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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.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

It was first observed by Bradford that, for a large collection of journal references on a given subject, most of the articles are derived from a small proportion of the total titles. Bradford listed the journals concerned in order of decreasing productivity and, by plotting the logarithms of the cumulative totals of titles against the cumulative totals of relevant articles produced, he obtained a straight line. (Similar results have been obtained by many later workers. The pattern is illustrated by Table 1 which shows the distribution of references among journal titles obtained by the author during a study of literature usage in the petroleum industry.) On the basis of these results Bradford then formulated a simple mathematical model to describe reference scattering. Vickery later pointed out that this ‘law of scattering’ predicted not a straight line but a curve. Kendall has now provided a more refined statistical explanation of the straight line observed by Bradford.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

The effective planning of technical libraries would be greatly facilitated if there were some theoretical basis which could be used to predict the probable distribution by titles, and by age of journal, of future journal demand. As a first step, the author has recently developed a general expression for the distribution among journal titles of large groups of journal references. In this present paper a relationship between usage and age of journal is established and the application of this relationship to some library planning problems is illustrated.

With each year that passes the world output of technical literature increases, making it ever more difficult to locate all significant information on any given subject. The continuance of this trend will lead to greater demands upon information services and plans must, therefore, be prepared for their future expansion. To be both realistic and effective, such plans must be based upon extensive fundamental knowledge, including quantitative data, on the use which scientists make of literature and information facilities.

The distribution of references in a collection of pertinent source documents can be described and predicted by the relation where the parameter ß is related to the subject field and the completeness of the collection. The model is used to predict the reference yield of abstracting journals in a search for thermophysical property data. It is used also to explain differences among various literature studies of the past in terms of differences in subject and comprehensiveness of search. The model is derived from S. C. Bradford's ‘law of scattering’ and is called the Bradford Distribution.

Outside RQ, writing on reference service, whether at craft or at management level, is rare. Attempts by LR to establish a practitioners' reference column have consistently failed. One referee doubted whether the following paper really deals with management aspects. Readers with other viewpoints may like to comment.

A survey of inquiries addressed to the Information Office of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), Harwell, is described. The objects of the survey were to collect facts about such inquiries, the work involved and methods used in answering them, and the nature of the answers obtained; to discover useful generalizations from these facts and to apply relevant generalization to the improvement of the information service at Harwell.