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The Library Association gives advance notice of a conference to be held at Regent's College, Inner Circle, Regent's Park, London NW1 4NS on 9 March, 1989 on “Training: Sources and Resources”. The cost will be £50 for LA members (£60 to non‐members) including lunch and refreshments. A full programme and booking forms can be obtained from the Continuing Education Department, The Library Association, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE. At the time of writing the speakers are not yet known.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

THE beginning of a new volume is always a matter of concern both to its Editor and to its Readers. It is usual to be able to forecast some programme of work or at least policy, for the year then opening. At the moment what is usual is not here; we have the cessation of actual battle in Europe, it is true; but we are as involved in Asia as we have ever been and, in spite of the optimists, the end is not in view. It would be well, too, for us always to realize that while there is no battle here, there is conflict with disease, want, misery and homelessness on a scale never approached before. It is certain only that men of goodwill, amongst whom librarians hope they are numbered, are awake to the situation and anxious to help. Thus, in our pages we shall endeavour to keep open minds and ideas adapted to our changing world before our readers.

The following is an annotated bibliography of materials published in 1977 on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources. A few entries have a 1976 publication date and are included because information about them was not available in time for the 1976 review. Also some entries are not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the information.

IN my hobbledehoy stage I devoured many books of a kind with which, I have since been often enough informed, a normal British youth should have nothing to do. But I was not a normal British youth, and didn't want to be. I was a secretly rebellious young Scot, nursing my dreams in a Glasgow tenement. My own life was comfortable and happy, but much of what I saw in Glasgow to me was misery and would not let me rest. I resented the smug narrowness and callous make‐believe of churchy folk, our imprisonment from the life and tradition of the Scots countryside, and the stuffily complacent British insularity which Scotland, once so cosmopolitan in her interests, had adopted from Public‐School England. I did not “glory in the name of Briton.” I was a Scot and a European.