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The purpose of this paper is to contest Edwards et al.’s (2002) findings that resistance to the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping and the form that it took when implemented by the British Government in the mid-nineteenth century was the result of ideological conflict between the privileged landed aristocracy and the rising merchant middle class.

The study draws upon a collection of documents preserved as part of the Grigg Family Papers located in London and the Thomson Papers held in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. It also draws on evidence contained within the British National Archive, the National Maritime Museum and British Parliamentary Papers which has been overlooked by previous studies of the introduction of DEB.

Conflict and delays in the adoption of double-entry bookkeeping were not primarily the product of “ideological” differences between the influential classes. Instead, this study finds that conflict was the result of a complex amalgam of class interests, ideology, personal antipathy, professional intolerance and ambition. Newly discovered evidence recognises the critical, largely forgotten, work of John Deas Thomson in developing a double-entry bookkeeping system for the Royal Navy and the importance of Sir James Graham’s determination that matters of economy would be emphasised in the Navy’s accounting.

This study establishes that crucial to the ultimate implementation of double-entry bookkeeping was the passionate, determined support of influential champions with strong liberal beliefs, most especially John Deas Thomson and Sir James Graham. Prominence was given to economy in government.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

A man in his 40s with alcohol use disorder, learning disability and autism was referred to the learning disability team due to anxiety and low mood. He had been abstinent from alcohol for ten years prior to a recent relapse. The purpose of this paper is to describe his case.

Treatment was person centred, followed standard practice for clients with alcohol use disorder and targeted harm minimisation. Initially, alcohol consumption reduced; however, at month three, he relapsed. Thereafter, he was repeatedly admitted to inpatient settings, drank excessively and engaged in risky behaviours.

Conventional approaches to treating alcohol dependence may not be entirely appropriate for this client group. The client’s alcohol consumption was only curtailed with the use of restrictions to his liberty agreed by him and incorporated into his tenancy agreement.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to discuss issues pertaining to people with co-occurring learning disability, autism and alcohol dependence. The authors discuss the use of restrictions, reasonable adjustments and policy issues relevant to treating this complex client group.

LIBRARIANS in Britain stand at the threshold of great possibilities. Having passed through the ages of the ecclesiastical library, the rich collector's private library, the academic institutional library, and the rate‐supported public library—all general libraries —they have reached the age of the special library. The next will be that of the co‐ordinated, co‐operative library service.

THE centenary celebration is that of the apparently prosaic public library acts ; it is not the centenary of libraries which are as old as civilization. That is a circumstance which some may have overlooked in their pride and enthusiasm for the public library. But no real librarian of any type will fail to rejoice in the progress to which the celebration is witness. For that has been immense. We are to have a centenary history of the Public Library Movement—that is not its title—from the Library Association. We do not know if it will be available in London this month; we fear it will not. We do know its author, Mr. W. A. Munford, has spent many months in research for it and that he is a writer with a lucid and individual Style. We contemplate his task with a certain nervousness. Could anyone less than a Carlyle impart into the dry bones of municipal library history that Strew these hundred years, the bones by the wayside that mark out the way, the breath of the spirit that will make them live ? For even Edward Edwards, whose name should be much in the minds and perhaps on the lips of library lovers this month, could scarcely have foreseen the contemporary position ; nor perhaps could Carlyle who asked before our genesis why there should not be in every county town a county library as well as a county gaol. How remote the days when such a question was cogent seem to be now! It behoves us, indeed it honours us, to recall the work of Edwards, of Ewart, Brotherton, Thomas Greenwood, Nicholson, Peter Cowell, Crestadoro, Francis Barrett, Thomas Lyster, J. Y. M. MacAlister, James Duff Brown and, in a later day without mentioning the living, John Ballinger, Ernest A. Baker, L. Stanley Jast, and Potter Briscoe—the list is long. All served the movement we celebrate and all faced a community which had to be convinced. It still has, of course, but our people do now allow libraries a place, more or less respected, in the life of the people. Librarians no longer face the corpse‐cold incredulity of the so‐called educated classes, the indifference of the masses and the actively vicious hostility of local legislators. Except the illuminated few that existed. These were the men who had the faith that an informed people was a happier, more efficient one and that books in widest commonalty spread were the best means of producing such a people. These, with a succession of believing, enduring librarians, persisted in their Struggle with cynic and opponent and brought about the system and the technique we use, modified of course and extended to meet a changing world, but essentially the same. Three names we may especially honour this September, Edward Edwards, who was the sower of the seed; MacAlister, who gained us our Royal Charter ; and John Ballinger, who was the person who most influenced the introduction of the liberating Libraries Act of 1919.

From whichever point of view we consider it, Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries is a remarkable work. Its two volumes provide a total of two thousand pages of text It is at once a history of libraries—and a history on a world scale—and a manual of library administration. It can, of course, be criticised on that score. Would it not have been better to have issued the history separately, in two still sizeable volumes, and to have presented the practical manual as a separate work? As published by Trubner in 1859 the manual occupies the second half of the second volume which itself consists of rather more than 1,100 pages. But to Edwards the history and the administration were by no means so clearly divisible. The practical chapter on book‐binding, for example, approaches the subject historically; prints a small selection of Roger Payne's bills; and is illustrated, inter alia, with lithographs of sixteenth century bindings.

This register of current research in social economics has been compiled by the International Institute of Social Economics. The register does not claim to be comprehensive but is merely an aid for research workers and institutions interested in social economics. The register will be updated and made more comprehensive in the future but this is largely dependent on the inflow of information from researchers in social economics. In order to facilitate this process a standardised form is to be found on the last page of this register. Completed forms, with attached sheets as necessary, should be returned to the compiler: Dr Barrie O. Pettman, Director, International Institute of Social Economics, Enholmes Hall, Patrington, Hull, N. Humberside, England, HU12 OPR. Any other comments on the register will also be welcome.

The interesting ceremony described in another part of our columns has once more recalled attention to one of the most remarkable characters in the annals of British librarianship. When Mr. Thomas Greenwood endeavoured, at the Plymouth meeting of the Library Association, to interest librarians in the man who had done so much for the craft, it must be confessed that his appeal, for various reasons, did not succeed in arousing so much enthusiasm as might have been expected. For one thing, a considerable proportion of the librarians who attended the Plymouth conference were young men who had not been able to obtain access to the works which Edwards left behind him as his most enduring monument. Again, the prominence given to Ewart as the sole parent of the municipal library movement, had completely overshadowed Edwards' share in the work, and only a few student‐librarians knew anything about the part which Edwards had played in securing effective library legislation. On the other hand, the publications of Mr. Greenwood, of the Library Association itself, and other modern and accessible literature, contain frequent allusions to Edwards and his works, from which information could be obtained, and it is only necessary to cite, in this connection the various writings of Messrs. Axon, Ogle, Garnett, Greenwood, Sutton, Brown, and others.

CANADA, until the last generation or two, has been basically a pioneer country but two world wars have changed all this and the economy has moved from an agricultural to a manufacturing community able to provide a standard of living second to that of the United States. (At the present time only 10.8 per cent of Canadians live on farms according to the 1961 census.) Natural resources, such as timber, wheat and mining, continue to play, however, an important role in the life of the nation. As in most developing and pioneer countries, learning has had to assume a secondary role compared with other enterprises and activities. This is gradually beginning to change as more people continue in school and the percentage of individuals attending university increases. Established organizations, like the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, catering to mass culture, have been strengthened and enlarged and new establishments, like the Canada Council and the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, of narrower function and appeal, have been set up. The Library movement, not the least of learning agencies, is gaining strength every day. In this paper some of the interesting new developments of the last ten years in the latter field will be discussed. Of necessity, much is abbreviated; a lot is ignored. Data selected has been based on the most recent sources; hence the variety in dates.