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This article reports an important multi‐centre practice‐based review that identifies good practice and an ideal pathway for the healthcare of frail older people, which, if replicated nationally, could result in improved quality of care and better value for money for the NHS. Data on healthcare resource groups (HRGs) in England were examined as a marker for the management of elderly people through the healthcare system. Care pathways in several different NHS trusts were explored via staff interviews. A high variation in treatment outcomes across centres was found. Principles of best practice were identified and include: comprehensive geriatric assessment; the availability of specialist geriatric teams and wards; and shared assessment and co‐ordination between care agencies.

This article presents evidence for important individual differences between older people concerning what they value as high quality service from home care. A case is made for improving service quality through systematically consulting each service user about their own preferences and seeking to fulfil these requests on an individual basis. This contrasts with setting uniform quality standards for all older home care clients, based on their most commonly expressed preferences. Evidence is cited from individual interviews with older home care service users and from an experiment in modifying older people's services through briefing home care staff on the preferences of individual clients. Issues in developing this approach are discussed.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

THE new President of the Library Association, a handsome portrait of whom appears in the December Library Association Record, brings to the office the influences of a career of fine public service. We, in common with every journal that speaks to and for librarians, assure him of loyalty and congratulate ourselves on this addition to the roll of distinguished men who have served librarianship. The Record is wise in reminding us that we are more than a librarians' association and the regular election of men of affairs as presidents is a policy that used to be followed and should now be continued. The policy need not exclude in normal circumstances an alternate librarian president.

HIS MAJESTY THE KING is winning new admiration, if that were possible, as the speaker of words on libraries which are memorable. At the opening of the University Library at Cambridge on October 22nd, he described that great new library as “both a power house and a testing station of educational activities,” and went on to say, “It is a workshop of new knowledge and a store‐house of seasoned wisdom.” It is difficult to think of phrases which convey more fully the work and aspirations of a great national library. We cannot refrain from mentioning again the significant fact that within one year His Majesty has opened two libraries, which together have cost £1,000,000 to build. If any have doubts as to the national attitude towards the library movement, they will probably be resolved in favour of the future of libraries by thinking of this. Of course, the Manchester Public Library was built out of the sum accumulated from the sale of a previous central library, and we know that one half of the £500,000 spent at Cambridge came from the International Education Board; but in the first case, the good will of Mancunians was required for the spending on the library of this large sum of money, and in the second case, £229,000 was obtained by public subscription from friends of Cambridge. These are works of faith which must have a very great effect upon the future of education and culture of England. If they were alone, however, they would have been significant, but when we remember that Leeds University and the City of Sheffield have built great libraries, and even in smaller places such as Dover a new library has been established, while there are many new branch libraries at Birmingham, Bristol, and elsewhere, and renovations of older libraries, as at Coventry and Croydon, and Nottingham, we realise that in a time which is thought to be one of depression, the public library has made strides which are almost as great as those of the early Carnegie days.

I SYMPATHISE with the decision to invite commercial advertising into Scoclis news, the thrice‐yearly sheet issued by the Standing Conference of Co‐operative Library & Information Services, but even though the rate is modest, I should think they will have to ‘professionalise’ the present stencilled format if they are to get much custom. You have got to make an advertiser feel he is getting value for money, not just providing a sub. Perhaps if Scoclis news doesn't have much success in ‘inviting’ advertising, it will try selling advertising instead. Some bodies, not necessarily SCOCLIS, which solicit commercial funding for their activities don't always seem clear just who is doing whom the favour.

Since the concept of provision aimed to attract particular groups from the community to use libraries began, library staff at all levels have discussed whether these materials should have a separate section of their own or be integrated with other items in the main classification sequence.

I HAD FORGOTTEN, in recent years, just how much dull donkey‐work there is about publishing books. My erstwhile firm eventually possessed just enough slaves to shelter me from the most boring and repetitive of the numerous jobs in a publishing house.