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Outlines the essential steps in establishing risk management as an effective process in any organization and relates to management claims, complaints and adverse incidents. Discusses the way to elicit and use information from patients and staff. Emphasizes the need to learn from all those involved in delivery and receipt of care.

Simulating Earthquakes at Siemens. The more intricate a device or the more complex a system, the more important is product evaluation and testing say Siemens. Over the years, the company has built up a test facility in Munich to evaluate a wide range of products and systems under a variety of differing, and often gruelling, environmental conditions. Staffed by some 80 specialists from most of the engineering disciplines, with the emphasis on non‐destructive testing techniques, Siemens claim their facility is one of the most comprehensive testing centres in Europe.

The most obvious symptom of the most obvious trend in the building of new libraries is the fact that, as yet, no spade has entered the ground of the site on Euston Road, London, upon which the new building for the British Library Reference Division has to be erected. Some twenty years of continued negotiation and discussion finally resulted in the choice of this site. The UK and much more of the world awaits with anticipation what could and should be the major building library of the twentieth century. The planning and design of a library building, however large or small, is, relatively speaking, a major operation, and deserves time, care and patience if the best results are to be produced.

Explores how psychoanalytic thinking can contribute to the management of the conflicting emotions stimulated by change. Suggests that successful change management depends on a combination of “positive” and “negative” capabilities. The positive capabilities involve the management of the substantive content of any change initiative, the change process itself, and the roles and procedures required by both of these. However, even when these three “technical” aspects are well managed, change always arouses anxiety and uncertainty. As a result, there is a tendency to “disperse” energy; that is, to be deflected from the task into a range of avoidance tactics. Through a particular understanding of such “dispersal” and its opposite, the “capacity to contain”, psychoanalysis can suggest how this counterproductive tendency may be more effectively managed. The British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion called this capacity to contain “negative capability”.

The dismissal of the ordinary and the embrace of chaos are characteristics of the thriller which has, over the last decade, accounted for nearly 25 percent of the best‐seller market. In spite of its existential overtones, the thriller, with rare exceptions, is seldom viewed as quality fiction, yet is not generally classified as genre fiction with attendant categorization by libraries and bookstores. Readers of thrillers in pursuit of authors must either search through the general fiction or “mystery” shelves where thrillers are sometimes placed. However, the latter solution offends both mystery and thriller readers.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.