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IN an address delivered recently before the members of the Library Assistants' Association, Mr. R. T. L. Parr, a Local Government Auditor, revived the suggestion that Public Libraries should be merged in the Education Authority. At first sight the suggestion seems reasonable. Public Libraries are a part and an important part, of the educational machinery of the country; a fact that the public are slow to acknowledge, if one can judge from the meagreness of the funds placed at the disposal of library authorities. Past efforts to increase generally the limited library rate of one penny in the pound have failed signally, while the unlimited general education rate has been rising steadily, without any great protests being made by rate‐payers. Why not, then, adopt Mr. Parr's suggestion, and drop all efforts to promote the new Libraries Bill, and instead favour an Education Bill, in which the necessary reforms for public libraries could be inserted? If this could be done without public libraries being placed under the control of the Board of Education, well and good, but, if not, it is advisable to pause and consider. For many years librarians have been endeavouring to organize their profession, and there is a great danger in the individuality of librarianship being swallowed up in general education. The work of the librarian is quite distinct from that of the teacher, and unless the librarian preserves his individuality he is lost. If public libraries are ever placed under the control of the Government, librarians would be well advised to see that they are specially administered on a professional basis, and not run by educationalists to whom the technique of librarianship is a thing unknown. An example of an attempt to combine librarianship with education is dealt with in the succeeding note. Apart from the idea of placing public libraries under the control of the Board of Education, a state of affairs that we do not recommend, librarians would do well to adopt Mr. Parr's hints, and talk more of the educational value of libraries, for it is in this direction that most influence can be brought to bear upon public thought.

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.

Under this heading are published regularly abstracts of all Reports and Memoranda of the Aeronautical Research Council, Reports and Technical Notes of the United States National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and publications of other similar Research Bodies as issued

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with advantage be devoted again to the consideration of its value as a modern library appliance. Passing over (a) the decision of that curiously constituted committee formed in 1879 to consider and report on indicators, and (b) the support which it received in 1880 from the Library Association, it may be said that for the next fourteen or fifteen years the indicator system was the popular, almost the universal, system in vogue throughout the country. Of late years professional opinion as to its value has undergone a remarkable change. The reaction which has set in was brought about chiefly by the introduction of Open Access in 1894, with the many reforms that accompanied it, though much, doubtless, was due to the prevalence of a more exact and systematic knowledge of librarianship, and to the natural evolution of ideas. It is not, however, intended in this paper to compare the indicator with the open access system, but with others suitable to the requirements of a closed library.

“GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him,” is an aphorism which has been accepted for many years. But, like many other household words, it is not always true. Even if it were, the dog to be operated upon would probably prefer a gala day at his Tyburn Tree to being executed in an obscure back yard.

THE Woolwich Borough Council have made the retirement of Dr. Baker from the post of Borough Librarian the opportunity of adopting the reactionary policy of dividing the Woolwich library system into three independent parts. They do not propose to fill Dr. Baker's post, and have made three members of the staff librarians‐in‐charge of the Woolwich, Eltham, and Plumstead libraries. Within recent years West Ham and Lewisham have adopted a similar policy; while an opposite course has been taken by Southwark and Westminster. It is obvious that an already limited income will be even more inadequate when it is administered in three separate parts. A small temporary advantage may accrue to certain localities of the borough, but the library service of the borough as a whole is bound to suffer. There is plenty of evidence that the greatest library service can be given to a district when the libraries form one organic whole. So much for the present; now for the future. Woolwich is growing rapidly in some localities, and when the inevitable library extension is required, what is going to happen ? Each of the older districts is going to be mulcted of a part of its already far from adequate share in order to finance still another separate administration. Instead of the Borough library service under one administration becoming increasingly efficient with the growth of the district, it is going to remain a series of small and comparatively ineffective units. Then there is another aspect of the question which touches us even more closely professionally. If library systems are going to be divided in this way, men and women are not going to be found willing to go through the long and special training necessary for an administrative librarian, because the position of “librarian‐in‐charge” is no return for such training. In this way, if this policy is going to spread, a much more serious blow still will be struck at the library efficiency of the country.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

This paper explores the development of a luxury retail shoe brand in Belle Époque Vienna.

Footwear retailing and marketing history is a neglected area. Unfortunately, no business records have survived from Robert Schlesinger’s shoe stores. However, it has been possible to reconstruct the history of the development of the Paprika Schlesinger brand from its extensive advertising in the Viennese newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, with the guidance of the founder’s grandson, Prof Robert A. Shaw, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Birkbeck, University of London, England. This case study would not have been possible without the digitization of some major collections of primary sources. In 2014, the European Union’s Europeana digitization initiative launched a new portal via the Library of Europe website which provides access to selected digitized historic newspaper collections in libraries across Europe. The project partners include the Austrian National Library which has digitized full runs of several major historic Austrian newspapers, including the Neue Freie Presse. Other project partners which have digitized historic newspapers which are relevant to this paper are the Landesbibliothek Dr Friedrich Teßmann of Italy’s Südtirol region, the National Library of France and the Berlin State Library. An associate project partner library, the Slovenian National and University Library’s Digital Library of Slovenia, has also digitized relevant historic newspapers. Furthermore, the City of Vienna has digitized a complete set of Vienna city directories as part of its Wienbibliothek Digital project.

This paper suggests that Robert Schlesinger created one of the first European luxury retail shoe brands.

This is the first academic study of the historical development of the advertising and marketing of a European luxury retail shoe brand.

Agricultural and fishery disasters are rather obscure emergency management research topics. However, the Food and Agriculture Sector is one of only 16 critical infrastructure sectors included in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, and the sector is a vital component of the United States economy. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of agricultural and fishery disasters, the Food and Agricultural Sector must adapt to and cope with unprecedented levels of risk. This chapter provides an overview of federal agricultural and fishery disaster policy and explores whether such policies are consistent with Jerroleman’s (2019)principles of just recovery.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.