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The wide availability of relatively cheap computing power has led many librarians and information officers to expect that the procurement of a microcomputer and database software will answer all of their needs for information management and retrieval. They then anticipate that this equipment will also serve all of the administrative needs of the information unit. This simplistic view is seen to ignore many of the hard realities of automation, and neglects the vital need for systems analysis and design. The author examines the ways in which microcomputers are currently used in libraries, and suggests some practical considerations for those about to embark on automation projects.

Many clients who seek the assistance of consultants in the field of library and information resources (LIR) begin with the assumption that automation is the desired end of the project, and do not look deeply enough at the operation of the unit in question. Often automation is not the answer, but is being used to conceal organisational defects, or a lack of strategic planning of LIR objectives. This paper will guide the reader towards the effective use of consultancy by outlining the steps which should be taken prior to employing a consultant, and the facts and figures which the client will require in the initial briefing.

Last Christmas my daughter received a book as a present. There is nothing apparently noteworthy about that, but this book is different. She is the heroine of this story; the other characters bear the names of her friends; and the action all takes place in our home and neighbourhood. All that we, the parents, had to do, was to supply the publishers with the appropriate pieces of information, and a word processor looked after the rest.

Information units have tended historically to operate as groups independent from their user populations. New technologies have generally been adopted within this operating pattern in order to carry out certain specific tasks. There has been little planned interaction between recording, storage, retrieval and dissemination functions. The electronic technologies, in terms of the potential which they offer for capturing and re‐using information; and their pervasive introduction within organisations, offer the chance to re‐evaluate information services and the products which they generate. The nature of information management is described, and a broad plan for carrying out an information audit is provided.

AS A RESULT of present economic problems in Britain and attendant cuts in spending, there is a need to achieve maximum cost‐effectiveness in all sectors of public spending including libraries. This article examines a simple method by which economies could be made in buying multiple copies of books. It is assumed that unless librarians have freedom to buy a single copy of any book they choose, they will not achieve the breadth and depth required of first‐class libraries, be they in the public sector or in academic institutions. Perhaps second copies need cause little concern, but a pilot survey of a polytechnic library revealed cases where as many as four, six or even eight copies of the same edition had been bought on one occasion before the effectiveness of a lesser purchase could have been evaluated.

LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central Reference Library at Manchester on July 17th. In a time, which is nearly the end of a great depression, that the city which probably felt the depression more than any in the Kingdom should have proceeded with the building of a vast store‐house of learning is a fact of great social significance and a happy augury for libraries as a whole. His Majesty the King has been most felicitous in providing what we may call “slogans” for libraries. It will be remembered that in connection with the opening of the National Central Library, he suggested that it was a “University which all may join and which none need ever leave” —words which should be written in imperishable letters upon that library and be printed upon its stationery for ever. As Mr. J. D. Stewart said at the annual meeting of the National Central Library, it was a slogan which every public library would like to appropriate. At Manchester, His Majesty gave us another. He said: “To our urban population open libraries are as essential to health of mind, as open spaces to health of body.” This will be at the disposal of all of us for use. It is a wonderful thing that Manchester in these times has been able to provide a building costing £450,000 embodying all that is modern and all that is attractive in the design of libraries. The architect, Mr. Vincent Harris, and the successive librarians, Mr. Jast and Mr. Nowell, are to be congratulated upon the crown of their work.

Library and Information Science Abstracts have successfully completed a pilot project, with SilverPlatter Information Limited, that has resulted in a one‐year file of Lisa for 1984 being recorded onto CD‐ROM (Compact Disk — Read Only Memory). Plans are now well under way for providing the complete Lisa database on CD‐ROM commercially by mid‐1986.