for the likes of us.” They do not understand the system of fines, the question of the renewal of books, and they certainly know nothing about the help they could receive from the librarian in selecting their books. Up to the present the method of helping people to read has been largely the method of borrowing books from the library, or else placing books in the buildings where people congregate. Librarians have been pestered by clubs and societies of all kinds, for loan boxes of books, and many a librarian foresees that if this system continues the library itself will be denuded of all books except those which few people in their senses would ever want to read. Moreover, pressure is being placed upon librarians to develop their work in separate compartments. They are being urged to develop a children's library, and very beautiful and imaginatively conducted children's libraries have been arranged in many areas. The success of these has encouraged many well‐meaning people to demand that libraries shall provide equally good facilities for youth libraries. However, though one does not doubt their ability to do this, and to do it no less imaginatively, one might well pause to consider where such departmentalism may lead us. Who is to say whether in a few years' time people may not demand old age pensioners' libraries, or housewives' libraries, or libraries for people over forty?