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Reviews previous research on factors affecting the choice of using before‐ or after‐tax performance measures to determine executive compensation; and uses regression techniques on a sample of US firms to test the relationship between this choice and various factors suggested by the literature. Shows that after‐tax measures are more likely to be used in service industries and are positively related to firm size, multinational operations, the number of operating segments and capital intensity; but negatively related to leverage. Suggests that firms with more tax planning opportunities use post‐tax performance measures to encourage managers to consider the tax consequences of their actions, but trade off large debt tax shields in favour of other ways to plan tax.

THE Programme of the Library Association Conference which reached us on April 22nd is one of much interest. Every year increases the difficulty of providing matter which has such appeal that members can say at the close that the time has been spent profitably. The pre‐print of the papers—a rather incomplete affair—raises the thought that Conference time could be better used than in discussions on such “Research Committee” matters as library vans and temporary buildings, excellent as we admit the enquiries and results of them to be. Yet this reflection is accompanied by the certainty that there have been few conferences which have not contributed something of material use to every participator and we still hold the view that more is learned in “a week at one than in months of hermit‐like seclusion.” That last quotation was written in the first edition of Brown's Manual and is valid to this day. Our representatives will write impressions after the event, not by way of detailed report, but as endeavouring to sum up what, if anything, material has been achieved. The report published by the Association usually gives the papers in extenso, but we wish its issue could be delayed long enough to provide more informative records of the discussions. As the best contributions occasionally come from the floor, the bare‐bones notes of the names of speakers and almost telegram‐like utterances they are supposed to have made, which have been the customary report, could be greatly improved.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 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.

THE topics of the Library Association Conference and the election of the Council of the Association naturally absorb a great deal of attention this month. To deal with the second first: there were few novelties in the nominations, and most of the suggested new Councillors are good people; so that a fairly good Council should result. The unique thing, as we imagine, about the Library Association is the number of vice‐presidents, all of whom have Council privileges. These are not elected by the members but by the Council, and by the retiring Council; they occupy a position analagous to aldermen in town councils, and are not amenable to the choice or desires of the members at large. There are enough of them, too, if they care to be active, to dominate the Council. Fortunately, good men are usually elected, but recently there has been a tendency to elect comparatively young men to what are virtually perpetual seats on the Council, simply, if one may judge from the names, because these men occupy certain library positions. It, therefore; is all the more necessary that the electors see that men who really represent the profession get the seats that remain.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

IT is evident from the numerous press cuttings which are reaching us, that we are once more afflicted with one of those periodical visitations of antagonism to Public Libraries, which occasionally assume epidemic form as the result of a succession of library opening ceremonies, or a rush of Carnegie gifts. Let a new library building be opened, or an old one celebrate its jubilee, or let Lord Avebury regale us with his statistics of crime‐diminution and Public Libraries, and immediately we have the same old, never‐ending flood of articles, papers and speeches to prove that Public Libraries are not what their original promoters intended, and that they simply exist for the purpose of circulating American “Penny Bloods.” We have had this same chorus, with variations, at regular intervals during the past twenty years, and it is amazing to find old‐established newspapers, and gentlemen of wide reading and knowledge, treating the theme as a novelty. One of the latest gladiators to enter the arena against Public Libraries, is Mr. J. Churton Collins, who contributes a forcible and able article, on “Free Libraries, their Functions and Opportunities,” to the Nineteenth Century for June, 1903. Were we not assured by its benevolent tone that Mr. Collins seeks only the betterment of Public Libraries, we should be very much disposed to resent some of the conclusions at which he has arrived, by accepting erroneous and misleading information. As a matter of fact, we heartily endorse most of Mr. Collins' ideas, though on very different grounds, and feel delighted to find in him an able exponent of what we have striven for five years to establish, namely, that Public Libraries will never be improved till they are better financed and better staffed.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the nineteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1992. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.