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WE hope that all London librarians will give full consideration to the project of the London Branch of the Library Association to provide a union catalogue of the non‐fiction Stocks of Metropolitan libraries. They are to be asked if they will co‐operate in the scheme by providing cards of their Stock of uniform size, or by making some contribution (a more difficult matter this) to the cost of the catlogue. Such a catalogue kept at the Central Library for Students, combined with the telephone and general goodwill, would bring about a co‐ordination of libraties on a voluntary basis with results in good as yet scarcely realized. The idea is not novel; it was rejected a score of years ago as visionary or impractable. It may have been visionary then; it is not so now. Modern librarians simply must get together if they wish to avoid being made to do so.

THE fact that the forthcoming conference of the Library Association is to be held at Eastbourne this year should provide it with an additional official interest, as it is here that the Association Hon. Solicitor and Legal Adviser holds the important office of Town Clerk. Mr. Fovargue is the authority on Library Law in all its aspects, and is the author of several books on this important subject. We are particularly happy in being able to print an article from his pen in our special Conference number. The programme of the proceedings is by now, no doubt, in the hands of our readers, and will be found to be less crowded, but no less useful for that, than in previous years. Apart from the usual business programme, which should prove full of interest, the social side has been fully catered for and delightfully arranged. Several interesting motor trips are to take place, and delegates will be afforded an opportunity of enjoying the charms of the beautiful county of Sussex as well as those of one of our most favoured of seaside resorts.

IN spite of the numerous efforts to educate the public on the function of the municipal library, much ignorance still prevails. Only a short time ago a writer in advocating the installation of gramophones as a legitimate and useful adjunct to public libraries used the phrase “tenth‐rate fiction.” He asserted that the provision of high‐class music by gramophone was to be preferred to the circulation of “tenth‐rate fiction.”

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co‐operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

The paper takes the form of a theoretical discussion focusing around seven preliminary case studies.

As yet only a cluster of community‐based enterprises have been discovered in the renewable energy sector in Wales. The authors propose to study them in detail in the next stage of the research.

This is a developmental paper and many of its suggestions require rigorous testing. The authors would suggest that detailed case studies of the seven examples of associative enterprise in the renewable energy field outlined here, and others which may emerge during the research, would greatly enhance our understanding of what drives entrepreneurs in this field. Further research might also compare these examples with others organised according to more traditional business models.

In view of the urgent need to move towards a low‐carbon economy and the expansion of the renewable energy sector this would require, understanding of the motivations of entrepreneurs in this sector is of great value.

Innovation in the renewable energy sector may be being held back by the limitations of the concept of entrepreneurship.

SATISFACTION was the general feeling in connection with the Conference at Leeds. The local arrangements had been made with care, every reasonable want of the visitors had been anticipated, and all things possible for their comfort had been done. In general the weather was fine, and what intervals of leisure could be snatched from meetings and social gatherings could be devoted usefully to a study of the great city. On other pages of this issue comment is made upon the papers. Here it is sufficient to draw one or two morals from the Conference as a whole.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been demonstrated to be an effective (although not universally successful) tool for the delivery of infrastructure and infrastructure-based services. For PPPs to achieve optimum results, the service outputs should be inclusive, i.e., they should be available to as wide a spectrum of society as possible, regardless of income level, gender or ethnic background. In developing countries, many PPPs are reliant upon user fees to create the revenue streams that enable private parties to provide such basic services as power, water, wastewater and transport. When these user fees act as barriers to service access (i.e., they are unaffordable to potential recipients of the service), what are the policy and contractual options which may make the services more universally accessible? This chapter examines three PPP projects from different sectors which have utilized creative mechanisms to enhance affordability and expand the user base: the Pamir Power project in eastern Tajikistan; the urban water PPP in Dakar, Senegal and the East Coast Toll Road in Tamil Nadu, India. Based upon these examples, the chapter will draw conclusions on how this experience can be more broadly applied and made a part of the PPP planning process in developing countries to achieve more affordable and sustainable growth.

We offer our readers our best wishes for a useful, prosperous and happy New Year. As last month we ran over the various ways which in general make the outlook of great interest: there is no more to say here on that matter than this: There was never a time in British library history more full of hopeful possibilities. Libraries of all types have taken root in this country in such manner that none of the competing agencies so‐called—wireless, the cinema, the motor car and the migratory habits of modern people—is likely to shake them seriously. With this growing certainty there grows also a sense of mutual effort, help and responsibility. Hardly a librarian today lives unto himself or even unto his town alone; he recognises, vaguely it may be but certainly, that he is or ought to be part of a national service.

WE offer our readers the best wishes for the gracious season which is immediately in front of us. As each successive year passes we have repeated this wish, and probably have never done so in circumstances more interesting, and perhaps more encouraging, than those in which we write it to‐day. There is, of course, uncertainty as to the way the Government Committee on Libraries will deal with future library policy. Whispers reach us of possible loss of independence or the possible establishment of a new form of central control. It is too soon even to speculate. At all events, we know the old stultifying days of the penny rate have gone; we know the strides that libraries have made since 1919, in spite of financial difficulties, have been greater than those made in the twenty years before; and we believe it will not be long before the library system of England as a whole may, proportionately to its size, compare its work, and the public appreciation with which that work in regarded, with American libraries.

Employee suggestion scheme (ESS) have existed for many years and many articles have been published over the past decades. They have been studied from many perspectives to illustrate their objectives, nature, content, process, significance and the benefits. Arguments have also been made with respect to success and failures of the suggestion schemes. Although the corporations widely use the suggestion schemes to elicit the creative ideas of their employees, sustaining a suggestion scheme is still a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to extract the critical success factors and critical success criteria to the suggestion scheme and to discuss the importance of these factors on sustainability of suggestion system. This is a literature review paper.

This is a literature review paper. The research used the university library to search for the relevant material. The university has an access for 25,000 journals. As the university had the subscription to main databases such as EBASCO, SCIENCE DIRECT, EMERALD, Google Scholar and WILEY, a search was performed on these databases using the key terms. The keywords used in the searches included: Suggestion System, Suggestion Scheme, Employee Participation, Employee Involvement, Innovation, Employee Creativity and Ideas Management. The Google Scholar citation tab was also searched further to identify any related articles. The citations of resulting articles were scrutinized further for further clues.

This paper identifies 23 critical success factors and 9 critical success criteria for suggestion schemes. It also discusses the interconnection between the critical success factors and the critical success criteria. Further, the frequency of each of the factors is also presented. It recognizes the lack of work on the assessment framework for sustainability of a suggestion scheme.

This paper should be of value to practitioners of suggestion schemes and to academics who are interested in knowing how this program has evolved and where it is today and what future it holds. It offers practical help to an individual starting out on research on the sustainability of suggestion schemes.

The paper attempts to put together many factors discussed in the literature and proposed a definition to define the sustainability of the suggestion system and categorized them as critical success factors and critical success criteria.