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Attempts to examine in detail the subject of book aid and its role in overcoming the problems associated with scarcity of information materials in developing countries. Highlights the pros and cons of book donation. Concludes that book donation can be beneficial in this part of the world only if national clearing houses are set up to co‐ordinate the in‐and‐out flow of these information materials.

Considers the factors hindering the transfer of information technology and subsequent automation of information management systems in developing countries. The same inhibiting factors which face conventional technology transfer, are identified for information technology transfer. Highlights the failure of policy makers in the Third World to grasp the importance of information and to plan for its collection and management: criticizes the theory of appropriate technology as seeming to aid instead of potential aiding agencies. Stresses the need for positive policies towards information technology in both aiding agencies and recipient governments and identifies the most common obstacles hindering introduction and management of information technology in developing countries.

This study examines the collection building of Western language materials in a Third World national library. Given the multitude of demands and needs of a developing country, national libraries are confronted with basic problems, including convincing the government that the library is an important national institution, contributing to the nation's development and worthy of financial support. In addition to resource constraints, there is also the question of spending wisely for one's domestic collection as well as foreign publications, the latter being crucial if the Third World country is embarked upon a determined program of modernization. With limited resources on the one hand and the need to procure information from the developed world on the other, libraries in Third World countries could best meet their goals through careful planning. When collecting Western language materials, constructive planning could be achieved through a collection development policy in which Western collections are systematically and rationally built to assure collection growth and maximum utility.

A RECENT book on the educational system in Great Britain devotes part of a short paragraph to the value of children's libraries and of the public and County library services. Strangely there is not a word about libraries in schools. It is now realised that there is no need or ground for rivalry between the various institutions which provide libraries. The world community is infinitely complex and there is need for many more libraries of all sorts to meet the widely differing requirements of people at different stages of development and seeking various objectives.

The authors give an overview of remote document supply in the world today and some of the key factors influencing its development. They illustrate this by referring to the Ghana project – a collaborative project between Danish and Ghanaian libraries to facilitate document supply, funded by IFLA. Finally, they make some predictions for the future.

This paper examines the particular problems faced by developing countries in providing information services. The use of CD‐ROM is considered for online searching, provision of databases relevant to the Third World, as a source of bibliographic records, and to establish public access catalogues. Future developments of the technology are examined. Particular reference is made to Papua New Guinea.

Librarians and co‐ordinators of library and information services in developed countries may not always appreciate the advantages that assured electric power and speedy communication provide in support of such activities as interlibrary loan and document supply (ILDS). Such infrastructures are less developed in many Third World countries, including Nigeria. That quite aside, the state of the collections in many Third World libraries are of dubious integrity. As finances available to many of these libraries for collection development are increasingly slender, any honest attempt to audit the collections would reveal that staleness, discontinuities and resultant document poverty are rife. Intends to be viewed as part of an ongoing effort towards sensitizing the “global village” to the awful deprivation of current and relevant publications that are endured in Nigeria and indeed in many other African states. Ways and means must be sought to heighten the profile of this vital aspect of information provision and service in Africa.

The aim of this paper is to present a model for the public library created by the authors.

The paper is divided into three parts. The first part emphasizes considerations regarding today's focus on both the virtual and the physical library. The second part describes the four‐space model, including examples of libraries as illustrations of the different spaces and examples of how the model is being used in the Nordic library‐world. The third part pinpoints some critical questions in relation to the model.

The paper shows how the four‐space model has been used in different ways in the Nordic countries since it was presented for the first time in a Danish report on public libraries in 2010.

The four‐space model can be a useful tool in relation to developing, building, designing, arranging and rearranging public libraries. Furthermore the model can be a tool for management and communication in connection with library plans and policy and not least a point of departure for the discussion of the public library's overall role in society.

This is the first time that the space model is presented to the library world outside the Nordic countries in a way where examples, usability and limitations are included.

RICHARD DE BURY'S prayer that war, the great enemy of the book and therefore of the library, be averted must have risen to the minds of some librarians recently. As we write these lines international relations seem to have reached a boding complexity unrivalled since 1939 and with potentialities for ill as great or even greater. By the time these words appear we hope sanity and a calmer spirit will prevail and that the Christmas we face as librarians may indeed be a happy one. However that may be, the many frustrations all development, including library development, have suffered in the past year, are not likely to be overcome soon. The 35 to 50 millions our interruption for good or ill in the Israel‐Egyptian affair has cost—a relatively small matter financially against our national annual spendings of thousands of millions—are not likely to make for library progress. Yet, paradoxically, our greater advances in modern times have been the outcome of conditions created it would seem by war. The Great World War showed the naked need of the public library service in a way that the previous seventy years of peaceful advocacy had failed to do. Even greater progress came out of the Second World War. What was lost in each of these catastrophes no one has been able to calculate.

Unless LR editorial policies have changed, I believe that it will be appropriate to make a contribution based on personal experience which, in my case, includes fourteen years spent overseas. These notes, therefore, if they fall within a subject field at all can be regarded as comparative librarianship, the comparison being mainly with Britain. What, I have asked myself, are the main areas of difference in our teaching experiences? I am writing as an expatriate in post‐independence countries who has been responsible for setting up library schools.