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Describes how business schools are currently facing a recruitment crisis. Increased competition and smaller numbers of students have placed many business programmes in jeopardy. Clearly business schools need to get closer to industry and structure their programmes to match the needs of employers if they are to be able to survive into the long term. Reports the findings of research carried out to ascertain the needs of employers in Exeter. A postal survey was undertaken of 400 employers employing over 50 employees on a given site to ascertain in detail the scope and nature of the management training they were currently supporting. Data were also gathered in respect of the attitudes of employers to business schools and the criteria they apply to assist in their selection. Shows that Devonian employers are spending well under half the national average on training and a greater percentage of that training is now undertaken in‐house. Management education continues to be a priority for most businesses although there are mixed perceptions in respect of the most appropriate mode of delivery. Finds that a greater participation with local enterprise is called for, together with the possible adoption of a consortia‐based management programme which would incorporate a greater degree of flexibility to allow employers to “pick and mix” the training they require.

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.

AT this time of the year librarians take their holidays. They will need the break this year as much as in any year since the end of the war. There are many problems to be faced in the autumn and winter, among them the continuous rising prices of everything, and the diversion of public funds to rearmament, which must have some repercussions upon the library service. Whether it is yet a fact that the pound is worth little more than five shillings in real money, we are not prepared to say, but it is certain that every cost has increased, and is continuing to increase. Especially is this so in connection with book production and bookselling; even, as our correspondent on another page suggests, in some cases the royalties of authors are in jeopardy. How far this will go it is impossible to say. At the same time the rates everywhere promise to increase still further, and in spite of the advances, it is unlikely that libraries will be exempt from the stringencies of the time. Such predictions have, however, been frequently contradicted by our past experience. Some of the real advances libraries have made have seemed to be the direct result of bad times. This is hardly a holiday meditation, but we think our readers will need all the physical and mental refreshment they can get before they face the possibilities that may follow.