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With digital technology libraries can archive considerable resources of detailed information about their users. This data is generally regarded as confidential between the library and the individual, but it has potential interest for commercial organisations, law enforcement and security agencies, and libraries themselves, to assist in marketing their services. The Privacy in the Digital Library Environment project at Loughborough University, 2000‐2002, investigated the issues this raises. Findings suggested that users had low levels of anxiety about privacy when using libraries, but this was because they expected that libraries would not pass on personal data to other bodies. Librarians, whilst respecting privacy as a professional value in principle, did not give it a high rating against other values. Additionally, a significant minority of libraries was not well prepared for data protection. To assist the professional community, guidelines for privacy policy were drawn up on the basis of suggestions made by survey respondents.

User privacy has taken on a fresh importance as digital resources and systems become increasingly important in libraries. Public and professional concern has been aroused by numerous instances of the privacy‐threatening effects of current technical and legal developments. Not only do loan and other transactions leave traces in library management systems, but Internet use at public terminals in libraries is also vulnerable to intrusion. Whilst the UK data protection legislation offers protection to personal data, new legislation such as the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act suggest a different tendency. The Legal and Policy Research Group at Loughborough University’s Department of Information Science is working on a substantial investigation, funded by Re:source, of the issue of user privacy in the digital library environment. Guidelines on privacy matters for information professionals are being developed on the basis of the investigation.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

So far as the London activities of librarianship are concerned, the Winter opened propitiously when Mr. J. D. Stewart and Mr. J. Wilks addressed a goodly audience at Chaucer House, Mr. Stewart on American, and Mr. Wilks on German libraries. There was a live air about the meeting which augured well for the session. The chief librarians of London were well represented, and we hope that they will continue the good work. It was the last meeting over which Mr. George R. Bolton presided as Chairman of the London and Home Counties Branch, and he is succeeded by Mr. Wilks. Mr. Bolton has carried his office with thorough and forceful competence, and London library workers have every reason to be grateful. The election to chairmanship of the librarian of University College, London, gives the Branch for the first time a non‐municipal librarian to preside. The change has not been premature, and, apart from that question, Mr. Wilks is cultured, modest and eloquent and will do honour to his position.

WITH the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).

IT is very appropriate that this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD should be devoted to the subject of cataloguing. This has become current in a special degree owing to the activity of the A.L.A. and the L.A. committees on both sides of the Atlantic, who are engaged in reviewing the Anglo‐American Code of Cataloguing Rules. Cataloguing is a subject that figures more in the minds of candidates for examinations than it does in the average conversations of librarians, but there is no more important subject in the librarian's life and no more significant activity. Our readers may not accept the implications of the somewhat vigorous “Letters on Our Affairs” which appear in this number, but it could be urged that there are many things to consider in cataloguing which have immediate importance. The matter was a simple one in former days. Forty years ago every library in this country of any size found it possible to issue a printed catalogue of some sort or other. The objections to these printed catalogues are commonplace to‐day; they were expensive, their cost was not recovered by sales, and they were incomplete from the beginning. The point is that libraries somehow managed to publish them, and those libraries were, as our correspondent suggests, of as good service to literature in its best sense as are present libraries.

With the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).