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“Do you want to keep your hand in?” strikes as a peculiarly unfortunate turn of phrase to one so recently delivered of a breech baby. Nevertheless son Dashiell is the reason this woman is presently not in Libraries, and hence was invited to contribute to the fecund pages of NLW.

It was one of the Almighty's little jokes to place the British and the French so close together and make them so entirely different in mental habits. The British hardly ever clear‐sightedly address themselves to establishing a policy — on anything. In Britain a “policy” is what you accidentally find you have after taking a number of ad hoc decisions on related matters. The French, and to a lesser extent other Continental peoples, are inclined to decide first to have a policy, then to decide what it should be in general terms and only finally to translate that general policy into detailed implementation. At European meetings it is therefore common for a proposition to be advanced in extremely general terms…often surrounded by clauses beginning “whereas”, “recalling”, “considering”, the kind of thing which characterises United Nations resolutions but is foreign to the economical language of a British Cabinet minute. At this point the eyes of the British representatives glaze over.

More library and information workers are likely to develop their careers ‘beyond the fringe’ of conventional librarianship. The post of Health Education/Information Officer (HE/IO) within Croydon Health Education Department demonstrates the potential to do so. The HE/IO acts as an information broker. Four main areas of activity are identified: (1) developing the library and information service; (2) meeting the information needs of colleagues; (3) promoting a healthy life‐style; (4) promoting the Health Education Department's services. The library has been reorganised. It is becoming a focus for other organisations seeking advice on handling information. The relevance of online searching is being tested. The creation of the post has enabled colleagues to concentrate on assessment, not retrieval, and has expanded the information dimension of the Department's work. The broker, like other Health Education Officers, undertakes research, liaison, planning, organisation, publicity and teaching. Library displays, reference packs of leaflets and information packs are used to promote health through libraries. Successful information brokerage requires wholehearted commitment to full participation in the work of a team, willingness to adapt and acquire new skills, and flexibility. Librarians and information workers could assume several different roles within Health Education Units.

Questions why no research has been done into libraries and librarians, either school or public, from the child′s viewpoint. Notes results of a project where children were asked to draw their impressions of a library and discusses the results. Concludes by asking what is the future of the “real books” approach by teachers and educationalists if libraries are to be perceived as so much “spare capacity” within the school building.

1989 was designated Museums Year to commemorate the centenary of the Museums Association, and unlike many of these PR exercises this one resulted in museums (especially national museums based in London) receiving an unusual amount of coverage in the qualities. Whether stories of protests and problems would have the desired positive effect on actual attendances has not yet been calculated. The unusually sunny weather cannot have helped much either. But the Museums Association itself produced a series of 11 regional guides which if read on the beach or in the pool would have enabled the readers almost to think that they had actually visited the collections described in considerable detail. Too many to note here but a list of all the titles is available from the MA or the Museums and Galleries Commission. Simon Olding's Exploring Museums: London (ISBN 0 11 2904653) and Arnold Wilson's Exploring Museums: The South West (ISBN 0 11 2904696) tackle their areas entertainingly, but their step‐by‐step guides to some of their subjects may soon be outdated as many existing museums are currently undergoing major rearrangements or refurbishments.

Even though many libraries now have sales counters where postcards (usually reproductions of old views) and some local histories (usually published by the library itself — like Northamptonshire Libraries' new, profusely illustrated and documented Waterways of Northamptonshire) are on sale, few if any have proper shops dispensing a full range of printed material on local topics (do send details if they exist).

I went to the Booksellers' Conference Exhibition (persona ELM Publications, Educational Books and Resources) hoping to alert booksellers to our new Factpacks series [Jackdaw look‐alikes, but with interesting differences].

“‘Personable’ is management‐ese for ‘crumpet’”. Thus observed an old friend late last Sunday; much too late indeed for the subsequent dialogue about equal opportunities, in which we drew heavily upon anecdotal evidence, experiential learning and totally unsubstantiated surmise. What better cocktail for an evening's imbibing, and where better than the pages of NLW to air one of the hidden agendas of professional life?

History teaching in a multi‐cultural society was one of the most frequently discussed topics in educational circles in 1990. Anybody who learned history in the pre‐1960 period would, however, have been surprised to learn that it was thought that “multi‐cultural society” was a new‐thing in the UK. To them the history of these islands seemed to be one wave of invaders after another with a sort of English only established as a universal language some 400 years ago. This strand in our history was matched by another in which brave Britons went off in search of fame and fortune, or to head off a foreign threat, overseas.