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Worldwide economic decline, rampant inflation, floating exchange rates and the rise of the Pacific Rim countries mean that businesses in the Western World must adopt a different strategy.

Luck, altruism, shrewdness, parsimony, industry, generosity, and what some authors (and librarians, perhaps) call hardness of heart have always been the characteristics of a successful publisher. He has first of all been a man of energy, sure of his own judgement, ready to accept losses, and (after success) conceited about his flair. In early days ready to work until all hours and to read every manuscript submitted to him (although comparatively few unsolicited manuscripts are worth publishing), he has been forced with the growth of his business to accept advice from employees of a peculiar type—those who, with no wish for glittering rewards, can tell him exactly what he needs to know about the inevitable avalanche. He has made friends in all professions; and these friends, also disinterested, have lent him their brains, instructing him in all sorts of possibilities in their own fields. He has used these friends without scruple.

The relationship between strategic positioning and the appropriate mechanism for its implementation is important to most top managers. The determination of an appropriate organisational relationship will largely reflect the complexity of the trading environment. Intrapreneurship within traditional organisational structural formats is one mechanism to combat turbulent trading conditions. A “menu” of organisational relationships is presented which are used within a looser model of organisational relationships. Changes of this nature imply a re‐examination of managerial “grooming”. Educators must design school curricula around criteria of increasing self‐reliance and risk taking. Management developers should encourage the same characteristics. A change in political and social attitudes is also indicated.

THIS is the month when librarians and library workers everywhere, their holidays over, turn to their winter plans. There are, however, some interesting events to take place before the darker and more active months come. The first is the meeting at Oxford on September 21st and subsequent days of the Federation International de Documentation. This will be followed by and merge into the ASLIB Conference, and there is in prospect an attendance of over three hundred. Our readers know that this organization produces and advocates the International Decimal Classification. It is not primarily a “library” society but rather one of abstractors and indexers of material, but it is closely akin, and we hope that English librarianship will be well represented. Then there is a quite important joint‐conference at Lincoln of the Northern Branches of the Library Association on September 30th— October 3rd, which we see is to be opened by the President of the Library Association. Finally the London and Home Counties Branch are to confer at Folkestone from October 14th to 16th, and here, the programme includes Messrs. Jast, Savage, McColvin, Wilks, Carter, and the President will also attend. There are other meetings, and if the question is asked: do not librarians have too many meetings ? we suppose the answer to be that the Association is now so large that local conferences become desirable. One suggestion, that has frequently been made, we repeat. The Library Association should delegate a certain definite problem to each of its branches, asking for a report. These reports should form the basis of the Annual Conference. It is worthy of more consideration.

WE have to announce with deep regret the death of Mr. I. Chalkley Gould, founder and director of the Library World since its establishment in 1898. Mr. Gould was a member of an old Essex family associated with Loughton and its neighbourhood, and was born in 1844, his father being the late George Gould, of Traps Hill House, Loughton. His connection with the firm of Marlborough, Gould & Co. and other stationery and printing concerns led him many years ago to give some attention to library and museum work, towards which he had always been attracted because of his personal interest in archaeology and literature. In this way he became associated with many museums, libraries and antiquarian societies, and identified himself more particularly with the movement for the preservation of ancient British earthworks. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, vice‐president of the Essex Archaeological Society, the Essex Field Club, and the British Archaeological Association. Within recent years he acted as hon. secretary of the Committee for Recording Ancient Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures—a committee for the formation of which he was largely responsible and in the work of which he took a very deep interest. He was chairman of the Committee for the Exploration of the Red Hills of Essex—an important undertaking which is not yet completed. He also contributed several valuable papers to the Victoria History of Essex, and assisted the editor of that publication in revising the earthworks sections of other counties.

The purpose of this article is to show that racism is not only a US problem. Rather, racism is endemic and pervasive in the UK context, manifesting at every level of policing. From stop and search, to deaths after police contact, the authors highlight long-standing and widespread racist disparities in UK policing. The authors therefore pierce through any delusions of UK “post-racialism” in order to show that, as protesters have reminded us, “the UK is not innocent”.

In this piece, the authors reflect on the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Whilst the catalyst was the death of George Floyd in the United States, the authors explore what the protests mean in the UK context. To do so, the authors draw upon recent high-profile examples of police racism, before situating those events within a wider landscape of racist policing.

Demonstrating that UK policing has to be understood as institutionally racist, the authors suggest that responses to police racism need to be radical and uncompromising – tweaks to the system are not enough. The authors therefore look towards defunding and abolition as ways in which one can begin to seek change.

The piece takes up the challenges set by this Black Lives Matter moment and offers a critical take on policing that seeks to push beyond reformism whilst also highlighting the realities of UK racism.

Older men can and do experience abuse in various forms, even though men are more usually seen as perpetrators than victims. This paper argues that agencies must train their workers to acknowledge that men can be victims, not only of ‘husband‐battering’ but of other forms of abuse, too. Giving abused men ‘permission to speak’ is also vital.

In the House of Commons recently Sir Kingsley Wood, the Minister of Health, was asked by Mr. Rickards, the member for the Skipton division of the West Riding, whether “the new process of adding germicide to milk for destroying bacteria had been brought to his notice?; whether he would have the process tested and investigated?; and consider whether any modification of the Food and Drugs (Adulteration) Act would be required to permit of milk so treated being sold on a commercial scale?”—Sir Kingsley Wood in reply disclaimed all official knowledge of the germicide. He also pointed out that to treat milk with a germicide would be contrary to the provisions of the Preservatives Regulations, and of the Food and Drugs (Adulteration) Act. We understand “germ” to be a more or less popular term frequently and somewhat loosely used when reference in general is made to pathogenic organisms; and a germicide is a material something that kills, or is supposed to kill, germs when it comes in contact with them, or the medium in which they exist. A disinfectant is a germicide. In the simple judgment of the ordinary householder the more it smells the better it is for purposes of disinfection. When a germicide is used in cither medicine or surgery the term antiseptic is frequently employed. Familiar instances of both disinfectants and antiseptics are chloride of lime, carbolic acid, iodine, boron compounds, formalin, sulphur dioxide, or sulphites.

“WE come now to another aspect of the question, and it must be admitted that the resource and ingenuity of the opposition have left nothing unnoticed. This is the common and constantly repeated assertion that novels are so cheap that every working man in the country can buy all he needs for less than the annual library rate. This statement was first made some years ago when publishers commenced to issue cheap reprints of non‐copyright novels at 1s. and 6d. each. Previous to this the halfpenny evening paper had been relied upon as affording sufficient literary entertainment for the working man, but when it was found to work out at 13s. per annum, as against a library rate of 1od. or 1s. 4d., the cheap newspaper argument was dropped like a hot cinder. We doubt if the cheap paper‐covered novel is any better. Suppose a workman pays £20 per annum for his house, and is rated at £16, he will pay 1s. 4d. as library rate, or not much more than 1¼d. per month for an unlimited choice of books, newspapers and magazines. But suppose he has to depend on cheap literature. The lowest price at which he can purchase a complete novel of high quality by any author of repute is 3d., but more likely 4½d. or 6d. However, we will take 3d. as an average rate, and assume that our man has leisure to read one book every fortnight. Well, at the end of one year he will have paid 6s. 6d. for a small library by a restricted number of authors, and it will cost him an additional 4s. or 5s. if he contemplates binding his tattered array of books for future preservation. Besides this, he will be practically shut off from all the current literature on topics of the day, as his 3d. a fortnight will hardly enable him to get copyright books by the best living authors. With a Public Library at his command he can get all these, and still afford to buy an occasional poet or essayist, or novel, or technical book, well bound and printed on good paper, such as his friend who would protect him against an iniquitous library rate would not blush to see on his own shelves. It seems hard that the working men of the country should be condemned to the mental entertainment afforded by an accumulation of pamphlets. Literature clothed in such a dress as gaudy paper covers is not very inspiring or elevating, and even the most contented mind would revolt against the possession of mere reading matter in its cheapest and least durable form. The amount of variety and interest existing among cheap reprints of novels is not enough, even if the form of such books were better. It is well known to readers of wide scope that something more than mere pastime can be had out of novels. Take, for example, the splendid array of historical novels which have been written during the present century. No one can read a few of these books without consciously or unconsciously acquiring historical and political knowledge of much value. The amount of pains taken by the authors in the preparation of historical novels is enormous, and their researches extend not only to the political movements of the period, but to the geography, social state, costume, language and contemporary biography of the time. Thus it is utterly impossible for even a careless reader to escape noticing facts when presented in an environment which fixes them in the memory. For example, the average school history gives a digest of the Peninsular War, but in such brief and matter of fact terms as to scarcely leave any impression. On the other hand, certain novels by Lever and Grant, slipshod and inaccurate as they may be in many respects, give the dates and sequence of events and battles in the Peninsula in such a picturesque and detailed manner, that a better general idea is given of the history of the period than could possibly be acquired without hard study of a heavy work like Napier's History. It is hardly necessary to do more than name Scott, James, Cooper, Kingsley, Hugo, Lytton, Dumas, Ainsworth, Reade, G. Eliot, Short‐house, Blackmore, Doyle, Crockett and Weyman in support of this claim. Again, no stranger can gain an inkling of the many‐sided characteristics of the Scot, without reading the works of Scott, Ferrier, Galt, Moir, Macdonald, Black, Oliphant, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Annie Swan and Ian Maclaren. And how many works by these authors can be had for 3d. each? The only way in which a stay‐at‐home Briton can hope to acquire a knowledge of the people and scenery of India is by reading the works of Kipling, Mrs. Steel, Cunningham, Meadows Taylor, and others. Probably a more vivid and memory‐haunting picture of Indian life and Indian scenery can be obtained by reading these authors than by reading laboriously through Hunter's huge gazetteer. In short, novels are to the teaching of general knowledge what illustrations are to books, or diagrams to engineers, they show things as they are and give information about all things which are beyond the reach of ordinary experience or means. It is just the same with juvenile literature, which is usually classed with fiction, and gives to that much‐maligned class a very large percentage of its turnover. The adventure stories of Ballantyne, Fenn, Mayne Reid, Henty, Kingston, Verne and others of the same class are positive mines of topographical and scientific information. Such works represent more than paste and scissors industry in connection with gazetteers, books of travel and historical works; they represent actual observation on the part of the authors. A better idea of Northern Canada can be derived from some of Ballantyne's works than from formal topographical works; while the same may be said of Mexico and South America as portrayed by Captain Mayne Reid, and the West Indies by Michael Scott. The volume of Personal Reminiscences written by R. M. Ballantyne before he died will give some idea of the labour spent in the preparation of books for the young. The life of the navy at various periods can only be learned from the books of Smollett, Marryat and James Hannay, as that of the modern army is only to be got in the works of Lever, Grant, Kipling, Jephson, “John Strange Winter” and Robert Blatchford.