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Purpose. Reflects on the work of Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and explains why knowledge is the organisations key asset. Informs the reader of the role of knowledge management in international development and explains the benefits of taking a more strategic approach. Approach. The approach taken was to investigate the opportunities, challenges and solutions that the change in VSO's strategic direction has brought to the organisation and how this impacts on information and knowledge management practices. Discusses the impact of internationalisation and the new challenges this brings in terms of developing systems, which meet the diverse needs of VSO's stakeholders. Finding. Highlights the importance of knowledge management to VSO and identifies some of the possible solutions to help support the organisation. At the moment VSO has written a draft knowledge management strategy and begun a knowledge‐mapping exercise. Once this process has been completed then VSO will have a much clearer vision of priorities and specific areas of work. Value. Provides an overview of the importance of knowledge to the organisation VSO. Recognises not only that knowledge management is for the corporate environment, but also that it adds value to the charity sector and in particular has a role to play in international development. Other key players within the international development arena also recognise its importance and have done a lot of work in this area. Provides a snapshot of how VSO has initiated a process for developing a knowledge management strategy based on organisational needs and a very complex change.

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.