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And for this relief give much thanks. A certain buildup of copy requires me to be brief.

LIBRARIANS generally are so accustomed to the notion of their activities being a Good Thing, altruistic even, that it may come as something of a shock when the justification for our labours in any sector is questioned.

First I should make clear that what I mean by ‘business information’ for the purpose of this paper excludes the technical and scientific information requirements of business and industry. Without attempting a full definition of the term, it is as well that I declare my concern to be with information which assists in the means of buying and selling of goods and services and the means—through the application of economics and management techniques—of their production, but not the technical processes involved therein. There is an area of overlap which has been called the techno‐commercial field, where for example the marketing men and the production men need to come together to establish what is technically feasible and permissible in respect of the sale of their goods in domestic and overseas markets. This is well recognized in the Science Reference Library which, for this reason, cannot be overlooked as a source of business information. But, except in smaller units in the company sector, and in some local authority libraries, the provision of business information is generally distinct from the scientific/technical, and separate staffs are involved.

In assessing the results of Judith Collins's questionnaire it should perhaps be noted that less than 50 per cent of respondents claimed to spend all or most of their time ‘dealing with economic or business or commercial information’. One can only speculate whether a higher proportion of full‐time business librarians would have revealed a greater degree of satisfaction due to a deeper knowledge of sources, or of dissatisfaction through a higher level of expectation.

‘The public library is the research library for small firms in the locality. It is the place where administrative and technical workers can go to keep up with their subject and where the answer to many inquiries can be found…. Specialists using the library service can expect to be served by people familiar with their subjects to a fairly high level and knowledgeable in the relevant literature and terminology.’

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

1. The Managing Director of Diners Club International has sent a ‘personal invitation to join and to enjoy all the privileges of membership for six months, without obligation and save the £15 enrolment fee’ to:

In this paper I want to look at just one of the many contemporary legal narratives of homophobia – the phenomenon of the “Homosexual Advance Defence” (H.A.D.). While I agree with the analysis of one American commentator, who indicts the H.A.D. as a “judicial institutionalization of homophobia” (Mison, 1992, p. 136), I maintain that it is important to extend analyses which take as their main target the entrenchment of bigoted judicial views or which employ as their main critical tool a liberal framework of equality and discrimination (for example, see Potter, 2001). Just as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick urges us not to view homophobia as simple ignorance or bigotry (see Howe, 2000, pp. 85–87), I argue that there is much more at stake with the H.A.D., and consequently much more required of us, than mere questions of ignorance, discrimination and (re-)education. While it is important to identify and condemn at every turn the various legal and social manifestations of homophobia, of which the H.A.D. is clearly one, it is just as important (if not more so) to interrogate the discursive and epistemological foundations, or legitimations, of these very beliefs.

To outline the multiple ways in which animals are inserted into sporting practices, outline historical and contemporary approaches to studying human–animal sporting practices, and advocate for the centering of sociological problems in human–animal research in sporting contexts and cultures and for considering such problems in relation to environmental issues.

In the first part of the chapter, conceptual differentiation of animals in the animal–sport complex is presented. Subsequently, studies of interspecies sport are reviewed with reference to the “animal turn” in the literature. In the second part, a critique is presented relating to: (1) the privileging of companion animals, especially dogs and horses, which overlooks the multiple ways animals are integrated into (multispecies) sport; (2) micro-sociological and insider ethnographies of companionship displacing of sociological problems in favor of relationship perspectives; and (3) the environment as absent from analysis. The conclusion offers implications for understanding multispecies sport and the environment.

I chart a general shift in emphasis and focus from animals as an “absent presence” in pursuit of sociological knowledge toward a clearly defined focus on interspecies sport as a field of research characterized by investigations of relationships with companion animals through the “animal turn.”

The focus on companion species means other animals (i.e., noncompanions) are understudied, big picture sociological questions are often sidelined, environmental concerns marginalized, and sociological understanding of the environment more generally is either ignored or reduced to a conduit of human–animal interactions.