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AFTER 17 years continuous service as a LA Council member it seemed strange to me to attend the first council meeting of 1979 as NLW'S reporter.

THERE ARE few controversies which have dragged on so long as ‘Public Lending Right’ (PLR). Originally put forward in 1951 as ‘Brophy's penny’ the controversy has raged ever since. The late Sir Alan Herbert devoted the later years of his life to it. Bills got as far as Parliament and were then talked out. The details of this unhappy story are well known, especially to the sufferers, the authors.

LIBRARY NETWORKS are a very hot topic on the US library scene these days. Nearly every library periodical one picks up seems to contain news about changes in OCLC, RLG/RLIN, and WLN and the growing competition among them. This report will review what has been happening during the past year and consider what may develop in the future.

A MAIN purpose behind adopting a policy of bookstock categorisation is to reduce the problem of bookstock supply (which equals customer choice), to understandable terms. If it is possible to determine a working ratio of shelf titles per topic/category to a given community of users a number of possibilities become available. A primary advantage is the determination of the minimum number of titles sufficient to meet a community of users' demand in each interest area. Increasing the range of titles can be seen as improving quality. A cost and quantity factor can be determined for an economic provision of bookstock and a cost factor placed on a stepped improvement in quality. By amalgamating these factors for a number of libraries a minimum economic provision can be determined for a county. The process of finding the minimum required bookstock will automatically, since the community of users is identified, identify both the timescale and the chance of finding a title by the user in which s/he is interested, has not already been read and is on the shelves, and will also identify the level of stock input and extraction that is required to maintain the quality of choice in any one library.

THE EMOTIVE term ‘over‐supply’ has been used for some years' in the library profession, particularly by those senior librarians who have experienced large numbers of applicants for each junior professional post they have advertised. The existence of an over‐supply has also been denied from time to time—not too recently, perhaps—or, at best, misgivings have been soothed by the feeling that unemployment in librarianship might not compare unfavourably with unemployment in other professions, and the general problem of graduate unemployment is a national factor quite unrelated to specific professions.

In mid‐1977 the Greater Manchester Reference & Information Sub‐Group (a working party of librarians representing the ten public library authorities in the county) set out to create an inexpensive but workable local government information service which would be available to any of the local authorities who wished to participate. Of the ten constituent districts, only Stockport had a full‐time local government information officer. One of the main features of Stockport's service was a weekly current awareness bulletin, using input from about a hundred journals. Oldham and Tameside were assisting Stockport by scanning extra journals and providing relevant abstracts and photocopies; in return they were receiving copies of the Stockport bulletin. Tameside staff were using this bulletin to help produce their own irregular information bulletin on a reduced scale and, like Stockport, were supplementing it with a photocopy supply service. Salford had produced independently for two years a fortnightly current awareness bulletin. Provision in the other districts was minimal.

This article examines and comments on the role of clinical directors in the NHS (UK), with specific reference to the relevance of a strategic marketing emphasis. It utilises qualitative methodologies to collect data from stakeholders ‐ in particular, clinical directors and other managers ‐ from two NHS trust hospitals. It examines the extent to which a marketing approach is applicable to clinical managers working in these two hospitals. It utilises a conceptual framework devised by Kottler and Andreason, to highlight whether a marketing approach is, in fact, utilised by these managers. It suggests that a strategic marketing approach (based upon relationships), remains relevant to clinical management, notwithstanding recent changes in government policy.

WITH, several days later, some residue yet of disbelief, allow me to tell you that at the end of October L actually went dancing. After an interval of 15 years since I last electrified my system in similar fashion, I may further tell you that dancing is no longer what it was.

ALTHOUGH IT was in November that council held its last meeting of the year there were no fireworks. Indeed, your representatives settled down with meek devotion to a four‐and‐a‐half hour session of solid business: here a query, there an amendment, now and then a reference‐back as the work of committees was polished to a final condition which, if not always shining, was good enough to pass muster.