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The overseas library consultant is not a new phenomenon on the world library scene, but has become increasingly familiar in recent years. Whilst there are earlier isolated examples of the employment of foreign librarians as consultants or advisers, their use on anything like a regular basis was first undertaken in the years between the two world wars by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which sent a number of leading British and American librarians on advisory missions to East, West and Southern Africa, to the West Indies and to Australia and New Zealand in connection with its programme of aid to overseas library development. This programme continued, on a somewhat reduced scale, after the Second World War, when it was gradually overtaken in importance by the work of other agencies such as the British Council, the United States government aid agencies and the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations — in particular, by Unesco.

As document supply grows in volume and importance it becomes more necessary to measure its performance. Nearly all measures are relative — over time, across countries, and between systems; they should therefore be consistent and comparable. The main measures are: fill rate (broken down by subject, form and date); speed (broken down into the various processes involved in document supply); user satisfaction (because users' needs may not be articulated); and costs. There may be trade‐offs between different measures (eg speed and costs). Any measurement system must be practical. Most data will be collected by sampling, but well designed automated systems in future should enable better measures to be calculated with less effort.

This is No. 21 of Supplements to Computers in Libraries and reprints papers on online library catalogues presented to the March 1989 Computers in Libraries Conference held in Oakland, California. There are apparently three US procurement documents, Request for Proposals (RFP), Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Quotation (RFQ) which have to be completed when buying new, large‐scale equipment from suppliers and these documents dominate the process of choice and purchase. Several of the papers in this collection deal with completing these forms when acquiring or changing systems, and would have little interest in the UK. The other papers offer more general advice on coping with the problems which arise when manual processes are replaced by high‐tech systems. Such problems are exaggerated in cases where patrons expect more of the system than it can actually deliver. However, what is being described is essentially American practice and library users in the US have a subtly different attitude from that found on this side of the Atlantic. The value of the text to UK librarians would therefore be limited to the opportunity for making comparisons with their own systems.

I HAVE BEEN looking at a six‐page leaflet which gives details of an international graduate summer school, 1 July‐23 August 1975, in librarianship and information science at the College of Librarianship Wales. (A joint undertaking by CLW and the Graduate School of Librarianship, University of Pittsburgh.)

MIDS Search Aids. Part I: Vendors. Part II: Databases. Part III: Database index. Compiled by A. Labuschagne & S. Rossouw. South African Medical Research Council, 1986, 204 pages, Free. This publication is a listing of search aids available for databases accessable via the major online hosts in the world. It is a print of the user aids holdings collected for the Medical Information Dissemination System, though the scope is wider than only medical databases.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by The Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription for 1983 for VINE is £22 for UK subscribers and £25 for overseas subscribers. The first copy will be charged at normal rate, but all others will be supplied for only £12 per year UK and £14 per year overseas. VINE is available in either paper copy or microfiche and all back issues are available on microfiche.

SOME twenty five years ago, in my late teens, poking about in a very dirty second hand bookshop of the sort which seem virtually to have disappeared nowadays, I came across a volume which had been very lovingly, and very clumsily rebound by hand in orange and brown morocco. It stood out from the nineteenth century sermons and the early twentieth century adventures in the Raj like some exotic tropical fruit. I took the book from the shelves and found that the front cover had on it a rather roughly executed plant design in blind. The raised bands of the spine were finished off with a small leaf design, and at the top of the spine on a dark brown and heavy label which I discovered later covered a messy attempt at tooling was the title of the book, The roadmender, in gilt. The title was also in blind on the front cover at the top and slightly askew. It was a dull day outside, and in the gloom of the shop, lit by one measly unshaded bulb, the book actually did seem to take on a luminous quality, but it was the fact that someone had clearly spent so much loving time on rebinding that made me buy it. I reasoned that if someone cared so much for what the contents had to say, either to rebind the book specially, or have to rebind it because of wear and tear, it might be worth reading. It was priced at one shilling—more than I was used to forking out in that type of shop where twopence (d) was the sort of money I anticipated paying in the days before inflated book prices. The title of the book meant nothing to me, and the name of the author—Michael Fairless—rang no literary bell in my head. But I bought it, and took it home.

Change is a somewhat mysterious process which has aroused the academic interest of sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and specialists from other fields. Information scientists should also be concerned with this topic, given that change seems to be the most permanent feature in this new discipline. Typical research questions such as what is change or how does change come about can be approached from many standpoints, ranging from the concepts derived from sociological and psychological theory to the very practical description of change taking place day by day.

This integrative literature review aims to explore themes within higher education that may be applicable to leadership education including: descriptions of trauma, trauma-informed practices and trauma-informed practitioners.

Integrative, systematic literature review.

The results suggest that trauma and trauma-informed practices may have a place in leadership education pedagogy.

There is no work being done in trauma informed practice in leadership education. This study provides future direction for both research and practice.