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The Intelligence Library of the Control Commission for Germany contains some 20,000 books and pamphlets, and its function is to provide an information service on German affairs for the benefit of the various divisions and branches of the main headquarters of the Control Commission in Germany. It is true that few special libraries are ever likely to be formed in similar circumstances, but some account of the ways in which these unique conditions were met may serve to illustrate the fundamental principle that the organization of a special library must be freely adaptable to the particular circumstances governing its existence.

It is characteristic of the modern English universities that a close relationship exists between the library and the teaching departments. The fact that the library forms an integral part of the academic community, in daily, even hourly, touch with the teaching staff, has a profound bearing on every aspect of library policy. The academic staff take an active interest in the library, particularly in those parts of the library serving the teaching and research carried on in their own departments, and it is indeed not unusual for a professor to show as great a concern for the actual arrangement of the books on the shelves as for the addition of the right books and periodicals to the book stock.

Probably no aspect of librarianship presents such variations of practice in individual libraries as does the provision of subject catalogues. The author catalogue, which tells the user whether a given work of which he knows the author and title is in the library, must necessarily take a similar form everywhere, and such variations as do exist in the treatment of certain types of heading—that of academies is a case in point—are quickly assimilated by the reader as he moves from library to library. The same cannot be said of the catalogue which tells the user what works are to be found in the library on a given topic. In the Anglo‐Saxon countries subject catalogues may be arranged, if indeed they exist at all, according to a variety of systems, and even where one of the accepted classification schemes or lists of subject headings is used the local modifications are often legion. Many university and research libraries find that no existing scheme offers an arrangement of the whole field of knowledge which reflects the approach to which their readers are accustomed; and certainly no ready‐made scheme is entirely suitable for a university library in the United Kingdom, although many libraries do attempt to provide a useful arrangement both of the books on the shelves and of the entries in the subject catalogue by adapting Dewey, the Brussels decimal classification, or the Library of Congress classification. Bliss, when his full scheme has been published, will probably be found to provide the arrangement most suitable for use in academic libraries, but even his admirable classification fails to provide a scheme which can be identified at all points with the approach which is required in a library which serves first and foremost the teaching of a university.

Any university library classification scheme must be capable of dealing not only with those subjects which are being taught but also with those which might be added to the curriculum in the future, and ideally it should arrange them in a way which is related to the needs of the teaching departments.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

This is the season of examination results and there are three pioneer ventures in education for librarianship which have come to fruition this summer. The College of Librarianship Wales reports 25 graduates from their joint honours degree with the University of Wales. Most of the new graduates will be taking up posts in Britain, but two are going overseas, to Norway and Zambia, and several are proceeding to a masters degree.

It may seem paradoxical to assert that the Reference Division, despte being the crown and glory of the new institution which began to operate on 1 July 1973, was, and to some extent still is, the least “national” of the various components which made up the whole.

THE news that our royal President has been promoted to the command of a frigate sugges an increase rather than a relieving of naval duties. Our pleasure in the announcement is qualified by the fear that the further demands may make his presence with the Library Association in September even more difficult than it seemed to be a month ago. This is pure speculation on our part, but we are aware of the eagerness with which librarians look forward to the central event of the Centenary Year. We are assured that the matter is in good hands and at the right levels.

The British countryman is a well‐known figure; his rugged, obstinate nature, unyielding and tough; his part in the development of the nation, its history, not confined to the valley meadows and pastures and uplands, but nobly played in battles and campaigns of long ago. His “better half”—a term as true of yeoman stock as of any other—is less well known. She is as important a part of country life as her spouse; in some fields, her contribution has been even greater. He may grow the food, but she is the provider of meals, dishes, specialties, the innovating genius to whom most if not all British food products, mostly with regional names and now well‐placed in the advertising armentarium of massive food manufacturers, are due. A few of them are centuries old. Nor does she lack the business acumen of her man; hens, ducks, geese, their eggs, cut flowers, the produce of the kitchen garden, she may do a brisk trade in these at the gate or back door. The recent astronomical price of potatoes brought her a handsome bonus. If the basic needs of the French national dietary are due to the genius of the chef de cuisine, much of the British diet is due to that of the countrywoman.

This paper aims to identify and understand changing research themes within this field and apply a novel technique for text mining.

Statistical text mining methods are applied as an approach to bibliographic analysis to nearly 30 years of papers published in Library Review and Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication to identify key research themes and analyse how they have evolved over this period.

Key stable research themes include students, literacy, learning, research, while emerging research themes include social media, networking and knowledge sharing through information and communication technology.

A novel approach to bibliometric analysis is applied to a large collection of texts published in the library field.