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Discusses change and its impacts on libraries and what libraries must do to remain relevant. Poses seven questions. How wired is your library? How fast is your library? Is your library harvesting its knowledge? Does your library dare to be open? How good is your library at making friends? Does your library’s management get it? How much does your library weigh?

The end goals of international resource sharing can be summed up in two phrases – “Find it” and “Get it”. This is what end‐users really care about. The information object, the real thing, is what they want and how and where are less important than when. It sounds so simple, but this is far from the reality. This paper reviews four of the key challenges surrounding global library resource sharing: the Internet and end‐user behaviour; languages and character sets; lack of a critical mass of online metadata for the world’s libraries; and lack of a tradition of library co‐operation in many countries. It also describes the initiatives that OCLC has underway to tackle the challenges head‐on.

Describes the background, design and working of a set of tools to catalogue and ingest (import) objects into a digital archive. The toolset had their origin in a collaboration between OCLC and RLG to define the characteristics of a trusted digital repository. The working of the tools is outlined. Their usage by the Connecticut State Library is discussed.

Companies that supply libraries with automation technology are part of the computer‐industry marketplace. However, vendors that serve the library component of this marketplace face problems not typical of the industry as a whole. Significant and unique problems include the protracted selection processes employed by libraries, the very slow and drawn‐out payment cycles, the dependence of the libraries on vendors, and the adversarial relationships that frequently exist between the libraries and vendors. These, and related issues, are discussed by representatives of eight prominent automation firms: Joseph R. Matthews (INLEX), James J. Michael (Data Research Associates), Harry Porteous (Geac), Gene Robinson (CLSI), Stephen R. Salmon (Carlyle), Stephen Silberstein (Innovative Interfaces), Phyllis Bova Spies (OCLC Local Systems), and Harriet Valázques (Utlas).

OCLC has agreed to acquire from Data Phase the Alis I and II software, and will provide future Hardwareand software maintenance for libraries using the systems. OCLC Local Systems Vice President Phyllis Bova Spies said OCLC will provide maintenance for current Data Phase users covered by maintenance agreements, but does not plan to further market the Alis I or II software. The Alis I and II software will be renamed ‘LS/2’.

Reading the political and the familial in The Americans illuminates central features of the New Right. In particular, The Americans provides an opportunity to reconsider the significance of the ‘pro-family’ label to New Right organising, the importance of mothering to the ‘pro-family’ narrative offered by the New Right, and the relationship between this account of mothering and democratic citizenship more broadly. This paper argues: first, the ‘pro-family’ label served to weaponise American families against equality and egalitarian public institutions; second, that this weaponisation of the family was accomplished through a rhetorical and real elevation of the moralised work of mothers in the home; and third, this account of mothering is incompatible with democratic citizenship not only because it reproduces inequality but also because it presents families, particularly mothers, as surrounded by enemies. Surrounded by enemies, their children appear endangered or dangerous should they become products of enemy forces. The pro-family rhetoric of the New Right – with its emphasis on the labour of women, particularly mothers – concealed an insurgent factional bid for power just as the Jennings family concealed an insurgent operation inside the United States. The displacement of law in The Americans mirrors the displacement of law in American conservative politics in the 1980s and law’s replacement by the ideal of sanctified families that the guard republic. The Americans both recognises this reversal in American conservative politics and parodies the reversal of the idea that law protects the family.

WE publish this issue on the eve of the Brighton Conference and our hope is that this number of The Library World will assist the objects of that meeting. Everything connected with the Conference appears to have been well thought out. It is an excellent thing that an attempt has been made to get readers of papers to write them early in order that they might be printed beforehand. Their authors will speak to the subject of these papers and not read them. Only a highly‐trained speaker can “get over” a written paper—witness some of the fiascos we hear from the microphone, for which all papers that are broadcast have to be written. But an indifferent reader, when he is really master of his subject, can make likeable and intelligible remarks extemporarily about it. As we write somewhat before the Conference papers are out we do not know if the plan to preprint the papers has succeeded. We are sure that it ought to have done so. It is the only way in which adequate time for discussion can be secured.

IT is seldom that I can bring myself to write anything for publication, and as I had a longish article on “The education of librarians in Great Britain” printed as recently as 1964 in the Lucknow Librarian (which is edited by my friend Mr. R. P. Hingorani) I had not contemplated any further effort for some time to come. But as THE LIBRARY WORLD evidently wishes to cover all the British schools of librarianship it would be a pity for Brighton to be left out, even though, coming as it does towards the end of a gruelling series, I can see little prospect of this contribution being read. Perhaps, therefore, I need not apologise for the fact that, as my own life and fortunes have been (and still are) inextricably bound up with those of the Brighton school, any account which I write of the school is bound to be a very personal one.