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Without doubt, the greatest single act of conservation for Britain's cities has been the passing of the Clean Air Act. Buildings that are cleaned and restored today will stay clean and should be pleasing to look at in the 21st century.

Summary (1) All building materials require correct treatment and regular maintenance. The expression ‘maintenance‐free’ is inaccurate. Where assumed, it leads to errors of design and poor building performance.

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.

The problem of this study was: (a) to determine the degree of agreement between teacher perceptions of actual and preferred supervisory behavior in Montana public schools during the 1978–1979 school year; and (b) to relate differences between actual and preferred supervisory behavior to the degree of teacher satisfaction with supervision. The major findings of the study were that: (a) responses to a few of the items were dependent either on sex, or teaching level, or years of teaching experience; (b) many Montana teachers would prefer to experience more often thirty‐one supervisory practices recommended in the literature since 1970; (c) satisfaction with supervision is significantly related to the absolute values of the difference between actual score and preferred score for those same thirty‐one supervisory practices taken collectively; and (d) the absolute values of discrepancy scores for seventeen of the thirty‐one recommended supervisory practices were found to make a significant, unique contribution to the prediction of one or more of the satisfaction indices.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

Cultural intermediaries define the standards many consumers use when evaluating cultural products. Yet, little research has focused on whether cultural intermediaries may systematically differ from each other with regard to the standards they emphasize. The purpose of this paper is to build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to examine how the type of subfield reviewed and/or the cultural intermediary’s expertise (or “field-specific cultural capital”) affect the standards an intermediary uses.

This paper employed a computer-aided content analysis of the full corpus of “Rolling Stone” music album reviews (1967-2014).

Critics with lower field-specific cultural capital reflect the same logic as the subfield they are critiquing. Critics with higher field-specific cultural capital reflect the opposite logic.

Bourdieu was ambivalent about whether cultural intermediaries will reflect the logic of a subfield. Results show that the answer depends on the intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital. The results also reinforce previous findings that individuals with high field-specific cultural capital are more likely to break with the logic of a field.

Not all intermediaries are created equal. Producers and consumers who rely on cultural intermediaries should understand the intermediary’s critical analysis within the context of his/her experience.

This is one of the first studies to examine how a cultural intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital impacts his or her work. The findings are based on a large review sample and include reviewers’ analyses as they developed from having lower to higher field-specific cultural capital.

Hearty congratulations are extended to Miss M. Gosset, B.SC., A.R.C.S., who has received the M.B.E. in the Birthday Honours. Miss Gosset, who is Librarian of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, is a member of Aslib Council and is well known to Aslib members through her attendance at conferences and meetings and her generous service on Aslib Committees.