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There is a large literature devoted to the stresses and strains of work and work‐related activities. This research effort shows no sign of abating. The aim of this paper is to highlight and discuss several centrally important questions and assumptions in the nature of this research which, in our view, require more careful consideration in future work.

In Part I of this paper we reported the main findings of a survey of the literature on occupational stress. We were particularly concerned to try to estimate the size of the problem of stress at work and, further, to see if different occupational groups experienced different degrees of stress. The oversimplified answers to these questions are that at any one time about eight per cent of the workforce are experiencing some distress and that greater proportions of the lower social classes experience more of it. Repetitive, machine‐minding type tasks appear to be particularly unpleasant and potentially harmful to health and well‐being. These findings were hedged about with reservations on the validity of the measures used and other doubts, and we concluded the paper with the comment that it was difficult to integrate and make sense of all these data without some better definitions of the concepts and a model for delineating the relationships of the concepts. This second part at‐tempts to deal with these two difficulties.

In the 1930s, several groups researching aspects of poverty in general and unemployment in particular reported findings concerning reading behaviour. The most ambitious of these groups, and subsequently the most influential, was investigating the thesis that “prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them”. The researchers studied the effects of the closure between July 1929 and February 1930, of a large factory dominating the employment and lives of a small Austrian town, Marienthal. With regard to library use, their thesis as regards dwindling use of opportunities at least was dramatically confirmed. The records of the Marienthal Workers' Library showed that from 1929 to 1931 the number of loans dropped by 49% even though a borrowing charge that had been levied before the plant closure had been suspended. Furthermore, even those who continued to borrow books actually borrowed fewer. In 1929 an average of 3.23 books per reader were borrowed and this had dropped to only 1.60 books by 1931. This was not apparently merely because the unemployed had read all the available books since the library obtained the contents of another library just before the closure occurred.

Two recent papers on the psychological impact of redundancy, have pointed out that there are frequently very positive reactions to the experience. Their remarks do not apply to those seeking voluntary redundancy to achieve substantial financial benefits, but to those who have redundancy forced upon them who then discovered that it gave them an exciting opportunity to start a new career and a new life. Apart from the fact that “redundancy” could do with some positive publicity, their finding raises the question as to what kinds of people respond to redundancy in this proactive fashion. This study was designed to examine the validity and utility of a personality typology which has the appearance of being very relevant to understanding people's reactions to changing circumstances.

STARING AT all of us in the preamble of the Library Association's Royal Charter is the statement that one of the objects of the association is ‘to unite all persons engaged or interested in library work for the purpose of promoting the best administration of libraries’. Now, whatever else we may have achieved over the last hundred years, we have conspicuously failed in this particular objective. How many experienced librarians with long years of library service behind them are there up and down the country, in government departments, universities and industrial firms, who seem to take a perverse sort of pride in not being members of the association, instead of being safely tucked up with the rest of us? Their number must be legion, and that in itself is an indication of our failure. And how often do they admit, a little shamefacedly, that they really see no relevance in what the Library Association is doing, in relation to their own individual circumstances? And then comes their clincher: besides, they will tell you slightly aggressively, ‘if I joined it would cost me £x’.

Anyone who has been in regular contact with the media during the last 10 years must have been impressed by the amount of information and interest in health and the stresses of modern life. Much of the attention has been centred on the role of work in creating stress and its possible contribution to major illnesses such as heart disease, stomach ulcers and hypertension. This interest has been stimulated by an ever growing amount of research into stress at work. Friedman and Rosenman in California have carried out many large scale studies of the role of behaviour/personality in causing heart disease. This lead to a semi‐popular book called A‐Type Behavior and your Heart. Three large surveys have been reported in the last few years: Caplan et al. carried out a survey of 2,300 persons from 23 different occupations for the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. They collected data on perceived stressors at work, perceived strain and perceived supports from inside and outside the organisation. Physiological measures were taken from a sub‐sample of 390 The results are very complex but the most stressed persons were in occupations which involve tasks that are simple but inescapable such as in machine‐minding. Such jobs are low in status and the strain is possibly exacerbated by lack of support from both inside and outside the organisation. Zaleznik et al. studied over 2,000 managers and supervisors from a large Canadian Corporation. Pearlin and Schooler conducted a survey of 2,600 persons for the National Institute of Mental Health. As well as exploring the nature of the stresses and strains experienced by these people the authors asked about the different kinds of strategies they used to cope with their problems. Four different problem areas were explored: marital, child‐rearing, economic and work. It was found that the people with a greater range of coping strategies felt less strained except in the area of work. The authors suggested that this was because the in dividual person can do little to remove the stresses at work since they are inherent in the system. Coping with work problems, they argue, needs to be done more at the level of the system.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

MY SELF‐RESTRAINT in refraining until thus far through the year from mention of the game of cricket is not, I'm afraid, due to a waning of interest with the onset of old age (it's my birthday next week), but to a ripe contentment with the Ashes victory in Australia during the winter, plus the realisation that cricket is hardly a suitable subject for discussion in the arctic weather conditions we have been experiencing during the first three months of 1979.

THE SIX YEARS since the reorganisation of local government in Northern Ireland have seen a massive development of services in the public library field, with progress on almost all fronts simultaneously. Five Education and Library Boards were created under legislation which gave certain advantages to the library service, not least of which was the close link with education, and including a statutory library committee and a designated post of chief librarian. Another helpful feature is the close similarity of population, which ranges from 230,000 in the Western Board to 360,000 in Belfast.