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British public librarians have long been ambivalent about fiction stock, accepting its contribution to loans statistics, but reticent, even shamefaced, about its content. Once there were frequent articles in the professional press on “the fiction question” as it was called: today there are fewer such, while the volume of research, and the number of conference papers on fiction is disproportionately small compared to the staff time, money and shelf space allotted to it. Whether librarians have made a conscious decision, or the climate of the times has changed, there is now less professional agonizing over novels' role in the book stock. Strangely, however, the result seems to be much the same: observation in a number of libraries suggests that there is still a residual reluctance to accept fiction as a legitimate, important part of the service, needing and deserving as much professional thought and care, and as adequate a level of provision, as the remainder. For example, do stock editors spend as much time, proportionately, to checking the quality of their fiction as they do to subject books.