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This is the first in a series of reports on the American library world which Ruth Kerns will write for us three or four times a year.

“I'm afraid I don't often have the opportunity, myself, of showing people around” explained the director of Multi‐Media Amenity Resources, “but most of my staff are taking industrial action today … oh, some minor dispute about my plan to convert branch libraries into games 'n disco bars.” In fact he hadn't been to the building for three months due to the pressure of committee, sub‐committee, advisory group, interdepartmental, forward planning, twinning, budget trimming, directorate, joint steering committee, management, community profile, section, heads of departments and ‘don't minute that’ decision making meetings. In addition, were day, weekend, short course, refresher, local, regional, national, schools, courses, seminars and conferences which he felt obliged to attend in order to supplement his collection of handy‐packed hotel beverages, and, incidentally, to keep up with all that was new and wonderful in the field of librarianship.

I HAVE SEEN no comments in our professional press on the notice given by the United States of intention to withdraw from Unesco at the end of 1984. Yet this decision concerns all of us who look beyond our own coastline, and take some interest in libraries throughout the world, because there can be no doubt that Unesco has been a major factor in their development. This is certain to suffer if the us contribution to the budget, some 25%, ceases. The decision has not yet come into effect, and there is still time to persuade the us not to implement it.

Not until the prsesent writer retired from active librarianship, and became dependent upon solleagues' home reading collections, did he have revealed the inadequacy of subject stocks in public libraries, including his own. Admirable books he had never heard of (but should have done) were found, it is true, but others, known to be invaluable to interested readers, were not. In particular, it became obvious that in many, possibly most, public libraries the selection available on the shelves at any one time, on any subject, is usually inadequate and unrepresentative, consisting of the books no one has chosen to borrow, while catalogue checks have indicated surprising, sometimes distressing, gaps. These latter are the more alarming phenomenon: if funds are insufficient for suplication of standard works, politicians may be blameworthy, but if they are not bought at all, it suggests that librarians do not know which are the best books.

British public librarians have long been ambivalent about fiction stock, accepting its contribution to loans statistics, but reticent, even shamefaced, about its content. Once there were frequent articles in the professional press on “the fiction question” as it was called: today there are fewer such, while the volume of research, and the number of conference papers on fiction is disproportionately small compared to the staff time, money and shelf space allotted to it. Whether librarians have made a conscious decision, or the climate of the times has changed, there is now less professional agonizing over novels' role in the book stock. Strangely, however, the result seems to be much the same: observation in a number of libraries suggests that there is still a residual reluctance to accept fiction as a legitimate, important part of the service, needing and deserving as much professional thought and care, and as adequate a level of provision, as the remainder. For example, do stock editors spend as much time, proportionately, to checking the quality of their fiction as they do to subject books.

A new word has been coined in America — “grambo‐ed”. It combines the current movie character, Rambo, with the Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings budget law which has severely curtailed, among other things, the hours of opening at the Library of Congress.

I WAS standing in a queue at the till in a department store in London, recently, when a woman in front of me, apparently unprovoked, showered racial abuse over the heads of a crowd of lunchtime shoppers. She started with the 20th‐century cliché, ‘They should all be sent back where they came from!’, she continued by accusing the despised minority of all manner of depravity and degeneracy, and climaxed with a comparison between Black Britons and jungle beasts—to the latter's advantage.

A country no stronger than its information As a result of the new Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings law which mandates a balanced federal budget by 1991 (a cut of $9.9m), and an $8.4 in budget reduction by Congress, the Library of Congress is suffering a total cutback of 7.6% from last year. This means a loss of $1 in every $13. The total number of hours open will be reduced by 30% per week; evening and weekend hours by 59%. The Library will be unable to purchase some 80 000 new books.

Question: What do Scotland Yard's Black Museum, Raymond Brigg's Snowman, Welsh harpists, the East Lancashire Railway, and the Sensible Footwear Theatre Company have in common?

Although their “best‐by” date (14 December 1990) has passed I can't really avoid some mention of The Library Charges (England and Wales) Regulations 1990. As is usual with government documents of this ilk, it follows a long‐standing tradition of unreadability. (Is this a ploy to discourage comment, one sometimes wonders?) Persevere with it, though, and a number of worrying proposals and implications reveal themselves. These include: