bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
AUTOMATION, CO‐OPERATION AND CO‐ORDINATION
Authors: MASSIL S.W.
Published: March 2008

Networks as a tangible prospect are matched by resource sharing as a topic of current interest in librarianship. Organisational developments have emerged and attention has been paid to these over several years. In North America the debate has been serious and systematic as outlined in representative papers at the Aslib Conference of September 1977. The development and aims of the UNISIST and NATIS programmes of Unesco indicate considerable international commitment to the two “imagos” of progress. The two concepts are not independent and are particularly intertwined when automation is drawn in for synthesis. Other technologies—microforms, photocopying, near‐print processes, AV equipment, compact shelving and telex—are also playing a part in modern developments in librarianship and some have roles in network activities. The computer however, introduces a particularly dynamic inducement to large‐scale changes in the way of comprehensive and co‐ordinated information policy. Stevens points this up with a definition of a library network as “a formal organization of three or more autonomous organizations inter‐connected to achieve their common purposes through the joint use of communications and computer technology”. Of the common purposes which individual libraries and consortia alike aim to pursue access to information and materials is crucial and automation of bibliographic services should be the means of achieving it most directly.
“I HATE YOU, MR. MUDIE”
Authors: HUBBARD TOM
Published: March 2008

Literature at nurse is a handsome, compact little volume containing a wealth of material on a landmark in English literary history. The reprint of George Moore's pamphlet occupies a third of the book, the other two thirds consisting firstly of Professor Coustillas's lucid context‐setting commentary, secondly of Moore's original diatribe against the circulating libraries published in December 1884 in The Pall Mall gazette, and the consequent correspondence in that paper. In Literature at nurse, published in 1885 by Henry Vizetelly, Moore elaborated his points into a readable and entertaining argument.
DUNDEE'S NEW LIBRARY
Authors: TORBET DUNCAN
Published: March 2008

The new Central Library in Dundee is part of a large shopping development which has replaced the Wellgate, one of Dundee's oldest thoroughfares. The main entrance to the library from Victoria Road gives the building its own individuality, but there is also a shop entrance in one of three shopping malls. Therefore the library, impressive though it is, does not occupy its own site—it is part of a much larger development, and that is the main reason why it came into being during a difficult period of financial restraint.
ISLINGTON'S EXTENSION
Authors: ELLIOTT C.A.
Published: March 2008

Islington adopted the Public Libraries Acts in 1904, and in December of that year James Duff Brown, Librarian of the adjoining borough of Finsbury, was appointed first Chief Librarian (at a salary of £300 per annum) and a programme for the erection of library buildings was planned. Following an architectural competition, Islington Central Library opened its doors in October 1907.
POPULAR READING AND OUR PUBLIC LIBRARIES: THE ABJURED PRESCRIPTION
Authors: COTTLE BASIL
Published: March 2008

Dr Cottle's paper was delivered at a meeting of the Reference, Special and Information Section's Western Group at Salisbury on 20 October 1977 to mark the centenary of the Library Association
BOOK SELECTION: BY WHAT CRITERIA AND WITH WHAT OBJECTIVE?
Authors: GILL PHILIP
Published: March 2008

THERE have been many theories of book selection. I do not intend to venture into the field of selection by algebraic formulae. I have no practical experience of this method, and I believe it to be an arid approach to an exciting process. I want to look at some of the practical problems of public library book selection, to suggest some solutions and to examine some of “the old wives tales” which surround this evergreen subject.
AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PRIVATE LIBRARY: THE BOOKS OF WILLIAM AND JOHN ADAM AT BLAIR ADAM
Authors: MOWAT IAN R.M.
Published: March 2008

While the architect members of the Adam family have been subjected to considerable scrutiny over the years, architectural historians seem to have overlooked the information to be gleaned from the 1883 catalogue of the Blair Adam library, a copy of which is held in the National Library of Scotland. Of course a catalogue printed almost a hundred years after the death of the last of the architects in the family is hardly a totally reliable guide. Nevertheless, if used with care and in association with other surviving evidence, it can shed additional light on a number of aspects of Adam biography.
AV: TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO THE LIBRARY SCHOOLS?
Authors: GEDDES GEORGE
Published: March 2008

What to do about preparing librarians for handling non‐book media has been the most vexing problem to face the library schools in the past five years. Or has it? Janet Andrew's plea that “non‐book materials should be treated as what they are—genuine library materials…deserving of attention throughout any course designed to educate (or train) librarians” produced, in the same issue of Audiovisual librarian in which it appeared, a response from the educators themselves:— to be accurate, from ten of the fifteen schools to whom the pre‐print of the article was circulated, and from an eleventh in a subsequent issue. Some respondents outlined their school's policies; others questioned the validity of Ms Andrew's criticisms. If anything emerged from the “debate”, it was that that there is no consensus as to whether or not librarianship education should take special account of non‐book media, or if so, how this should be carried out.
CATALOGUING OU COURSE UNITS
Authors: COOK BRENDA
Published: March 2008

Any librarian who has been faced with the problem of cataloguing the course unit booklets supplied by the Open University as the framework of its teaching will have discovered how bibliographically intractable they are. This article seeks first to describe some of the problems thus encountered, and secondly to describe how one institution has attempted to solve them.
THE WAY WE WEREN'T: A TALE OF PORTLAND PLACE
Authors: GERARD DAVID
Published: March 2008

Annalist rather than analyst, Professor Asa Briggs moves not dogmatically but deliberately through his own Music of Time series, the chronicles of broadcasting. His immense and detailed labours began in the 1950s, the first volume of this serial universe being published in 1961. The fourth, the most substantial to date, covers the period 1945–1955. Like the others it is a model of quite literal documentary history, strong on sources which range from the indispensable basic material—Cmd. 5091, 6852, 6974, 8116, 8416 and other official key papers—down to office memos and even snatches of conversation. The impression is of discreet panelled rooms and policy documents, in‐trays and loaf‐haired secretaries, all the apparatus of a living bureaucracy staffed by impeccable products of the British leadership machine creating a tradition as they go along, leaving behind them an immutable executive procedure as they move onwards, upwards or outwards from the great institution itself. Names now scarcely more than smoke trails in the memory swirl about the pages as once they swirled about the corridors, concocting reports, generating minutes, shaping paragraphs, giving material embodiment to the Corporation.
THE ABANDONED SWITCHBOARD: LIBRARY/INFORMATION JOURNALS
Authors: GRESHAM JOAN
Published: March 2008

More than archivists, museum curators or other information‐related professions, librarians have always had before them in print the artefacts of communication systems designed by other men. They may always have tended to regard these as so many items to be stored, sorted and accounted for: but external communication models have arguably not been without influence on the library profession. With the development of professionalism among librarians, at the point when individuals no longer worked in ignorance and disregard of what others elsewhere were doing, the creation of purpose‐made systems became a necessity.
LIBRARY EDUCATION IN THE THIRD WORLD: SOME PERSONAL COMPARISONS
Authors: BENGE RONALD
Published: March 2008

Unless LR editorial policies have changed, I believe that it will be appropriate to make a contribution based on personal experience which, in my case, includes fourteen years spent overseas. These notes, therefore, if they fall within a subject field at all can be regarded as comparative librarianship, the comparison being mainly with Britain. What, I have asked myself, are the main areas of difference in our teaching experiences? I am writing as an expatriate in post‐independence countries who has been responsible for setting up library schools.
UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: STANDARDS AND EXPECTATIONS
Authors: HOLDSWORTH HAROLD
Published: March 2008

While I can recall the establishment by the British Government of the first series of “overseas” universities in dependent territories I have close knowledge only of those to which I have been attached and then only for the periods of attachment. Others I have seen, briefly; I have assumed that they have resembled each other sufficiently for one to make certain generalisations. Three factors have to a great extent determined the kind and pace of their development — the intrinsic wealth of a country; the stage of its development; and the amount of foreign aid at its disposal. Some have developed more rapidly than others; some are physically grander than others. All began with a very high complement of expatriate staff, but all aimed at becoming local institutions in every sense as soon as possible. What I have to say concerns the broad terms of development as I see them.
EXPATRIATES
Authors: OLDEN ANTHONY
Published: March 2008

Expatriates are people who live in a foreign country, but this article confines itself, in the main, to British expatriate librarians and lecturers in librarianship working in English‐speaking Black Africa. Most of the examples are taken from Nigeria, where I have worked as a librarian and as a lecturer since 1975. This is not to say that Nigeria is typical of a continent which is as diverse as Europe or any other, but simply to acknowledge, at the outset, that I am aware of the limitations of generalising on the basis of four years in one country. Few would dispute, however, that those parts of Africa and the rest of the world (including Ireland, my own home country) which experienced British rule have been left with something in common as regards approaches to librarianship as well as to other matters; or dispute that Britain showed little interest in developing libraries in its African colonies until independence was imminent.
TRAINING THE FUTURE PROFESSIONALS
Authors: MOWAT IAN
Published: March 2008

Glasgow University Library's participation in and contribution to the SCONUL student trainee scheme over the past two decades have increasingly been appreciated by library school lecturers. It is probable however that they have not been as widely known elsewhere as they deserve. The author played no part in the development of the training programme but was himself a student assistant in the library and has since rejoining the staff participated in the selection and training of the present generation of student trainees.
PROFESSIONAL VALUES IN A BUREAUCRATIC STRUCTURE
Authors: USHERWOOD R.C.
Published: March 2008

For the purposes of this paper a bureaucratic organisation is defined as an organisation that relies on rules and non professional control structures. Thus librarians working for local authorities are employed in complex organisations in which final authority, indeed the final responsibility rests with non professionals. The non professional rules, OK?
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL IN THE PROFESSIONAL CURRICULUM
Authors: BRUNT RODNEY
Published: March 2008

It is generally accepted that cataloguing and classification should be included in the core subjects in any course leading to the award of a professional library qualification. In Britain the professional examinations of the LA have included the subject at both first and final levels, and all library schools currently offering degree or diploma courses set it in its conventional place. Indeed it could be said that any school failing to offer such instruction would be unlikely to receive accreditation for registration purposes.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INFLUENCES ON LIBRARY PROVISION IN IRELAND 1850–1925
Authors: POWELL JOHN S.
Published: March 2008

The unloved Act of Union between the British and Irish Parliaments in 1800 which constituted the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had within it the seeds of its own unhappiness, if not its destruction. There was an element of schizophrenia about it, for while Ireland was integrated with Britain, specific Irish functions were retained, such as the Viceregal Court, local patronage, and the local government of the Protestant Ascendancy. Indeed the deal was done with one section of the community only; it did not solve the question whether Ireland was an annexed colony of a full part of Britain.
KNOWLEDGE: GENERAL OR USEFUL?
Authors: GRIFFIN BRIAN
Published: March 2008

In his preface to Everyman's encyclopaedia the editor traces the ancestry of such compendia “back via Knight's Encyclopaedia to the great Penny Cyclopaedia published between 1833 and 1843 at the instigation of Lord Brougham by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a body which did much in its day to further the education of ordinary men and women”. It's a good idea to brush up one's sense of this social background by re‐reading George Eliot's Middlemarch. Here, at the beginning of Chapter 38, is a typical group of Top Middlemarchers in discussion:
JOHN FOWLES: THE AMBIVALENT VIRTUES?
Authors: PALLISER CHARLES
Published: March 2008

In some ways the popularity of John Fowles is surprising. His two best‐sellers, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman, exemplify strengths and weaknesses unusual in so widely‐read a writer. His virtues shade into his faults. His uncompromising determination to write the kind of novel that interests him, regardless of the expectations of his readership, has made each of his books excitingly distinct but is less happily reflected in a frequent lack of concern for his reader's interests — or, indeed, interest. Again his pre‐occupation with ideas — though admirable as the manifestation of an intellectuality rare among British novelists — occasionally leads him to incorporate them somewhat indigestibly into his novels. His worst faults derive from these ambivalent virtues: a lack of humour, stylistic carelessness, the subordination of characters to ideas, and a tendency to didacticism of tone and content.
INNER CITY: END OF THE ROAD FOR TRADITIONAL LIBRARIANSHIP
Authors: ROSS DONALD
Published: March 2008

LR rarely prints position papers. The piece which follows is an exception which the author himself believes does not apply exclusively to inner city libraries.
ON‐LINE: EQUALIZING ACCESS TO RECORDED KNOWLEDGE
Authors: ANDERSON DOUGLAS
Published: March 2008

Information is the key to economic and social development. However, before information can be put to productive use it must be processed, stored and disseminated. Among the systems that transmit recorded knowledge, libraries collect, store, organize for use, and disseminate recorded communication, whether in book or non‐book form — but with strikingly uneven resources.
STUDYING AND COLLECTING EARLY CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Authors: HANNABUSS STUART
Published: March 2008

The study of children's books has always been a mixed affair in which reader response and classroom methods jostle with the parameters used by librarians. In recent years, research into children's books has exemplified this well: such research, at home and abroad, has ranged widely in spheres as diverse as sociolinguistics and descriptive bibliography. It has become a major growth area in literary research, and a profitable avenue for personal advancement for entrepreneurs and academics concerned with children and their reading.
CRISIS‐CENTRED, ISSUE‐BASED: THE LONELINESS OF DISTANCE LEARNING
Authors: BOYLE JAMES
Published: March 2008

From the Board Schools of the 1870s to the Polys of the 1960s, the structure of formal education in Britain has grown ever more elaborate. Now at every level it is under the greatest financial pressure. Yet never has so high a proportion of adults needed to learn — in many cases to learn quickly — in face of technological obsolescence, bureaucratic encroachment or complex environmental dilemmas. People learn when they have to, Boyle argues: and he examines areas where broadcasting and libraries would appear to be operating side by side.
NOT ALL IN THE MIND: THE VIRILE PROFESSION
Authors: COWELL PENNY
Published: March 2008

In our media‐orientated, image‐conscious contemporary society the librarian may very well seem particularly unfortunate, reflected in the imagination of the general public as a fussy old woman of either sex, myopic and repressed, brandishing or perhaps cowering behind a date‐stamp and surrounded by an array of notices which forbid virtually every human activity. The media, for whom the librarian is frustration personified, have reinforced this stereotype, hitherto transmitted solely by superstition and hearsay; its greatest impact has no doubt fallen on the two‐thirds of the population who never use the library. One of its effects will be to ensure that they never do so in the future. As Frank Hatt has pointed out: “The controllers of the new media of communication … have shown a tendency to limit choices by using the considerable power of the media to limit their audience's established attitudes, simply because such limitation is good business.” The popular BBC television series, The last of the summer wine, portrayed a librarian whose vicarious sex‐life through the pages of D. H. Lawrence led to inevitably frustrated attempts to act out his fantasies in occasional under‐the‐counter forays with his similarly repressed female assistant. A Daily mail leader on an appeal against unfair dismissal made by a London Deputy Borough Librarian reiterates this concept:
“THE STABLE POINT OF REASON”: PRESCRIPTION OR MALADY?
Authors: SHARPLES STEVEN
Published: March 2008

One of the consequences of being a philosopher who insists on removing philosophy from the realm of abstract speculation and installing it as a practical tool for the posing and solving of everyday problems is that you are liable to be taken at your word. Others take that philosophy and “apply” it to practical problems. When this happens the philosopher loses control over his or her ideas, whose coherence and utility are then dependent on the skill and understanding of the disciple. Given Karl Popper's project for just such a practical philosophy it is perhaps not surprising that sooner or later someone should write a book which attempts to use Popper's thought to clarify a whole range of questions about public life, from the “logic” of centralised social, physical or economic planning to the desirability of comprehensive schools and metrication. What must dismay Popperians is that in Dr. Roger James' hands what emerges is a theoretically incoherent book which avoids being petulant only when it is banal.
GETTING DOWN TO 2% BOOKS FOR RURAL SCOTLAND
Authors: BRUCE NEIL M.
Published: March 2008

In 1979 the trustees of the R. D. MacLeod Trust divided their monies between the two Scottish library schools to further the studies in libraries and librarianship carried on in them. The first research grant awarded by the School of Librarianship, Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology, Aberdeen from the above fund enabled the writer to study rural mobile services in Scotland both in detail and in perspective.
THE READING DIMENSION IN EFFECTIVENESS AND SERVICE
Authors: McCLELLAN A.W.
Published: March 2008

FIRST, one or two naive questions. For example, “What is this public library?” or “What is it for?”. They are questions one could imagine a being from another planet might ask. When one has been associated with something over a long period of time it is both difficult and, useful to consider it from a fresh and detached point of view.
INTERLIBRARY COMPARISONS AND THE CIFC
Authors: JONES GRAHAM
Published: March 2008

HOW good do costs and workloads in library X look when set against those of comparable libraries?
COPYRIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS
Authors: McFARLANE GAVIN
Published: March 2008

TO a certain extent, the field of copyright has always been the scene of a contest between owner and user. The creator of a particular work, or the owner of it, has generally been interested in obtaining the best possible price for the commodity; the user by contrast has naturally sought to obtain the material which he wished to exploit on the most favourable terms.
PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION CHANGES COURSE AGAIN
Authors: DAY ALAN
Published: March 2008

IT is possible to look upon continuing education from a number of different perspectives. Some regard it as a method of personal self‐development, and what evidence already exists suggests that there is much truth in this. Some librarians would emphasise the need for staff to prepare themselves for new posts, or new responsibilities in their present posts; others will simply think of continuing education as a means whereby gaps in professional knowledge can be bridged. One of the many silly remarks in the Library Association discussion document, the Draft code of professional ethics, stated: “The librarian has … a continuing obligation in the interests of the client to keep abreast of developments and applications in all branches of professional practice in which qualifications and experience entitle him or her to engage”. The response of one department of library studies at least to the Green Paper pointed out the sheer impossibility of this—of doing a good job of work, eating, sleeping, looking after a family, and undertaking those high‐sounding social roles outlined in the foreword to the Green Paper, and keeping abreast of developments and applications in all branches of professional practice. All you can reasonably hope for is to keep abreast of what directly concerns you—and there may be a good deal of self‐development involved in that—and hope that one day there will be an opportunity to catch up or to extend your personal horizons.
TRAINING NON‐PROFESSIONAL STAFF: A QUESTIONNAIRE APPROACH
Authors: COUTTS MARGARET M.
Published: March 2008

This report on methods recently adopted at Glasgow University Library to give formal training in reader service describes a seminar included in a training programme for members of non‐professional staff appointed some months previously. The programme encompassed an introductory talk by the Head of Reader Services and visits to other Library departments, including Cataloguing, Acquisitions and Special Collections and the Bindery.
PAYING FOR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE ECBB
Authors: BARR BERNARD
Published: March 2008

HOW rich does one have to be to qualify as poor? This Irishism has to be asked at the outset because ECBB, as the work under review will no doubt become known officially, is bound to be popularly regarded as the poor library's ESTC. The reviewer, who happens to be in charge of one library with no prospects of paying a four‐figure sum for a reference tool, and to work on behalf of another library which will have to consider very carefully whether to spend such a sum on this single tool or or a larger number of alternative titles, is only too well aware of the reality of this question.
GARBAGE IN, MISCHIEF OUT
Authors: BUCHANAN RICHARD
Published: March 2008

Delivered recently to an audience of information scientists and librarians, Dick Buchanan's paper has implications no less for archivists. For two questions are at issue. First, given the acknowledged presence of both factual error and patent conjecture in official records concerning private individuals in our own time, what percentage of the files left in copperplate script from earlier ages conceal comparable unreliability? Secondly, if as Richard Buchanan urges, the record of past transgressions be expunged from official files for the living, what will be the consequences for historians of such de mortuis deletions? For librarians as information middlemen, there remains the disturbing possibility that they will increasingly be invoked as intermediaries between the individual as client and the authority as funding agency.
REFERENCE: ANALYSIS, MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING
Authors: ROHAN JAMES G.
Published: March 2008

Outside RQ, writing on reference service, whether at craft or at management level, is rare. Attempts by LR to establish a practitioners' reference column have consistently failed. One referee doubted whether the following paper really deals with management aspects. Readers with other viewpoints may like to comment.
BOOKS FOR BLOCKADE MEN: THE CONCERN OF MISTRESS FRY
Authors: JACKAMAN PETER
Published: March 2008

BORN in 1780, one of twelve children of a successful Quaker banker, Elizabeth Gurney herself became converted to Quakerism at the age of 18 and eventually, after the death of her father, became a minister of the church. At the age of 20 she married the London businessman Joseph Fry, by whom between 1801 and 1816 she bore 10 children. In between the birth of the children she carried out her ministry, visiting Quaker groups throughout the country, and pursued philantrophic activities. In 1819–20 she became concerned by the conditions of the homeless in London and was responsible for establishing a night shelter providing food and a bed.
FOR THIS AND FUTURE GENERATIONS MANAGING THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CONSERVATION AND USE
Authors: WILSON ALEX
Published: March 2008

MY THEME affects all of the community who live with or by books. This theme is that all of the book community, but most particularly librarians, have given priority to the exploitation of library materials over their conservation in use to such an extent that accumulated neglect is almost irrecoverable in economic terms. Particularly is this the case with modern books, say those published from the middle of the nineteenth century. Within them the seeds of destruction in the form of lignin and the acidic content of paper, sizing, adhesives, leather and even the ink upon the pages could condemn them to an unusable state in less that a lifetime even if kept in reasonable conditions.
CAPITAL APPRECIATION: STIRLING BURGH LIBRARY 1897–1914
Authors: BROOK CHARLES F.
Published: March 2008

THE ANCIENT and royal burgh of Stirling, at one time the capital of Scotland, was at the turn of the century the county town of Stirlingshire and the centre of a thriving agricultural community. With the exception of a carpet and woollen mill and some neighbouring coal mines, there was little industry in the town. This was reflected in its social structure. There was growing up in the village of Raploch, beneath the castle rock, a sizeable Irish community of labourers and artisans, but of a population of around 20,000 in 1900, middle class businessmen and shopkeepers predominated. The town's structure in turn was reflected in the nature of the Town Council, which, although not always conservative in politics, was generally conservative when faced with innovation, be it a swimming pool or a modern town centre. This might explain why in Stirling the public library movement was late in starting, nearly 25 years after the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act of 1870 authorising the use for library purposes of 1 d. in the £ from the rates. It might also explain why there was some opposition from the Town Council to providing for the upkeep of the library after its foundation.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT
Authors: WHITEMAN PHILIP
Published: March 2008

Perhaps the marvel is that there should exist at all a department in a British official body at national level dedicated to the support of research into information needs and the problems of providing and operating library and information services. That it does exist may be regarded as the product of a typically British combination of conscious decision‐making and historical accident.
THE PROFESSIONAL
Authors: HARRISON K.C.
Published: March 2008

Although this profile will attempt to look at various of the activities of this many‐sided man, our first concern will be with his years at Westminster. McColvin was appointed city librarian there in 1938 when he was 42 years of age. For this signally important position he had been well‐grounded. His early years in librarianship had been spent at Croydon under the much respected W. C. Berwick Sayers. After that, his public library experience had been considerably widened by his being successively deputy librarian of Wigan, chief librarian of Ipswich, and chief librarian of Hampstead.
THE COLLECTION BUILDER
Authors: de PARIS P.M.
Published: March 2008

In August 1947 I had the good fortune to be offered a post at Westminster Public Libraries. No doubt I flatter myself, but I regard it as an example of Lionel McColvin's open‐mindedness that I was selected presumably for apparent ability rather than on the basis of lengthy and appropriate experience. Certainly, after nearly six years in the army and a year at a school of librarianship to complete the Library Association examinations, I was singularly short on the latter. The post to which I was appointed was Head of the Accessions Department; and although I was nominally responsible to the Chief Cataloguer, in practice I largely reported direct to the City Librarian — an unusual position for a comparatively junior officer.
BOOK BORROWING AND UNEMPLOYMENT
Authors: FRYER DAVID , PAYNE ROY
Published: March 2008

In the 1930s, several groups researching aspects of poverty in general and unemployment in particular reported findings concerning reading behaviour. The most ambitious of these groups, and subsequently the most influential, was investigating the thesis that “prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them”. The researchers studied the effects of the closure between July 1929 and February 1930, of a large factory dominating the employment and lives of a small Austrian town, Marienthal. With regard to library use, their thesis as regards dwindling use of opportunities at least was dramatically confirmed. The records of the Marienthal Workers' Library showed that from 1929 to 1931 the number of loans dropped by 49% even though a borrowing charge that had been levied before the plant closure had been suspended. Furthermore, even those who continued to borrow books actually borrowed fewer. In 1929 an average of 3.23 books per reader were borrowed and this had dropped to only 1.60 books by 1931. This was not apparently merely because the unemployed had read all the available books since the library obtained the contents of another library just before the closure occurred.
CROSS‐CURRENTS: BL AND LC IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Authors: COLE JOHN Y.
Published: March 2008

In this paper the author concludes the review of the British Library on the completion of its first decade which began with the Spring issue of LR. He writes not as executive director of the Centre for the Book in the Library of Congress but as an individual contributor setting down his own perceptions.
HOLDINGS AND ACCESS IN THE BRD: NEEDS, TOOLS AND PROBLEMS
Authors: KAEGBEIN PAUL , KNOCHE MICHAEL
Published: March 2008

At the end of World War II the destruction of German libraries and the political division of the former Reich led in the Federal Republic (BRD) to a planned development of research collections and of collection‐based bibliographic tools highly relevant to the present‐day Anglo‐American debate on so‐called holdings and access policies. Unhappily, the authors argue, current financial constraints in the Bundesrepublik after weakening the thrust of acquisitions work now pose a threat to the access tools themselves.
MEDIA ARCHIVES: THE LONG HELLO
Authors: MAIN C.E.
Published: March 2008

Few LR readers will lack sympathy with the drive towards archive preservation of cultural materials. To that extent, the report reviewed below will be welcomed. Many on the other hand may feel concern at the piecemeal development of media archives hitherto, the lack of central inspiration, leadership or coordination, the limited and specific nature of local initiatives and the tendency not so much to reinvent the wheel as too often to fail to do so. To what extent in these aspects does this document provide tangible grounds for encouragement?
FINANCE
Authors: LABDON PETER
Published: March 2008

Whatever continuity of financial policy existed in the United Kingdom between 1974–5 and 1983–4, nationally or locally, was imposed by circumstances largely beyond the control, and certainly beyond the expectations, of any of the participants at the beginning of the decade. Looking back down the tunnel of collective experience, it is clear that the years between 1972 and 1974 were the wrong years in which to decide upon and prepare for the new golden age of reorganised local government; the years between 1974 and 1979 were the wrong years in which to try to convince the consumer that bigger really was better in terms of local government administration, and the years since 1979 have been the wrong years in which to be either employed in or dependent upon local government services.
METROPOLIS: PEOPLE AND PENCE
Authors: JONES GRAHAM
Published: March 2008

“There is no hope for a more efficient library system for London”, wrote Frank Pacy, City Librarian of Westminster in the mid‐1920s, “under the present divided management by twenty‐eight separate entities”. Root‐and‐branch language of this order, implying that the speaker's professional career has been spent largely contending with the impossible, is not often used by a senior public servant within sight of retirement. Yet Pacy was no radical. Such judgments had in any case been current some twenty years earlier, after experience over half a decade of the then new Metropolitan Boroughs. The delivery of a paper by John McKillop to the Library Association annual meeting of 1906 at Bradford and its subsequent publication in the Library Association record — remarkably, without the author's name, as if representing a corporate viewpoint — provide substantiating documentation.
SUBURBIA 1900–1965
Authors: HARRISON K.C.
Published: March 2008

LEBENSRAUM The London of Roman times, Elizabethan London, Pepys' London, the London of 1900, the capital of today — one after another successive maps in most atlases record the relentless growth of the metropolis over the years. But always the most rapid and sensational growth is seen between 1900 and the start of the Second World War.
LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT: THE POLYTECHNICS
Authors: ASHWORTH WILFRED
Published: March 2008

To assess the effect which the Council for National Academic Awards has had on the growth and present standing of polytechnic libraries is impracticable without first putting the polytechnics themselves in their historical perspective.
LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE RESEARCH: THE CNAA RECORD
Authors: RIDLER ANN M. , STUART WEIR J.
Published: March 2008

The CNAA impact on research in librarianship has been in ways equally true of other subject areas. For this reason this paper aims to set the Council's involvement in the broader context of the work and policies of the Council in general, seen against published statements of government policy. It considers the nature of Council's responsibility for research, and the impact it seeks to have on research in public sector higher education, all of which is relevant to librarianship and may provoke reflection as to possible future developments in institutional provision for research in librarianship. The paper then analyses the applications Council has approved for research degrees in librarianship, and considers the likely trend of future developments.
NEWLY QUALIFIED RECRUITS: THE NEGLECTED RESOURCE FOR MANAGEMENT
Authors: BRUNT RODNEY M.
Published: March 2008

The debate on the proper place in the job structure for newly qualified librarians is of long standing. In the days when the normal route to professional qualification in Britain was via Library Association examinations, perhaps, there was less of a problem. The training of those who qualified in this way was to a large degree in‐house and their promotion into professional posts was facilitated by their being acquainted already with the systems in which they worked.
COMRADE AND CAPTAIN
Authors: BEBBINGTON JOHN
Published: March 2008

Like many young men of my generation, I was attracted by the internationally renowned Leeds system under R. J. Gordon. I joined the staff there in 1935, three years after Hutchings had left for Rugby. That I learned about him at that time was dependent on hearsay, but I gained the impression that he was a lively character, a go‐ahead librarian and a good singer. When he returned to Leeds in 1943, I was in the RAF and it was not until 1946 that I came to know him personally.
CRAFTSMAN AND CLYDESIDER
Authors: NICHOLS HAROLD
Published: March 2008

At the close of his professional life Fred Hutchings had no regrets for the course his career had taken. This was not complacency but a quiet satisfaction that he had made the best available decisions open to him. He could not look back on the planning of a substantial new library. His career at its high point, as Chief Librarian of Leeds, the fifth largest provincial city in Britain, coincided with the lean decades for public building after the Second World War. Once, in the fifties, driving through a clearance area of old inner‐city houses, he asked “How can I press for expenditure on new branches when houses have to be built?” For me, the depth of feeling covered by this remark summarised many of the attitudes and principles of an outstanding Chief.
COLLEAGUE AND COUNSELLOR
Authors: DURBIDGE LIONEL
Published: March 2008

PRELUDE “A child's abnormalities may prove his subsequent strength as an individual”: that scathing note annotating an article in an American library periodical typifies F.G.B.H.'s concern for people early and late. In 1937, he was horrified by the battery of specialists trained on the child who failed in reading in the USA. They included “the physician, the oculist, psychologist, reading specialist, social worker … psychiatrist and the teacher”. Hutchings commented
COMMAND AND CONTINUITY: A NOTE
Authors: JONES GRAHAM
Published: March 2008

Erratically before World War II and consistently thereafter data exist which support comparative study of standards of provision in most British public libraries. If we accept the assumption that those libraries provide best for their readers that spend most on their service the same data identify unmistakably librarians who would be regarded as successful by their contemporaries. At Rugby F. G. B. Hutchings was a pioneer. What was his achievement at Leeds?
THE INFORMATION MATRIX
Authors: COOPER ROSS
Published: March 2008

Information is often regarded as a nation's most valuable resource. The management of this resource at a national level presupposes the existence of a coherent national information policy. This article deals with attempts to develop such a policy for information services in Ireland during the 1970s and outlines the present approach of encouraging technological change, in the form of new information technology applications, to determine the character and extent of national information related developments in Ireland.
GOVERNMENT LIBRARIES
Authors: DOYLE MARY , MARSHALL OLIVER
Published: March 2008

The legal basis of the Irish Civil Service is contained in the Ministers and Secretaries Act, 1924. This act designated the extent of ministerial authority; it also established the Departments of State and allocated public business between them. 11 Departments were established in 1924 with 21,000 civil servants. As the century wore on, there was a gradual increase in the role of the State and a consequent increase in the size of the Civil Service. By 1980 there were 18 Departments and 60,000 civil servants.
TRAVELLER FROM TUNBRIDGE WELLS: RONALD BENGE REMEMBERS
Authors: GERARD DAVID
Published: March 2008

When his first full‐length book Libraries and cultural change, was published, Ronald Benge stepped forward as the compulsive conscience of our time, a happy worrier about virtually all things in heaven or hell, libraries providing a convenient locus for his professional and personal experience. Three further books written by him have been essentially a continuation of the same anxious questioning about the world in which he and his profession stand. There seems no reason why the tetralogy completed to date, Libraries and cultural change (1970); Communication and identity (1972); Cultural crisis and libraries in the Third World (1980) and the last, here reviewed, Confessions of a lapsed librarian. should not continue further as from his unquiet retirement in Barcelona he surveys the condition of his profession.
WILBRAHAM TO FALLOWFIELD; THE REGENERATION OF A COMMUNITY RESOURCE
Authors: GODWIN T.M. , STEVENSON B.G.
Published: March 2008

THE HISTORY Wilbraham District Library (now re‐modelled as Fallowfield Cultural Centre) was first opened on 31st October 1932 by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Chancellor of the University of Manchester, amid a great deal of ceremony‐presided over by the Lord Mayor and in the presence of Manchester's hew Chief Librarian Charles Nowell. The Annual report of the Manchester Libraries Committee for 1932–33 states that the Earl dutifully borrowed the first book, The mediaeval woodwork of Manchester Cathedral by Henry A. Hudson. As early as 1923 the Libraries Committee had applied for the use of the important corner site occupied by the new library on the new housing estate in Wilbraham, believing this to be a “pivotal point” for the whole estate and the close proximity with the nearby school enabling “the services to co‐operate successfully in their work with children”.
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES: WHAT NOW?
Authors: HEANEY HENRY
Published: March 2008

Based on the seven articles on the Republic of Ireland in the Summer 1985 issue of LR, the need for a national information policy is identified as an urgent priority. Some steps which might be taken to establish such a policy are suggested; certain difficulties to be faced in its implementation are outlined.
ARGYLL: LIBRARY SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC BEFORE 1958
Authors: SCOTT WILLIAM L.
Published: March 2008

INTRODUCTION To choose 1958 as the year terminating a study of the development of public library facilities in Argyll may seem somewhat arbitrary. The year is chosen as marking the completion of the County Library system as conceived at its commencement in 1946. It was only then that the last of the Burgh Libraries became integrated into the service and it could be said to cover the whole county. Further developments took place within the context of this service but the concern of this paper is to examine the history which led up to its establishment. This is done mainly through the study of original material such as correspondence and reports. Since much of the available material related to the protracted period of negotiation between the County Authorities and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust it seemed possible to concentrate on the activity of the Trust in the general development of rural library services in Scotland. During the years spent in considering their own position the Argyll authorities collected much information concerning other areas. Argyll's efforts, or the lack of them, might have been placed in comparison with activity elsewhere. However, it became obvious that services in other areas developed on individual lines which made comparisons possible only in the broadest of terms. Similarly, the Trust operated a policy within broad and negotiable guidelines involving detailed regulation on only a minimum of issues which were considered to be vital.
AIRDRIE PUBLIC LIBRARY, 1853—1894
Authors: CRAIG STRANG W.
Published: March 2008

Like the Caithness library, the Airdrie library as a separate entity disappeared in the process of local government reorganisation in 1975. This account assesses the extent of community support in the earliest years of the service.
SIBERIAN BOOK STUDIES
Authors: POLANSKY PATRICIA
Published: March 2008

This brief survey notes new publications which contribute to our understanding of the book as it developed in Siberia. Soviet scholars and librarians have a strong tradition of interest in the study of the book «knigovedenie». The rather numerous works which have appeared recently on the vast Siberian area will be useful in understanding regional printing developments in the Soviet Union.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND THE ARTS
Authors: MAIDMENT W.R.
Published: March 2008

It is not unfair to say that the arts in association with public libraries have been hampered in Britain (1) by financial restrictions (2) by legal restrictions and (3) by the deliberate choice of librarians and library authorities.
PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOKSTOCK MANAGEMENT
Authors: BETTS DOUG
Published: March 2008

As I listened recently to Alex Wilson delivering a paper on conservation I was reminded of his excellence as a lucid communicator of ideas, enthusiasm and timely sense of direction. His 1977 paper “The threshold of choice” must be one of the most frequently cited papers of recent times, and in a brief state‐of‐the‐art article on systematic bookstock management, Nick Moore has called the paper “seminal”. The concept of managing stock is a central element in Wilson's thinking, though he establishes its critical interaction with the management of all resources. This interaction may appear obvious but critics of a systematic stock management approach persist in attacking it for lacking properties and objectives which it cannot, by definition, have nor aspire to: as McClellan pointed out, and Moore re‐iterates, it is a sub‐system operating within the context of a greater whole, not an isolated system. The approach may nonetheless be regarded as subversive partly because it potentially challenges what may have become comfortable assumptions, partly because its adoption presupposes changes in methods and attitudes, the influence of which is likely to extend in all directions. Wilson is able to indicate this practical and conceptual influence in a way which speaks directly to the needs of UK public libraries without appearing to threaten the fabric of their existence.
AFTER ATKINSON
Authors: RATCLIFFE F.W.
Published: March 2008

It is difficult to recall ten years later the depth of feeling roused among university librarians in Britain by the report of a University Grants Committee Working Party on Capital provision for university libraries. “Anger, indignation, incredulity and despondency” were among the immediate reactions to the Atkinson report, nor were these reactions confined to university librarians alone. The academic community at large reacted violently to the proposals, and in so doing identified the well‐being of universities unequivocally with that of their libraries.
AMPUTATION: BY CONSENT?
Authors: CAMERON KENNETH J. , ROBERTS MICHAEL
Published: March 2008

Recession, inflation, cuts — these and related keywords have dominated the international literature of librarianship in recent years. The academic library community has been implored to change its “mission”, redefining its basic priorities, and substituting service for stock, access strategies for holdings strategies, collection management for collection development, undergraduate needs for postgraduate needs (or vice‐versa), and management skills for professionalism. While the production of prescriptions, frequently radical ones, has become an industry, analysis and, above all, measurement of the underlying problem has been strictly limited. Descriptions of cuts have tended to paint a qualitative rather than a quantitative picture. Statistical analysis of aspects of recession has usually been restricted by time‐span, subject coverage, type of material, or a combination of these.