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The ‘interview’ undergone by the young prince in W F Yeames' well known painting shown on our front cover this month, was more painful than most. But job interviews are more often than not rather harrowing—at least in prospect—and we have asked four authors, each representing a different part of the interviewing spectrum, to give us their views about the process, its importance, and how best to approach something which happens to most of us at least once in our professional careers.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES, whatever the subject, can bring enlightenment and new thoughts on old ideas. To investigate, and to find from written evidence, different approaches to similar problems or familiar practices in a new setting, engenders a feeling of professional kinship and often the pleasurable discovery of some original application or circumstance. The advantages of the academic pursuit of comparative librarianship are sufficiently well known. They have their most comprehensive summation and exposition in J Periam Danton's recent The dimensions of comparative librarianship.

“FORMAL classes on how to use a library would be an insult to the intelligence of the student.” This was an extreme reply mentioned in the Report of the Committee on Libraries, with reference to a questionnaire to academic staff about instruction in library use. This view of the teaching activities of librarians with students must be familiar to all librarians whether they are concerned with formal teaching activities or not. Nevertheless it is suggested that, in the current climate of change in the nature of sixth form studies, and the need for bibliographic training as part of a general education leading to informed library users in the academic and professional world, there is now a strong case for an examined course of study at “A” level G.C.E. incorporating the principles of bibliographical knowledge for users.

The Deutscher Verband für Schweisstechnik (German Welding Society) made a very judicious and much appreciated choice of venue for its Third International Conference on 18–20 February, 1986, on Interconnection Technology in Electronics. Fellbach, less than 10 km from the Schlossplatz in Stuttgart, and whose past profile was shaped almost entirely by winegrowing, has become since the opening in 1976 of the Schwabenlandhalle a town renowned equally for its significance as a conference centre. With the vine‐crowned Kappelberg hill dominating the town and commanding views to the Neckar Valley, Swabian hospitality and friendliness at its best, and a most impressive congress hall with excellent facilities in picturesque snow‐clad surroundings, the ingredients for providing a conference venue conducive to an optimum interchange of technological information were certainly present.