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It is one thing to discuss the clauses of a prospective Bill; but to get that Bill through Parliament is a vastly different affair. It was at the Buxton L. A. Conference, in 1896, that the matter was considered, and now, after four years' working and waiting, we have advanced just so far as to have got through the House of Lords “a Bill intituled an Act to amend the Acts relating to Public Libraries, Museums, and Gymnasiums, and to regulate the liability of managers of Libraries to proceedings for libel.” At the present moment this Bill is awaiting an opportunity of coming before the Commons. With this position it must be perfectly familiar, for it was only on account of Lord Avebury's despair at finding no opening for it in the House of Commons that the Association induced Lord Windsor to pilot it through the House of Lords. If the present Parliament lives long enough there is just a chance of the measure being entered upon the statute book; but, with forecasts of an early dissolution confronting us, and with Mr. Balfour's recent announcement of the Government appropriation of private members’ days this session, the prospect is not particularly encouraging. If these slender hopes are not realised, the Bill will be none the forwarder for passing the Upper House; whilst, if it should be so fortunate as to pass the Commons without further amendment, it would at once pass into law. Lord Balcarres has been good enough to take charge of the Bill in the House of Commons, and as it is well “backed,” and has been pruned down by the Standing Committee, and has really nothing of a contentious nature in its provisions, we may reasonably hope that if it once gets a start in the House it will reach a successful finish.

The literature on the history of the pub presents an invaluable background to any study of the industry, the very special place it fills in our society, and the wider context of its role in British tourism heritage. Most authors acknowledge that the pub is changing with the times, although a mere glance through such comment bears testatment to the way in which the pub's enduring qualities have survived by gradual evolution and adaptation. Of more topical interest, newspaper articles draw the public's attention to the latest developments and trends in the entertainment and leisure spectrum, and comment on their implications for the community and specifically the public house. For the most part, these are of a nationally introspective nature and the pub is not portrayed as a tourist attraction in its own right This article contrasts the views of three stakeholders within the retail pub industry, namely, the tourist, the landlord and the brewer. It charts their views on the evolution of the public house.

Takes a humorous view, using Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, in setting up a hypothetical case of derivative investigation by the two sleuths. Asks a few questions along the way and uses a figure to add emphasis to “the entangled equilibrium of principal and interest”. Cryptic clues abound in this with a good message for practitioners.

Stephen Hodgetts read the e-mail over and over again and still could hardly believe what he had read. He had just come back from his vacation, well rested and refreshed, and this e-mail had dampened his high enthusiasm. It took time to absorb such bad news and for Hodgetts to get over his incredulity.Yet in the end Hodgetts accepted the truth‐a deep, dark terrible truth that would not go away. Robert Davis, his business partner’s son, had confirmed in an e-mail his worst fears about their newest business partner, David Russ.Many thoughts were running through his mind simultaneously yet each screamed to be heard.“How could he and his partner Richard Davis have been so blind, so trusting?” “How could Russ not have heeded the advice of his business partner, Richard Davis, Russ’s former English professor?” And most important, “What was now going to happen to their new business?” Yet the one thought that continued to echo among them all was surprisingly a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character, Sherlock Holmes: “But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.”

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER : BEFORE Opening, as we do, a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD, especially as with it we reach the venerable age of sixty‐one, does suggest retrospective and prospective view. The magazine is the oldest amongst independent library journals, though others existed before 1899 in different forms or under other titles than those by which they are known to‐day. When at the end of last century it was felt that utterances were needed about libraries, unfettered by uncritical allegiance to associations or coteries, librarianship was a vessel riding upon an official sea of complacency so far as its main organisation was concerned. It was in the first tide, so far as public libraries were concerned, of Carnegie gifts of buildings, not yet however at the full flood. The captains were men of the beginnings of the library voyage; who were still guided themselves by the methods and modes of the men who believed in libraries, yet feared what the public might do in its use of them. Hence the indicator, meant to show, as its name implies, what books were available, but even more to secure them from theft, and to preserve men and women from the violent mental reactions they would suffer from close contact with large numbers of books. There were rebels of course. Six years earlier James Duff Brown has turned his anvil shaped building in Clerkenwell into a safeguarded open access library in which he actually allowed people, properly vetted, to enter and handle their own property. This act of faith was a great one, because within a mile or so some 5,000 books had been lost from the Bishopgate Institute Library, which has open shelves, too, not “safeguarded”. Brown's “cave of library chaos” as a well‐known Chairman, who by one visit was convinced of its good sense and practicability, called it, focused the attention of scores of librarians—so much so that Brown had to beg them to keep away for about a year, so that the method might be better judged after sufficient trial. It also focused the attention of the inventors of the indicator, who, presumably, had more than a benevolent interest in its sales. So there was war against this threat and for several years this childish contention raged at conferences, in private conversations amongst library workers, and in letters to the press aimed to convict Brown and all his satellites of encouraging dishonesty, mental confusion and other maladies public. Hence Brown, L. Stanley Jast, William Fortune and others initiated this journal to teach librarians and library committees how libraries were to be run. That, in extreme brevity, is our genesis. For sixty years it has encouraged voices, new and old, orthodox or unorthodox, who had something to say, or could give a new face to old things, to use its pages. Brown was its first honorary Editor, and with some assistance in the later stages remained so for the thirteen years he had yet to live. Nearly every librarian of distinction in his day has at some time or other contributed to these pages. So much of our past may be said and we hope will be allowed.

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.