Ludovic,

Thanks for the help.  I edited ice-9/slib.scm as you specified, and now I'm
getting behavior which might be right and might not be: error on the first
try and success on the second:

# guile
guile>  (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
ERROR: Unbound variable: system
ABORT: (unbound-variable)
guile>  (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
guile>

Unfortunately, this is apparently not good enough for GnuCash, as the
following ./configure snippet fails:

if ${GUILE} -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)" > /dev/null
2>&1
then

  { echo "$as_me:$LINENO: result: yes"
>&5
echo "${ECHO_T}yes" >&6;
}
else

  { { echo "$as_me:$LINENO:
error:


   Cannot find SLIB.  Are you sure you have it
installed?
   See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347922



"
>&5


Since the test in the configure script seems reasonable, and the
fail-first-time behavior was demonstrated on the command line, it would seem
appropriate to further pursue the solution here...  Any ideas why the same
thing both succeeds and fails?