Letter to the editor.

Letter to the editor. I live in Brisbane and became an ALIA member last year. I havefound the ALJ ALJ Administrative Law JudgeALJ Association for Legal Justice (Northern Ireland)to be an interesting and informative journal which I enjoyreading. However, I do have a question about the book review section. This section is always most informative and there have beenoccasions when I would have liked to have purchased a book reviewed bythe ALJ. This has proved to be a time consuming and difficult task. Icannot purchase from James Bennett etc. because I am not a library or abookshop. I cannot purchase from technical or other bookshops becausethe books are never in stock. The Americanl Bookstore in Brisbane canusually import the books from overseas, but I usually have to wait 6 or8 or 10 weeks for the book to arrive. Do you know of any bookshops inCanberra, Sydney, Melbourne or elsewhere that may have these books instock? As a member of AHA, couldn't I buy the books from you? Isuppose James Bennett Library Services might supply to ALIA where theywould not supply to private individuals. One assumes that if a book isreviewed then it must be purchasable. It is really upsetting to readabout a wonderful book and then not be able to get it anywhere. Is therea solution? Many thanks Maria Petrohilos, petro@powerup. com.au We asked our book reviews editor, Dr Gary Gorman to comment. Dear John Your correspondent is quite correct, and in fact the situation isperhaps even gloomier than the one she paints. Some of the larger LIS LIS - Langage Implementation Systeme.A predecessor of Ada developed by Ichbiah in 1973. It was influenced by Pascal's data structures and Sue's control structures. A type declaration can have a low-level implementation specification. publishers no longer have Australian or New Zealand New Zealand(zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. agents -- the ALA isone of these -- so that their titles must always be purchased overseas.There is no bookshop or other stockist stock��ist?n. Chiefly BritishA commercial retailer or wholesaler that stocks merchandise.stockistNounCommerce Brit a dealer who stocks a particular productNoun to my knowledge who holdsreliable supplies of LIS titles. I have used DA Information Services See Information Systems. inthe past, because they will deal with individual purchasers, and theyare reasonably prompt. However, they rarely have items in stock itseems, even when they are listed as the supplier. Most often when purchasing I go overseas to Heffers/Blackwells andcan receive titles from them by air in about a fortnight. Others saythat amazon.com is quite good, but I have heard that they stock almostnothing and rely on placing orders once a request has been received. It would be excellent if the library profession in Australia/NewZealand had its own bookshop, but of course the market is pretty smalland profit margins low -- hence we have the present situation. If Mariawere to become one of our happy band of reviewers, she would at least beable to keep the books she reviews! Dr Gary Gorman, School of Communications & InformationManagement, Victoria University of Wellington, gary.gorman@vuw.ac.nz