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High on the roof of the world, with its crest above the Arctic Circle, and nearly 800 miles of Russian frontier flanking it on the east, lies little Finland, land of 65,000 lakes and over 100,000 square miles of forest. Half its population is still employed in agriculture, but industrialisation has been recent and rapid, and with it has come the spread of education, transforming a peasant people into a completely literate one. So stiff now are the high school final examinations that those who pass them are automatically eligible for admission to the universities; and the University of Helsinki, with its enrolment of 10,000 students, is the greatest in Northern Europe.

OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.

This article examines what women consumers mean when they define themselves as either “young” or “middle‐aged.” A survey of women 30 to 69 shows that they consider it acceptable to be young at any chronological age. This article provides evidence debunking five common fables about women and negative age stereotypes. The reality, supported by this survey, is that women deny their chronological age, consider themselves young well beyond forty, and typically identify with a state of ageless youth. The marketing implications involve product development embodying youthful images and advertising campaigns using mature models, rather than teenagers, to appeal to mature women who define themselves as young at heart.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

THE article that appears in this issue entitled ‘Machine Design and the Work Study Analyst’ illustrates that the techniques of work study can be equally well applied in fields outside of production.

Acknowledges that research on objects belonging to the categories of furniture, glass and stained glass, metalware, pottery and porcelain, or rugs and carpets involves the consultation of specific handbooks and guides. Lists, with a brief description, various decorative‐art reference books as sources for research in these categories, and offers relevant subject headings so that the New York Public Library’s catalogs can be checked for similar holdings.

THIS number of THE LIBRARY WORLD returns to the question of foreign literature in British Libraries. The insistence in recent years upon two foreign languages at least, as a qualification for a librarian, has had some good results; but they are Still inadequate in extent. Every librarian must be painfully aware of the handicap we British people suffer in our average inability to converse in any language but our own; no other race is quite so restricted. A Swiss, for example, does not ask if we can speak this or that language, but asks, “In what language shall we speak together?”—a vastly different thing. It is not because of any lack of power to learn; it is merely our unwillingness or lack of opportunity to do so. Such attitudes are anachronisms to‐day; peoples get so much closer every hour, and it must be clear to all who think that one place in a town where a foreigner should be able to ask an intelligent question and receive an answer in his own tongue is the library.

THE European campaign to catch up with the United States and Japan in the provision of information technology took a major step forward at the end of February when the Council of Ministers of the European Communities adopted the ESPRIT programme. ESPRIT equates to the ‘European Strategic Programme of Information Technology’ and the main areas of research cover micro electronics, software technology, advanced information processing, office systems, and computer integrated manufacturing. The programme will span the years 1984–88 and will cost 1,500,000,000 European Units of Account (£900,000,000), half of which will be contributed by the European Communities Commission, and half by industry. Although the European Community represents over thirty per cent of the world IT market, European industry provides only ten per cent of this market. For further details of the programme, contact Mr W Colin, IT Task Force, 200 Rue de la Loi, B 1049 Brussels, Belgium, tel 235 4477 or 235 2348, telecopier 230 1203, tx 25946.