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Aslib Winter Meetings. The next meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday 30th January 1957, at the Royal Society of Arts, John Adam Street, Strand, London, W.C.2. Tea will be served at 5.30 p.m.

In 1941, with the help of the Royal Society and with funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, Aslib made a survey of the deficiencies in the supply to libraries in Great Britain of current scientific and technical periodicals from enemy and enemy‐controlled countries.

On 18 February 1945 the Conference of the Association of Scientific Workers passed a resolution stressing the urgent need for the closest collaboration between scientists of all countries ‘including the fullest interchange of scientific and technical knowledge’. It is hardly surprising that a paper on information services was included in the programme, and it was generally felt that the response indicated a long‐felt need. The issue is significant. Five hundred scientists representing some sixteen thousand from all over Britain, and in agreement with co‐operating societies in many other countries, demand co‐ordination of effort, including an adequate flow of scientific information. The long and very important programme of the Conference did not allow time for discussing the matter in detail; but since this question is one which concerns the scientific and scholarly world as a whole, I may perhaps be justified in presenting a survey of the situation in so far as scholarly and scientific information can be supplied by means of photographic techniques.

These are personal reminiscences only and my connection with Aslib did not begin until May 1933. Nevertheless, to understand the situation as I found it, it is necessary to sketch very briefly an outline of the previous nine years of Aslib's existence.

The meeting took the form of an interview in which Professor Hutton answered questions put to him by a panel consisting of Miss M. Gosset, M.B.E., B.Sc., A.R.C.S., formerly Librarian, AERE, Harwell; Mr B.Fullman, M.B.E., B.Sc., F.R.I.C., F.I.M., formerly Information Officer, BNFMRA; and Mr Leslie Wilson, M.A., Director of Aslib.

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

When I consider the World list of scientific periodicals, or the array of slips which we hope will one day be published as the British union catalogue of periodicals, and then turn to look at the few journals on my library shelves, I feel rather as Newton did: like a child, playing with a few pebbles on the sea‐shore, while the vast ocean of truth lies all undiscovered before me.

The year 1938, not so distant in point of time, but early in modern microfilm history, saw the establishment of University Microfilms as the first commercially operated microfilm service to serve the needs of scholars and libraries. Other laboratories had been established earlier at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the University of Chicago, but each of these had the benefit of outside funds for equipment and overhead expenses and each was primarily concerned with servicing its own collections. University Microfilms sought to provide effective microfilm service at rates comparable with those of subsidized laboratories.

ASLIB – the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux – was founded in 1924 with the aim of co‐ordinating the activities of specialist information services in the UK. This article seeks to present a new history of the first quarter‐century of the Association.

This is a historical study based substantially on two collections of primary documents: ASLIB's own records, held at Aslib Headquarters, London; and the papers of Edith Ditmas, held at the National Library of Wales.

The paper explores the origins of ASLIB, and its roots in the “science lobby” of the time; it then traces the development of ASLIB as both a “national intelligence service” for science, commerce and industry, and as a quasi‐professional association with international significance. It concludes that the first of these two functions was the Association's fundamental raison d'être.

The research is limited to study of ASLIB in the period 1924‐1950 and an obvious continuation would be a history of “corporate” ASLIB (1950‐1997). More generally, the paper reveals that the history of UK documentation and information science in the twentieth century is underexplored: there is scope for future research focused on key pioneers and ideas, as well as institutions such as ASLIB.

As far as is known, this is the first historical study of ASLIB to be based on contemporary records: it should therefore be of value to both historians of information and library science and practitioners interested in their professional heritage.

Not many weeks back, according to newspaper reports, three members of the library staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London were dismissed. All had refused to carry out issue desk duty. All, according to the newspaper account, were members of ASTMS. None, according to the Library Association yearbook, was a member of the appropriate professional organisation for librarians in Great Britain.