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The article considers marketing as a socially located practice, and argues that any form of trade or exchange may be seen to both reflect and reinforce the social structures, customs and outlook of an entire culture and not simply a part of it. These developments are grounded in aspects of anthropology which, in turn, suggest that not only is trade a socially significant activity but that the objects which are traded in are themselves remarkable as reflections of the nature and influence of those who caused them to be manufactured. The article may be seen accordingly as an attempt to develop insights into the societal and cultural processes associated with contemporary variations in the “cultural design of persons and goods” (Sahlins, 1976). This understanding may then be used as a basis for the further investigation of marketing and its part in the “creation and movement of goods”.

Discusses the analogy of two bow ties, part of a deceased relative′s effects, showing that although one was worn out and the other unopened they were both second‐hand. Compares this with the element of choice in people and their life symbols of occupational and domestic choices through time.

Despite tempting parallels between contemporary theories of biological evolution and the commonplace adaptation of products in varying cultures and circumstances, any apparent support for notions of market‐based Social Darwinism is seen as misplaced. Closely observed examples from Japanese commerce show that exchanges of goods, ideas and people involve processes of “bricolage” whereby consumers’ individual and collective skills in trading words and things enable the retention and repair of their various social standings as well as their broader ethical and cultural assumptions. These multiplying interpretations are the bases of our everyday lives and the route by which inequalities in popular access to power, language and goods reflect and reinforce other imbalances evident in the workings of both market economies and consumer cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore introspection in marketing research, its controversial origins, its positioning as an art form, the possibilities and the pitfalls of research based on this method, and how to successfully enter into its creative spirit.

Although its overall approach is broadly conceptual, in a similar fashion to the dramatic device of a‐play‐within‐a‐play, the paper makes a habit of using introspection to reflect on introspection.

While it is clear that well‐written introspections can deliver rich stream‐of‐consciousness accounts of marketing‐relevant goodness from beginning to end, they provide more than just frivolous entertainment. The innermost imperative of introspection equates well with consumption, creativity and aestheticisation, the corner‐stones of arts marketing.

The inherent mucky‐mindedness of introspection as a formal method lays its success or failure on the shoulders of the paper's author.

Whatever their interpretive methodology of choice, arts marketers, indeed all marketers, should give serious thought to integrating introspection into their research approach.

While many of the ideas in the paper are pilfered from other sources (see long list of references), the author is proud to assert that precisely these words have never been written in precisely this order.

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.

No attempt to survey the scene would be within miles of success which did not contemplate the almost revolutionary effect of the coming of the county library service. A few of its pioneers foresaw the possibilities of the service which took practical shape, after much private but necessarily limited experiment, with the publication of the Adams Report. With it has come a large amount of journalistic writing and some important books. The earliest book was Duncan Gray's County Library Systems, 1922, which was followed almost immediately by Robert D. Macleod's County Rural Libraries, 1923. They are pioneer books on the technique of the new job, and Macleod goes well into its social and educational problems and results as he, the first librarian to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, saw them in the birth and infancy of the scheme. Both are distinctive men in quite different ways: Macleod is clearly a Scot and, if Burns is to be trusted, the other is or ought to have been!

I HAVE sometimes been asked whether I am conscious, as the present editor of THE LIBRARY WORLD, of the spirit and influence of its founder, James Duff Brown, and of his editorial successors, who included J. D. Stewart and W. C. Berwick Sayers. The answer is that of course I am—how could it be otherwise?

HIS holidays over, before the individual and strenuous winter work of his library begins, the wise librarian concentrates for a few weeks on the Annual Meeting of the Library Association. This year the event is of unusual character and of great interest. Fifty years of public service on the part of devoted workers are to be commemorated, and there could be no more fitting place for the commemoration than Edinburgh. It is a special meeting, too, in that for the first time for many years the Library Association gathering will take a really international complexion. If some too exacting critics are forward to say that we have invited a very large number of foreign guests to come to hear themselves talk, we may reply that we want to hear them. There is a higher significance in the occasion than may appear on the surface—for an effort is to be made in the direction of international co‐operation. In spite of the excellent work of the various international schools, we are still insular. Now that the seas are open and a trip to America costs little more than one to (say) Italy, we hope that the way grows clearer to an almost universal co‐working amongst libraries. It is overdue. May our overseas guests find a real atmosphere of welcome, hospitality and friendship amongst us this memorable September!

AT the very outset of this paper it is necessary to make clear that it is not an attempt to compile an exhaustive bibliography of literature relating to special librarianship. Neither space nor time permit this. In fact, the references given can only claim to be a sample of the wealth of material on the subject and this paper is submitted in the hope that it will stimulate others to more scholarly efforts. Reference numbers throughout this paper refer to items in the ‘Select list of references to the literature of special librarianship’, section 2 onwards.

IN this number, as is our custom at this time of the year, we turn our attention to the coming Annual Meeting of the Library Association. The choice of Leeds as a venue for the Conference, coming as it does after Glasgow and Birmingham, is a proof to those who need it of the earnestness which actuates the Council, and the members, of the Library Association. We note that our colleagues the accountants, surveyors and others, have a weakness for Torquay, Southport and Scarborough for their serious annual deliberations; and such a choice has one advantage: it encourages members of committees to join their officers at the meetings. There are compensations, however, as any wise man will recognise. The library movement succeeds, in so far as it is able to convince the great centres of population of its value. Meeting in them has, therefore, a primary political value, if we may use that term in this connection ; and it has a secondary professional one in that in such great towns a really complete and active application of library work can be seen.