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British policy‐making has been characterised by a British political scientist. Jack Hayward, as ‘humdrum’. By humdrum he means a policy which is in essence ‘muddling through’. Though seen as a characteristic of liberal democracies, this style of policy‐making has taken on an acute form in Britain. Thus, in contrasting the achievements of economic planning in Britain and France, he sees the British approach as ‘toothless tripartism’. This pluralistic paralysis was the result of a belief that administrative and pressure group consensus was a prerequisite to effective planning. Business organisations and trade unions were elevated into ‘corporatist veto groups capable of frustrating public policy’.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

A curious reaction to the Post‐War Policy Report of the Library Association is beginning to make itself articulate. Educationists, who are likely to be vocal in the matter, say that the three principles on which it is based are not in sufficient agreement for practical use. The Library Association wants local autonomy, while interfering most drastically with the small towns which are the very foundation of such autonomy; it advocates the educational value of libraries but is emphatic that they must live separately from the official education organization; and they should have government grants but be absolved from government control. There is a symposium covering some of these points in the Spring, 1944, number of Library Review, where are brought to bear the views of Professor H. J. Laski, as a former chairman, Mr. Frederick Cowles, as representing a small town library, Mr. F. M. Gardner, from a rather larger one, Mr. Edward Green, the former librarian of Halifax, whose enthusiasm is as great as ever, and Mr. Alfred Ogilvie, who speaks for county libraries, from Lanarkshire. Most of the contributions are severely critical and all are worth study.

The following is an annotated list of materials that discuss the ways in which librarians can provide library users with orientation to facilities and services, and instruct them in library information and computer skills. This is RSR's 11th annual review of this literature, and covers publications from 1984. A few items from 1983 have been included because of their significance, and because they were not available for review last year. Several items were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure them.

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.

MID‐OCTOBER sees the activities of the library world in full swing. Meetings, committee discussions, schools at work, students busy with December and May examinations in view, and a host of occupations for the library worker. This year—for in a sense the library year begins in October—will be a busy one. For the Library Association Council there will be the onerous business of preparing a report on State Control; for libraries there will be the effort to retain readers in a land of increasing employment and reduced leisure; and for the students, as we have remarked in earlier issues, preparations for the new syllabus of examinations which becomes operative in 1938. It is a good month, too, to consider some phases of library work with children, “which,” to quote the L.A. Resolutions of 1917, “ought to be the basis of all other library work.”

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand the effectiveness of national crisis response networks (NCRN) in a broad sense, including the domains of governance, and strategic and tactical management. The chapter thus moves beyond views considering crisis response a reactive, tactical level effort. Specifically, it focuses on the role of military organizations in NCRNs.

Methodology/approach – After building a research framework based on organization and military studies, this case study examines the organizational response to the disaster that was caused by the tropical cyclone “Katrina”; the data used are qualitative.

Findings – The results highlight the ex-ante lack of preparedness of organizations to cooperate in a NCRN. Once Katrina hit in 2005, confusion and tensions permeated interorganizational relationships for a number of days.

Research limitations/implications – Implications for researchers and practitioners center on the NCRN's backbone organizations and communities potentially affected. Through tension management and network-level investments in knowledge and routines they can contribute to effective crisis response. The framework could be applied to other national crises. Case studies can be generalized in a conceptual sense.

Originality/value of paper – Katrina has been studied quite extensively yet from a crisis response perspective. This chapter offers a reflection that broadens the scope of our understanding of NCRNs, with an emphasis on the military.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of accounting within state-based agencies which interpreted the ideal of protection for the Aboriginal population as principally about the removal of children from the Aboriginal communities to institutions of training and places of forced indenture under government-negotiated labour contracts.

The study uses the original archival records of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards (1883-1950) to highlight the link between pastoral notions of moral betterment and the use of accounting technologies to organise and implement the “apprenticeship” programmes.

The analysis reveals that accounting practices and information were integral to the ability of the state to intervene and organise this domain of action and, together with a legal framework, to make the forced removal of Aboriginal children possible.

The mentalities and practices of assimilation analysed in the paper are not unique to the era of “protection”. The study provides a history of the present that evokes the antecedents to recent welfare policy changes, which encompass a political rationality directed at the normalisation of the economic and social behaviours of both indigenous and non-indigenous welfare recipients.

The paper provides an historical example of how the state enlisted accounting and legal technologies to construct a crisis of “neglect” and to intervene to protect and assimilate the Aboriginal children.

Statements by Lord Denning, M.R., vividly describing the impact of European Community Legislation are increasingly being used by lawyers and others to express their concern for its effect not only on our legal system but on other sectors of our society, changes which all must accept and to which they must adapt. A popular saying of the noble Lord is “The Treaty is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back”. The impact has more recently become impressive in food law but probably less so than in commerce or industry, with scarcely any sector left unmolested. Most of the EEC Directives have been implemented by regulations made under the appropriate sections of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955 and the 1956 Act for Scotland, but regulations proposed for Materials and Articles in Contact with Food (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) will be implemented by use of Section 2 (2) of the European Communities Act, 1972, which because it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, will not require separate regulations for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is the first time that a food regulation has been made under this statute. S.2 (2) authorises any designated Minister or Department to make regulations as well as Her Majesty Orders in Council for implementing any Community obligation, enabling any right by virtue of the Treaties (of Rome) to be excercised. The authority extends to all forms of subordinate legislation—orders, rules, regulations or other instruments and cannot fail to be of considerable importance in all fields including food law.