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THE Report of the Committee on Libraries, which was issued by the University Grants Committee in the summer of 1967, had for long been called the Parry Report after its Chairman, Dr. Thomas Parry, formerly Librarian of the National Library of Wales and at the time the Principal of University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. When it was first set up in June 1963 the terms of reference were as follows:

This paper seeks to examine gender‐ and management‐ level differences in perceptions of effective leadership within a framework of new leadership models that focus on the processes of influencing self and others rather than leadership based on hierarchy.

A self‐report questionnaire was distributed to a sample of council employees. The responses were analysed using thematic matrix displays.

Males and non‐management employees (when compared with female and management) perceived effective leadership as that which emphasises fairness, equality and honesty, develops staff, fosters workplace harmony, and is trustworthy. Female employees emphasised communication, decision‐making ability, and supporting the leader as being important to how a work unit could contribute to organizational leadership effectiveness. Employees at the management level underscored vision, supporting the leader, and integrity as being important to how a work unit could contribute to organizational leadership effectiveness. Female and non‐management employees highlighted employee development, contingent reward, communication and vision as being central to how organizational leadership could contribute to the effectiveness of the work unit.

Unlike the literature that differentiates between charismatic and transformational forms of leadership, this paper views these two constructs as both being components of transformational leadership.

Following the resource-based view, this paper aims to investigate the business performance impact of R&D–marketing integration and marketing and technical capabilities at the organization level in a non-Western context. Specifically, this work explores the mediating role of the two capabilities, while accounting for potential moderating effects and under the contingency of technological turbulence.

Survey data were collected from the paired marketing and R&D executives of 207 Japanese manufacturing companies. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that marketing capability – by itself and also coupled with technical capability – mediates the relationship between R&D–marketing integration and business performance, while technical capability alone does not.

This study’s subjective performance measures and cross-sectional design have inherent limitations. The exploration of antecedents and other contingency variables would provide ample scope for future research.

The findings suggest that managers need to build these two capabilities, especially marketing capability, because R&D–marketing integration by itself will not be sufficient to improve business performance.

This study provides empirical evidence for a new theoretical link through which R&D–marketing integration impacts business performance at the program level. The findings may also partially explain the mixed and conflicting results often found in past studies.

Three decades of academic and professional discourse on HR technologies (HRTs) have produced continued disagreement over construct definitions and research streams that are highly fragmented. These realities suggest that greater consistency in meanings is sorely needed if we are to integrate and upgrade knowledge in this area. This chapter draws on the findings of a systematic research review to properly define the content domains of human resource information systems (HRIS), virtual human resources (virtual HR), electronic human resource management (e-HRM), and business-to-employee (B2E) systems. An integrative synthesis was performed on 242 system-level writings that appeared in the literature from 1983 to 2017. The weight of the evidence strongly supports treating HRIS, virtual HR, e-HRM, and B2E systems as independent, complimentary constructs. While the first three comprise a firm’s HRT system, the fourth construct is more appropriately positioned in the business-collaborative system. The sample was further evaluated with an analytic framework to detect patterns of practice in research designs. This revealed that much more attention has been focused on system actions and outcomes than on attitudes and system characteristics. Different units of analysis were well represented aside from trans-organizational studies. Finally, a case is made for better contextualizing HRT research by recognizing differences in assimilation stage, functional penetration, and collective proficiency. These factors are rarely mentioned, let alone studied, raising additional concerns about measurement error. Detailed suggestions are offered on ways to incorporate them. Together, these materials should promote more sophisticated and generalizable assessments of technology, improving our ability to understand its impacts.

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.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.

“Ice cream is a foodstuff in my opinion and not a confection,” stated Mr. Morley T. Parry, Northamptonshire's Chief Sanitary Inspector, at a meeting of that county's branch of the Ice Cream Alliance at Northampton on April 24th. But this very fact made it most necessary that every care should be taken to safeguard public health. Addressing the meeting on the new Ice Cream (Heat Treatment, etc.) Regulations, Mr. Parry dealt mainly, as he said, with the “etc.” These were liable to be overlooked, and he considered them certainly of no less importance than the heat treatment process itself. In particular, the regulations required traders “to protect their ice cream, at all times during its storage and distribution, from dirt, dust, or other contamination, and all apparatus and utensils must be thoroughly cleaned after use and kept clean at all times.” It is my belief, said Mr. Parry, that these requirements, together with that concerning storage temperature, will sound the death‐knell of the old‐fashioned pushcart. “I am so confident of this,” he continued, “that it is my intention to take what will probably be a ‘ test case ’ in this connection at the first opportunity. But I must add that I have seen only two such vehicles on the streets in this Borough during the last two years.” Giving examples of bacteriological tests, Mr. Parry remarked that they showed the need of coverings to prevent ingress of dust and dirt, even in shop premises, and really explained the reason for the requirement that ice cream must be stored at 28°F. He felt that protection of the product during times of busy sales was going to present the trade with an immense problem. Speaking of sampling tests of Northamptonshire's ice cream, Mr. Parry had an encouraging word to say about the county's manufacturers and traders. “Since early 1946 we have never had a really bad bacteriological sample from any traders following the methods we have advised,” he said. “I would like to take this opportunity to compliment local traders on the efforts they have made to carry out suggestions my department has made to them, many of which must have seemed ‘finicking.’” He announced that a modified form of the Methylene Blue Reduction Test used for milk was now to be used for testing ice cream samples in place of the bacteriological examination which gave plate counts, B. Coli and Faecal Coli contents.

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.

This is the first comprehensive study that has appeared on consumption and rationing in the present war. All types of rationing and the experience of a very large number of countries are brought under review, on the basis of material collected by the Economic Intelligence Service of the League of Nations. Rationing and other measures of consumption control are enforced in order to ensure an equitable distribution of limited—and in many countries drastically curtailed—supplies of certain essential goods, such as foodstuffs, clothing and fuel. But they play a further very vital role in war economy, by reducing (or limiting) civilian demand in order to liberate maximum resources for war purposes and by making possible the control of prices. The volume opens with a discussion of this broad problem of consumption control in war economy, the various methods of rationing, the conditions under which they can operate successfully and the connection between rationing and price control. Particular attention is naturally devoted to food. In the second chapter tables are given showing, for some thirty countries, by categories of consumers and groups of foodstuffs, rations prevailing in the spring of 1942. As regards Europe, available evidence seems to show that diets are adequate in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, and not critically short in calories (though apparently deficient in animal proteins, fats, minerals and certain vitamins) in Germany, despite the substantial cut in the German rations which occurred in April, 1942. The situation in Italy and Spain is decidedly worse than in Germany. This is also true of the occupied countries, except Denmark. Not only are the legal rations lower, but those rations are frequently unobtainable in the shops; and even if obtainable, it is often doubtful whether full rations can be purchased by the poorest classes, prices having risen out of all proportion to the frozen wage‐rates. Diets in the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Norway are nutritionally poorer and more deficient in calories than in Germany. In France and Belgium, where the rations represent about 60 per cent. of the pre‐war calorie consumption, many of those who are unable to eke out their rations by purchases on the “ black market ” are living at the barest level of subsistence. In Finland the rations represent about 55 per cent., in Poland (General‐Government) less than 50 per cent. of the pre‐war calorie consumption. In the latter country, in parts of Yugoslavia, and above all in Greece, there is famine. To meet differences in individual needs, two distinct systems have been evolved. In Germany, where about 90 per cent. of food consumption is rationed, rations are differentiated according to kinds of foods and classes of consumers—the latter being divided into categories by occupations (heavy worker, very heavy worker, light worker) and by sex, age, etc. The rations of bread, fat and meat of “ very heavy workers,” for example, are between two and three times as large as those of normal consumers. The German system, which has been generally applied in the occupied countries, is rigid and leaves a minimum of free consumers' choice. The British system is far more flexible. Bread and potatoes are free, thus permitting everyone to obtain an unlimited number of calories, while restaurant and canteen meals are supplementary to the individual's basic ration. Special needs are met by the allocation of extra rations to canteens catering to industrial workers, by the extension of free school meals, and by “ distribution schemes ” giving children, mothers and sick people first claim on available supplies of protective foods such as milk and fruit‐juice. Flexibility is also maintained by the group rationing of canned goods. According to this system each item within the group is valued in points and the consumer may buy whatever he desires up to a given total point value. It is considered of great importance that all, irrespective of income, should be able to obtain their quota of essential foods. Among the measures introduced for this purpose are the far‐reaching subsidies to keep down prices. Many aspects of the British system are naturally to be found elsewhere: for example, the subsidisation of staple foods is practised in Sweden and certain other European countries; Germany distributes free vitamin preparations to school children; canteen and school feeding is common in Germany and many of the occupied areas, though for these meals ration cards have, as a rule, to be given up. In the case of food, there are definite limits to the amount by which consumption can be reduced without endangering health and life; in the case of most, though not all, consumers' goods, there are no such obvious limits and, in fact, the consumption of such goods has been drastically curtailed. Available information on the subject is given in the third chapter. The group rationing system just mentioned has been universally applied in the case of clothing. But in Germany, most of the occupied areas and Italy, rationing lias been supplemented by a system of special permits, without which no purchase of certain articles of clothing can be made. By the first half of 1941, purchases of clothing in Germany had been reduced by some 50 per cent. from the pre‐war level. The clothes rationing introduced in the United Kingdom in June, 1941, led to a decrease of about 30 per cent. in the volume of sales in the second half of that year compared with the same period of 1940. Fuel, electric current, soap, and other articles of household consumption are subject to restrictions of varying degrees of severity; the production of luxury goods has been restricted or stopped, while such limited quantities as may reach the market are subject to drastically increased taxation; the production of most durable consumers' goods— refrigerators, household furniture, pianos, etc.—has likewise been stopped. The last chapter contains a brief analysis of the effects which war‐time restrictions have had on the aggregate volume of consumption in various countries. Consumption has been heavily reduced in all European countries and in Japan; in the United States, Canada, Australia and certain other countries it appears to have increased up to the latter part of 1941. In the United Kingdom the reduction in consumption provided about one‐third of the total domestic resources absorbed in the war effort in 1941. The requirements of war production have also been met to a considerable extent by the consumption of capital. Germany, in particular, has had to resort to capital consumption on a large scale, in spite of a curtailment of private consumption by some 25 to 30 per cent. In reviewing the whole body of evidence, especially concerning food rationing, it is observed that the rationing systems which have been developed are “ more than a mere method of restricting individual consumption. They aim in fact at securing a minimum diet for the population as a whole and, in spite of the necessary limitations imposed by the war‐time scarcity, they contain the elements of a distributive system in which consumption is guided not so much by individual purchasing power as by human wants.”