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IT OCCURRED to me the other day that I have been using public libraries since 1920, beginning my association with them on a false declaration of age. I had not reached the minimum age for membership then locally prescribed and it seemed to me absurd that I should be excluded from the shelves of G A Henty in the children's corner of the lending library on a mere technicality. I confess, too, that my early type of ethical practice developed further when it became necessary, on each library‐visit, to delay my departure until there was on exit‐counter duty an assistant who would not notice that he was charging out to me two Hentys at a time, one, legitimately, on my fiction ticket and the other (shame, oh shame!) on the non fiction only. The librarian‐in‐charge of the department was a purist and had to be outflanked. Seven years later, after I had joined his staff, he and I had many a tussle over matters which doubtless seemed important to us both. Incidentally, it seems curious now that my acceptance of a junior post in a public library should have been so firmly disapproved of by friends and relations. There seemed, to them, to be no future in it. It seems even more curious, in view of my life‐long obsession with books that I should, myself, have regarded the post as no more than the stop‐gap which would make it unnecessary for me to return to school after the summer holidays; I had had enough of school discipline. My earliest aspirations in further education, leisure‐time, were motivated much more by business and commercial than by librarianship ambitions. A hard core perhaps remains: I was not displeased when a publisher friend told me recently that I could think like a business man! Well, Angel pavement period notwithstanding, I did not turn away from business ambitions until Frank Seymour Smith had joined the staff as our new deputy librarian. Only when I had had time to watch him in action did I decide to become a librarian like him. I doubt if most new entrants to the public library service join now against a background of so much doubt and disapproval. But then public libraries have come a long way since 1927.

‘THERE is a need, which is hardly appreciated in the mainstream of the profession for the training of a new type of librarian…’ p 46.

The coming year will see many enthusiastic librarianship graduates emerging from colleges and universities up and down the country and taking their first professional posts. Successful job applicants will be seeking to make their mark with an attitude of enthusiasm, efficiency and professionalism. However, so many newly qualified librarians fail to maintain such an attitude. Why? At a recent conference, Pat Coleman warned librarianship students that they “would feel frustrated in their first professional post after completing their courses, and that they would have difficulty in trying to bring about change”. Anna Smyth also expressed some concern at the fate awaiting many of our young colleagues; “If they remain unfulfilled, unstretched and uninterested for long they may well become bored, frustrated and cynical — a well known syndrome within librarianship”.

‘WHAT A novel arrangement. Is any reason given?’

I WAS shopping in a strange town when my eyes caught the sign SECOND‐HAND BOOKS—SALE TODAY IN THE BASEMENT. An iron filing can no more resist a magnet than I can resist the probable pleasures of a second‐hand bookshop. I passed through the door and hurried below. The basement turned out to be a cellar, but it was clean except for the air, which was bookishly musty. I turned my attention to the tables where the books were displayed and knew, at a glance, that my errand would be fruitless. I was looking at a consignment of ex‐public library books.

I SUPPOSE that members of most library staffs are generously prepared to regard their chief librarians as eccentric. In these days of corporate management, group responsibility and participation we must expect, of course, to find the eccentricity more evenly spread. But be they few or be they many, eccentric librarians are not necessarily inefficient; they may be both competent and conscientious. If, however, they seem interested to excess in some small aspect of their responsibilities or if, alternatively, they have unusual habits which may modify or interfere with their performance, then they may be regarded as eccentric. I remember the public librarian who seemed to spend many of his working hours making and repairing the library furniture in a well‐equipped workshop in the basement. I remember the university librarian of whom a member of his staff once said to me ‘That man turns the loss of a char‐woman's duster into Greek tragedy!’ I remember another university librarian who took absurdly exaggerated personal interest in the quality of the packing used by other libraries when returning to him books which had been borrowed through a regional scheme. Then there was the classic case of Richard Porson at the London Institution. But his drinking problem made him inefficient as well as eccentric.

COMPARATIVE STUDIES, whatever the subject, can bring enlightenment and new thoughts on old ideas. To investigate, and to find from written evidence, different approaches to similar problems or familiar practices in a new setting, engenders a feeling of professional kinship and often the pleasurable discovery of some original application or circumstance. The advantages of the academic pursuit of comparative librarianship are sufficiently well known. They have their most comprehensive summation and exposition in J Periam Danton's recent The dimensions of comparative librarianship.

SOME twenty five years ago, in my late teens, poking about in a very dirty second hand bookshop of the sort which seem virtually to have disappeared nowadays, I came across a volume which had been very lovingly, and very clumsily rebound by hand in orange and brown morocco. It stood out from the nineteenth century sermons and the early twentieth century adventures in the Raj like some exotic tropical fruit. I took the book from the shelves and found that the front cover had on it a rather roughly executed plant design in blind. The raised bands of the spine were finished off with a small leaf design, and at the top of the spine on a dark brown and heavy label which I discovered later covered a messy attempt at tooling was the title of the book, The roadmender, in gilt. The title was also in blind on the front cover at the top and slightly askew. It was a dull day outside, and in the gloom of the shop, lit by one measly unshaded bulb, the book actually did seem to take on a luminous quality, but it was the fact that someone had clearly spent so much loving time on rebinding that made me buy it. I reasoned that if someone cared so much for what the contents had to say, either to rebind the book specially, or have to rebind it because of wear and tear, it might be worth reading. It was priced at one shilling—more than I was used to forking out in that type of shop where twopence (d) was the sort of money I anticipated paying in the days before inflated book prices. The title of the book meant nothing to me, and the name of the author—Michael Fairless—rang no literary bell in my head. But I bought it, and took it home.

ADVERSE WEATHER conditions greatly reduced the number of members attending the February Council especially those resident in parts east. Everyone who had made it seemed to take a while to warm to their task and passed the report of the Executive Co‐ordinating Committee like lambs. With mild interest they heard that the Secretary had recommended to the General Purposes Committee that the old Council Chamber should not after all, be divided into offices but instead be made into a joint members' and staff common room. ‘More modest extensions to the toilet accommodation’ (the imagination boggles!) are part of this reduced package which saves half the projected £40,000. For council meetings a platform with furniture suitable to the dignity of the association will be provided.

The passer‐by had already flipped a couple of smooth‐edged coins into the upturned flat cap when his eye was caught by the placard captioning the slightly shabby personage seated on the pavement beside it. The placard read: ‘Help a poor information scientist with three hungry kids and a football team to support.’ The passer‐by paused suspiciously and enquired, ‘What's an information scientist then? You're not one of these new religions are you?’