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Intelligent vehicle‐highway systems (IVHS) combine computing, sensors and telecom‐munications to deliver a more effective road/vehicle system for freight and passenger vehicles. Many of these technologies involve surveillance of the location and behaviour of identified vehicles and/or people, and the collation of such data for further use. These and other aspects of IVHS technologies raise concerns among the community, and have delayed the adoption of some systems. Outlines IVHS systems, and considers strategies for their introduction. The ownership and use of data collected in the course of IVHS operations is shown to present opportunities relating to revenue‐collection and law‐enforcement, on the one hand, and public acceptability problems, on the other. There are growing links with large‐scale data transmission facilities such as the US National Information Initiative (NII) and the equivalent massive interactive data networks developing elsewhere. Major errors in the implementation of early elements of IVHS may make it extremely difficult to deploy further elements. Argues that adoption of a number of principles could safeguard the potential benefits at an acceptable social cost.

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

GLASGOW was later by about one hundred and thirty years than some of the Scotch towns in establishing a printing press. Three hundred years ago, though Glasgow contained a University with men of great literary activity, including amongst others Zachary Boyd, there does not appear to have been sufficient printing work to induce anyone to establish a printing press. St. Andrews and Aberdeen were both notable for the books they produced, before Glasgow even attempted any printing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the returns to the investors and the state in private finance of road infrastructure. It uses an empirical case of the E4 Helsinki-Lahti road, which was built in 1995-1999 in Finland as the first real PPP-project.

The analysis adopts an approach based on cash flow modelling of the project and the analyses show how the cash flows are formed and divided between the various stakeholders. The pure cash flow based approach to compare the economics of PPP vs traditional procurement of road infrastructure projects produced results that pose challenges to the logic, and pros and cons of shadow toll PPPs.

The analysis shows that potential win-win situations are hard to find in shadow toll arrangements. This is largely due to the different discount rates used by investors and state. It is argued that the state does not include all the true costs in its appraisal of projects. Private investors, in principle and as a rule, price all of the relevant risks and uncertainties of which they are cognisant.

The paper presents an analytical cash flow model that can be applied a wider range of PPP projects than simply to shadow toll roads. The paper contributes to the discussion on the viability of PPPs in different contexts.

IT is evident from the numerous press cuttings which are reaching us, that we are once more afflicted with one of those periodical visitations of antagonism to Public Libraries, which occasionally assume epidemic form as the result of a succession of library opening ceremonies, or a rush of Carnegie gifts. Let a new library building be opened, or an old one celebrate its jubilee, or let Lord Avebury regale us with his statistics of crime‐diminution and Public Libraries, and immediately we have the same old, never‐ending flood of articles, papers and speeches to prove that Public Libraries are not what their original promoters intended, and that they simply exist for the purpose of circulating American “Penny Bloods.” We have had this same chorus, with variations, at regular intervals during the past twenty years, and it is amazing to find old‐established newspapers, and gentlemen of wide reading and knowledge, treating the theme as a novelty. One of the latest gladiators to enter the arena against Public Libraries, is Mr. J. Churton Collins, who contributes a forcible and able article, on “Free Libraries, their Functions and Opportunities,” to the Nineteenth Century for June, 1903. Were we not assured by its benevolent tone that Mr. Collins seeks only the betterment of Public Libraries, we should be very much disposed to resent some of the conclusions at which he has arrived, by accepting erroneous and misleading information. As a matter of fact, we heartily endorse most of Mr. Collins' ideas, though on very different grounds, and feel delighted to find in him an able exponent of what we have striven for five years to establish, namely, that Public Libraries will never be improved till they are better financed and better staffed.

WE write on the eve of an Annual Meeting of the Library Association. We expect many interesting things from it, for although it is not the first meeting under the new constitution, it is the first in which all the sections will be actively engaged. From a membership of eight hundred in 1927 we are, in 1930, within measurable distance of a membership of three thousand; and, although we have not reached that figure by a few hundreds—and those few will be the most difficult to obtain quickly—this is a really memorable achievement. There are certain necessary results of the Association's expansion. In the former days it was possible for every member, if he desired, to attend all the meetings; today parallel meetings are necessary in order to represent all interests, and members must make a selection amongst the good things offered. Large meetings are not entirely desirable; discussion of any effective sort is impossible in them; and the speakers are usually those who always speak, and who possess more nerve than the rest of us. This does not mean that they are not worth a hearing. Nevertheless, seeing that at least 1,000 will be at Cambridge, small sectional meetings in which no one who has anything to say need be afraid of saying it, are an ideal to which we are forced by the growth of our numbers.

We learn from various sources that the Cambridge Conference arrangements are well in hand. It is many years since the Library Association gathered in body at either Oxford or Cambridge and the event should therefore be of universal interest. On one point it has a special interest, for the President will be Mr. Jast, the first municipal librarian to hold our highest office for many years past; and no one will do otherwise than rejoice at the somewhat tardy honour thus to be paid him. Cambridge itself is making first‐class history in that it is about to build a new University Library, the elevation of which—and it is a most imposing one—has been published in The Observer and probably elsewhere. Moreover, the university city with its colleges, halls, libraries and quite glamorous history from the literary point of view, offers librarians more than most people the ideal place of meeting.

THIS is the month when the public librarian again faces his annual estimates. Things are rarely exactly easy for him. This year may be no exception, as there will be in some places an effort to lop off the non‐essential works of local authorities. It is at this time that some librarians wish the service ceased to be local, because town councillors as a whole believe so much in the local character of government and do not realize that if they reduce on such things as libraries they are placing their own people at a disadvantage in relation to other towns. That is the soundest reason, and one that cannot too often be stressed, for some sort of imposed standard of service, which cannot be varied too greatly because of some temporary condition of local or national finance. We do not anticipate crippling reductions anywhere, but the signs for advance are not more propitious than in the bad old days. We shall be interested to hear of special cases this year, but hope that they will be few. We know that salaries cannot, at present, be greatly affected, but even librarians do not live for pay‐cheques alone; they want books, light, heat and many more things to revive, if not to improve, their service.