ABSTRACT
The reader who has got this far may wonder what has happened to the old-fashioned virtue of personal responsibility. Professors who assign research projects that require hundreds of students to use a single source in a library inevitably invite trouble in our competitive and permissive society, unless they make a co-ordinated effort to provide multiple copies of the source and to subsidize convenient photostat machine operating costs. In practice, in the UK, the company is usually prosecuted and prosecution of individuals is rare. It seems to occur only when there has been gross negligence, deliberate damage to safety equipment or failure to carry out duties which were clearly laid down as part of the job. For example, in 1996 an asbestos contractor who took no precautions to prevent the spread of asbestos was jailed for three months. If accidents are not due to managerial wickedness, they can be prevented by better management.
