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The criminal justice system uses oversimplified stock narratives that place women who kill into limiting categories of ‘bad’, ‘mad’ and/or ‘victim’. These narratives deny women's agency by portraying their actions as lacking humanity, rationality and/or intentionality. Many feminist scholars argue that new narratives are needed to recognise women who kill as fully human, volitional subjects. This chapter uses the case of Maria Barberi to examine why and how defences founded on a victim-based agency fail. In 1895, Barberi killed Domenico Cataldo in a Manhattan barroom after enduring months of psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Her defence was grounded in the unwritten law – a widely held belief that people had the right to avenge their honour (when impugned by infidelity, seduction or sexual assault) with lethal violence. The case went through four stages: the initial trial, resulting in a murder conviction and death sentence; a nation-wide clemency campaign; an appeal; and a retrial, resulting in an acquittal. Throughout this process, Barberi's agency was undermined by negative stereotypes of gender and ethnicity, the political goals of women's rights activists, and Barberi's own self-interests. Ultimately, this case demonstrates that agency-based narratives are both difficult to deploy and desperately needed.

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

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

The interesting ceremony described in another part of our columns has once more recalled attention to one of the most remarkable characters in the annals of British librarianship. When Mr. Thomas Greenwood endeavoured, at the Plymouth meeting of the Library Association, to interest librarians in the man who had done so much for the craft, it must be confessed that his appeal, for various reasons, did not succeed in arousing so much enthusiasm as might have been expected. For one thing, a considerable proportion of the librarians who attended the Plymouth conference were young men who had not been able to obtain access to the works which Edwards left behind him as his most enduring monument. Again, the prominence given to Ewart as the sole parent of the municipal library movement, had completely overshadowed Edwards' share in the work, and only a few student‐librarians knew anything about the part which Edwards had played in securing effective library legislation. On the other hand, the publications of Mr. Greenwood, of the Library Association itself, and other modern and accessible literature, contain frequent allusions to Edwards and his works, from which information could be obtained, and it is only necessary to cite, in this connection the various writings of Messrs. Axon, Ogle, Garnett, Greenwood, Sutton, Brown, and others.

IF YOU WERE to ask why ‘the treatment’ for (the London Borough of) Sutton's new central library, there are two reason's. First, Sutton's Chief, Roy Smith, was on like a flash to my sloppy discourtesy in neither acknowledging his invitation to the official opening in December nor turning up for it, and gave half a day of his time last month instead to take me round; second, in Mr Smith's own words, ‘This is one of the most interesting new libraries to come out of public librarianship for a long time’, and I am disposed to agree with him.

Positive cash flow ‐ LAMSAC, which is an acronym denoting Local Authorities Management Services & Computer Committee—an odd bird, by the sound of it, is to carry out a ‘major research study into income generation in public libraries in England’ for the Arts Minister.

A question of size THE Committee set up by the Minister of Education in 1957 to “consider the structure of the public library service in England and Wales, and to advise what changes, if any, should be made n the administrative arrangements, regard being had to the relation of public libraries to other libraries,” was the first such since the Kenyon Committee which reported in 1927. One of the most controversial aspects of the Roberts Committee's deliberations was the consideration of the minimum size (in terms of population) of an independent library system.

IT would be quite impossible adequately to report a Dublin conference of any kind in purely professional terms. The warm friendliness of its people demands an equally personal reaction from its visitors and for public librarians certainly this is as it should be, because we are ourselves, above all, involved with people. So professional affairs at this conference were kept in their proper place—as only a part of the whole and merely providing a framework round which the business of renewing contacts and making friends could take place.