Nasal swabbing is the standard method in many locations for MRSA screening. Its diagnostic efficiency in practice appears to be limited, however, and the resource implications of multiple body site screening have to be balanced against a potential clinical benefit whose magnitude and nature remains unclear.

No abstract

The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) was formally constituted in 1994 with the aim of enabling European research libraries to collaborate on assembling the printed heritage of the hand press period in Europe and the wider world for the benefit of scholarship. On the tenth anniversary of its foundation, the Hand Press Book Database is now a substantial resource, and research libraries from all parts of Europe and beyond are investing in developing this important resource for early European printed material. The Consortium's original focus has extended to embrace other initiatives sought by scholars such as a multi-lingual thesaurus for place, author and imprint names in early printed material, a manuscripts and print search facility, and member services. Steps have been taken to determine the exact niche that the Consortium should seek to fill within a European ‘information landscape’, and in the wider sphere of international scholarship. A vital aspect of further development is to extend membership as widely as possible to research libraries, book historians, the antiquarian book trade, individual researchers and all those concerned with the early written heritage of Europe. An important step in this direction is widening membership to include libraries and important European historical collections in countries in the wider ‘diaspora’.

No abstract

Conspectus is a system developed inNorth America for measuring collection levels. Its application in Scotland by the eleven major Scottish research libraries is the first group Conspectus in Europe. Each library in the Working Group on Library Co-operation, which works actively to promote interlibrary cooperation, is carrying out the conspectus of its own holdings, with central coordination provided by the National Library of Scotland This article explains how Conspectus in Scotland was planned and implemented.Readers of this article will wish to know of an article in the Journal of Librarianship, April 1987, 19 (2), entitled 'Collection development in the British Library: the role of the RLG Conspectus' by Stephen Hanger. CONSPECTUS IN SCOTLANDThe Conspectus system, developed by the Association of Research Libraries' Office of Management Studies (OMS) and the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) in 1983, is a method of measuring collection levels in libraries. Using coding mechanisms, it permits the assessment by subject of a library's existing collections and current collecting policy, on a scale of comprehensiveness ranging from zero to five. A separate set of indicators is used to indicate language coverage.The discussions about the use of the Conspectus system in Scotland took place within the context of meetings of the Working Group on Library Co-operation. The working group, comprising the librarians of the eight major university libraries and the two major public reference libraries, the librarian and other representatives of the National Library of Scotland, was established as the Working Group on Co-operation in Acquisition in 1977, and renamed the Working Group on Library Cooperation in 1986. The decision to apply Conspectus was taken after quite extensive discussions within the framework of this group, over a period from the spring of 1985 to May 1986, when the decision to go ahead was taken. From the outset, we felt that it was important that the decision should be taken unanimously by members of the group, who represented the major research libraries in Scotland, since we viewed Conspectus as a tool which we hoped would enable us to plan more effectively how we ANN MATHESON is Keeper of Printed Books m the National Library of Scotland, with responsibility for modern printed materials, both UK and foreign.