You'll know what to make of this

• British library patrons are the latest targets of direct marketing.

From The Guardian:

The plan is being run by the direct marketing company Howse Jackson, whose business development director Mark Jackson said the company was "very proud" of what he described as "a brand new channel" for direct marketing.

"In this day and age you have to work hard to come up with new ideas," he said.

"The inserts are put in the book at the first page as you're handed the book to check it out," he explained. "They're going to be inserted right next to the panel with the return date on it, which means that everyone will look at them at least once."

"We're looking at somewhere between 500,000 and 300,000 a month at the moment," he said, adding that if 300,000 slots were sold a month the participating libraries could hope to see income of around £10,000.

It's a scheme the company is looking to take nationwide over the next few years, a development which dismayed the director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Guy Daines.

He said that such a scheme should be operated with "caution" and suggested there would be "numerous practical difficulties, perhaps the most important of which is that a high percentage of people would find it off-putting".

Gag.