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The overall purpose of this paper is to detect spatial, temporal, sectoral, thematic and other patterns or transitions in techno-socio-economic evolution that are likely to co-determine future development and allow the steering of it. The development of a “Global Change Data Base” (GCDB) promises a graphically and geographically oriented tool for the representation of correlations for global long-term data series.

A literature analysis supports the interpretation of such “pattern recognitions”, especially the literature in the areas of economic growth, systems analysis, energy economics, social indicators and quality of life. Preconditions for economic growth are empirically analysed on a sectoral level along with prevailing structural shifts in the use of energy sources.

The main outcome is a distillate of a few formative “paths of development”, according to a synthesis of to-date growth theories. These lines might influence development in future decades and co-determine the degree to which sustainability targets are met. Debates and discussion procedures make use of such findings and outline modes of actions.

Developmental university curricula such as “Global Studies”, democratisation endeavours based on analyses of economic performance of (partly) democratic systems or global governance of science could profit from a consensus on global trends patterns, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change endeavour at the United Nations level.

Such heuristic methods could suitably mediate (in “multicultural” manner) between contradictory paradigms of global economic development that are mainly ideology-driven and hamper global society’s joint action.

In short, this is an empirical work on pattern recognition in global evolution using aggregated spatially and temporally enabled data. It refers to the historic example of Kon-Tiki which undertook a surprisingly long journey based on precise knowledge of ocean currents and wind without applying own force.

WE endorse with much pleasure the welcome that has greeted the election of the new President of the Library Association. When the Association, in what seems now a somewhat remote past, determined to place the executive side of its business in the hands of a permanent Secretary, the question of the continuance of an Honorary Secretary was given careful consideration. It was resolved that he should continue and that his main function would be to represent the President at all times when the latter was not available. He had other duties, even if they were not clearly expressed, including a general overall initiative in committee and Council matters. The successive holders of the office since, Stanley Jast, Dr. E. A. Savage and Lionel R. McColvin proved so clearly the wisdom of that decision that the Association made each of them President; they have been heads of the profession in a real sense, inspiring and actively creative. The last of them, Mr. McColvin, is known everywhere librarians meet, here and overseas, and only the newest library recruits are unfamiliar with his reports, essays and many books, or have not heard of his home and other county surveys and his fearless, suggestive appraisals of what he has seen and thought. In a rather difficult time the Library Association is fortunate to have so statesmanlike a librarian to lead it.

There is no argument among serious researchers that a mongoloid stock first colonized the New World from Asia. Nor is there controversy about the fact that these continental pioneers used the Bering Land Bridge that then connected the Asian Far East with Alaska.– Gerald F. Shields, et al.American Journal of Genetics (1992)

Not very long ago I was browsing in the library, looking as one does, for something to tickle a momentary fancy. There, on the shelves, were all those familiar titles that spelt the escape of twenty years ago and more—Jules Verne, Dennis Wheatley and Edgar Wallace; stories of violence and discovery and what we now call science fiction.

The problem of library co‐operation is again in the forefront following the decision of the National Central Library that it will not be responsible for applications for British books published after 31st December, 1958. The responsibility for books to be published after that date devolves therefore upon the ten British regions and the hope has been expressed that these regions should be self‐sufficient in themselves, each devising some means of subject specialisation which will insure that all books, apart from a few excepted classes, are covered in one or other library within the region. The latest indications are that there may be some co‐operation between regions reducing the responsibility of each region to that for only a part of the whole subject field.

Bibliographers and book collectors must continue to endure “Double, double toil and trouble” so long as publishers refuse to heed Lord Falkland's wise dictum:— “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” Some American and British publishers simply will not let well enough alone in accepting book titles. They persist in issuing books under one title on one side of the ocean and under another title on the other side of the ocean. Prospective book buyers must therefore spend considerable time verifying title entries and comparing the contents of books if they wish to avoid a duplication of an author's works. In 1940, Hodder & Stoughton of London published John Buchan's joyful recollections, Memory Hold ‐ the ‐ Door. The Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston simultaneously released the book under the title, Pilgrim's Way. It would be interesting to learn how many librarians and bibliophiles unwittingly duplicated the memoirs in the innocent belief that they were acquiring distinct narratives. Either title was appropriate, but the dual titles resulted in confusion.

T. S. Eliot in London, Louis Gottschalk in Chicago, both re‐cently have voiced in public meet‐ings their concern at the decay of the private and the personal libraries—mortmain is setting in—the dead hand that libraries are placing upon the free flow of books. Libraries are often more concerned with the acquiring of books than they are with the books themselves. Too many libraries have too many books.

In some obscure corner of the offices of George Newnes, publishers of such thriving periodicals as Woman's Own and Tit‐Bits, the dust that settled four years ago on the files of the Strand must now be settling on the long rows of dark‐green volumes that preserve the pages of John o' London's Weekly. Within a twelvemonth—for the public memory is short—it will be as much a ghost as T.P.s, Cassell's, Everyman, and many other literary weeklies that have gone before it into oblivion.

My first reaction to the question —“How am I affected by publishers' publicity in my book selection” —was almost a rude one, but I compromised with “very little.” This brief answer requires amplification and explanation, because when I began to think about the question I realised I was affected in two ways—subconsciously and indirectly.

THE STAFFING SITUATION IF after the absence of a year or two we return to a familiar library, we are apt to find that most of the librarians known to us have gone, or so many of them that the familiarity seems to have departed. Indeed the turn‐over in the visible staffs is so great as to suggest that library service, fascinating as some think it to be, we amongst them, is not sufficiently so to hold its beginnners. The impression that this applies only to libraries should not be adopted until we know that most other occupations are not afflicted with the same transience in their servants. We have to assure ourselves that this is not a national condition that is itself transient, in which every professional, industrial, and commercial concern is fighting for a share in the limited supply of young workers and is offering wages or salaries against the others in a boom time which may pass. Are we able to tell juniors that the “never‐had‐it‐so‐good” age is unlikely to endure and that library service will and they should stay in it? If we could, would the immediate cash of the outside world prevail and the credit of the future be foregone?