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Presents the preliminary findings of a one‐year British Library Research and Development Department‐funded project looking at disaster management in British libraries. Based on visits to some 30 organizations within and outside the library profession and analysis of 62 library disaster control plans, considers the terms “disaster”, “disaster control planning” and “disaster management”, highlighting the central role of the written disaster control plan. Emphasizes the need for these plans to be managed and supported by risk assessments and regular inspections of buildings and equipment, the identification and use of reliable expert advice, staff training programmes and contingency planning for temporary services, accommodation and storage. Undertlines the importance of personnel issues such as the careful selection of those responsible for disaster management and staff counselling following a disaster, and also the need to investigate insurance cover and to consider the installation of fire detection and suppression systems.

Presents the results of a questionnaire survey which revealed that an estimated 590,000 enquiries were made to general enquiry offices of the national offices of 111 national voluntary environmental organizations in 1994. Over three‐quarters of organizations experienced an increase over the past two years and one‐third expect to increase their enquiry services this year. Consequently effective policies, strategy and marketing are becoming more important as are guidelines concerning response times, and the need to monitor enquiries. More than 50 per cent of enquiries come from the educational sector which prefers the postal service to make enquiries. In contrast members need more detailed information and prefer a telephone service. Several organizations have developed Internet services, and almost all utilize wordprocessing. Others use desk top publishing, and/or databases to organize their data. Identifies a high level of commitment to the general enquirer, together with the need to be cost effective in preparing material, delivering a service and meeting the aims of the organization.

The University of Minnesota Libraries have developed and implemented LibCMS, an open architecture content management system (CMS) that combines with the previously‐built LibData system to meet the web page publishing and site management needs of a large research library. The purpose of this paper is to present overall observations about CMSs and their implementation, and details the requirements and design of LibCMS.

The system's development followed an evolutionary path moving from a modest data repository, to a large system with a three‐tiered web page authoring environment, and now to a CMS with site‐level management capability. This work leaned on abstract tree structures to manage navigational hierarchy both within and between pages. Methods were developed to represent tree architecture in an RDBMS while economizing traversal and maintenance of nodes.

Developing the CMS locally ensured that design followed the requirements of a large academic library environment and its service/business model. This also allowed the implementation to be an organic extension of existing authoring tools in the environment rather than the potentially disruptive incorporation of a new system.

Architectural problems encountered here have traditionally been treated outside of library and information science. The challenge both in implementation and in research has been to bridge gaps between computer science and applied technologies in libraries.

Implementations of open source, library‐oriented CMSs could, over time, open the door to community software development and distribution efforts.

This paper uniquely details the rationale and design of a library‐oriented, open architecture CMS, built to interoperate with a large, content repository.

Documents and notes the specific content of Marx′s postulate (in the original German edition of Das Kapital, 1867) that “der Mensch von Natur...ein gesellschaftliches thier ist”. All the prominent English editions (unlike the French, Russian, Italian and Spanish versions examined) except one omit the “by nature” qualifier. Suggests reasons for and the significance of this critical and essentially mysterious omission.

OUR readers will, we trust, appreciate our double souvenir number issued in connection with the Library Association Conference at Glasgow. Special features are the articles on the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, 1874–1924, by a member of the staff, Mr. J. Dunlop, and one on the Burns Country, by Mr. J. M. Leighton, of Greenock Public Library. We printed the provisional programme in our July issue and as we go to press have little to add to the particulars there given, except to compliment the Library Association and the Local Reception Committee on the excellent programme arranged for the occasion, from both the professional and social point of view.

The staffing of the county libraries proceeds apace and all kinds of appointments are reported. It is rumoured that a retired army man has been selected in one case and a school teacher in another, both of whom, without special library experience, will be entrusted with the organisation of their respective library schemes. It is further reported that a discussion among Directors of Education brought forth the opinion that trained men were not necessary on these jobs, “men of commonsense” being preferred.

In The Changing Body (Cambridge University Press and NBER, 2011), we presented a series of estimates showing the number of calories available for human consumption in England and Wales at various points in time between 1700 and 1909/1913. We now seek to correct an error in our original figures and to compare the corrected figures with those published by a range of other authors. We also include new estimates showing the calorific value of meat and grains imported from Ireland. Disagreements with other authors reflect differences over a number of issues, including the amount of land under cultivation, the extraction and wastage rates for cereals and pulses and the number of animals supplying meat and dairy products. We consider recent attempts to achieve a compromise between these estimates and challenge claims that there was a dramatic reduction in either food availability or the average height of birth cohorts in the late-eighteenth century.

OUR readers are sure to find the New Year, which we hope will be a prosperous one for them and for librarianship,an interesting one in many ways. From the standpoint of the Library Association it will see the attractive experiment of an Annual Conference which for the first time is to be held in June. Margate, the venue of this, can be spartan in that month; on the other hand, she can be delightful, and the crystal, bracing air of the town, unequalled anywhere in our isles, and the long days, which should be sunny, ought to send librarians back invigorated to the common work of libraries. The objection that June cannot be combined with late summer holidays, that it cuts across school and university terms, and so on, is sound enough, but the advantages seem to be equally clear. At any rate we hope that Margate will be a bumper conference.

In previous efforts I have dated the birth of (modern) Social Catholicism (alias: Roman‐Catholic Social Economycs) with the publication of the closely associated works of Charles de Coux (1832) and Alban de Villeneuve‐Bargemont (1834/37). If indeed (and without going all the way back to Jesus of Nazareth, via Thomas Aquinas, Jerome and Ambrose et al.) that be the case, and the implication of the present assignment be correct, then we should have to date the “birth of solidarism” in the Social‐Catholic vein identically. Undaunted by Gide's virtual declaration that “they were all solidarists then”, this is what we set out to show, viz. that our Solidarism did have its birth therewith.

WE hope that all London librarians will give full consideration to the project of the London Branch of the Library Association to provide a union catalogue of the non‐fiction Stocks of Metropolitan libraries. They are to be asked if they will co‐operate in the scheme by providing cards of their Stock of uniform size, or by making some contribution (a more difficult matter this) to the cost of the catlogue. Such a catalogue kept at the Central Library for Students, combined with the telephone and general goodwill, would bring about a co‐ordination of libraties on a voluntary basis with results in good as yet scarcely realized. The idea is not novel; it was rejected a score of years ago as visionary or impractable. It may have been visionary then; it is not so now. Modern librarians simply must get together if they wish to avoid being made to do so.