bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On safari for Comla
Authors: HARRISON KC
Published: March 2008

ZMTKU! This, so far as I am aware, is not an African word, but merely the initial letters of the five countries I recently visited as a Commonwealth Foundation scholar. The names of the countries had to be typed so often during the planning stages that it was easier to think of them as ZMTKU rather than as Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. But even if ZMTKU isn't a word, you can't be in East and Central Africa very long without learning at least a few words of Swahili, if only ‘Jambo’, and ‘Mzuri’.
Cap and gown and bells
Authors: SHALLOW ROBERT
Published: March 2008

I HAVE BEEN looking at a six‐page leaflet which gives details of an international graduate summer school, 1 July‐23 August 1975, in librarianship and information science at the College of Librarianship Wales. (A joint undertaking by CLW and the Graduate School of Librarianship, University of Pittsburgh.)
Comment
Authors: PEARCE MIKE , DAY ALAN , DUCKWORTH ALAN , SUBRAMANYAM K , STEELE COLIN
Published: March 2008

ONE OF THE questions I get thrown at me at fairly frequent intervals by undiscerning friends is ‘Why don't you go on Mastermind/Brain of Britain/ etc? You're a librarian. You could do it easily.’
Comment
Authors: PEARCE MIKE , TOMLINSON NORMAN , WINDRUSH FRANK , SYKES PAUL
Published: March 2008

DURING THE twelve days of Christmas, between the King's speech and Twelfth Night, after the chocolate smoking set had been consumed, though not in flames and smoke, and before the Christmas decorations had sagged to waist level, I used to read my annuals.
Library education in Russia
Authors: DAVINSON DONALD
Published: March 2008

AS PART OF a three‐man delegation, with Philip Sewell (as leader) and Eric Clough, to the Soviet Union in May this year under the Anglo‐Soviet cultural agreement, a number of impressions about the nature and current problems of education for librarianship in Russian were gained.
A personal statement
Authors: SHALLOW ROBERT
Published: March 2008

I AM DEEPLY grateful to the editor for his indulgence in permitting me to make a statement at this particular time. The events of the recent past have been a nightmare for me, yet it is not for my own sake that I address you now. Nor is it to excuse my behaviour which has been described as bizarre. I shall, of course, explain it in detail later, but it certainly needs no excuse.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Kempson Elaine , Buchanan John
Published: March 2008

IT REALLY IS very hard to have one's kindliest intentions kicked back into one's teeth.
Library service to children in Norway
Authors: Byberg Lis
Published: March 2008

THE Norwegian Children's Librarians Association, a sub‐group of the Norwegian Library Association, exists for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting library work with children and young people. The association was founded in 1961 and now has about 130 members.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Buchanan John , Kempson Elaine
Published: March 2008

IF YOU WERE to ask why ‘the treatment’ for (the London Borough of) Sutton's new central library, there are two reason's. First, Sutton's Chief, Roy Smith, was on like a flash to my sloppy discourtesy in neither acknowledging his invitation to the official opening in December nor turning up for it, and gave half a day of his time last month instead to take me round; second, in Mr Smith's own words, ‘This is one of the most interesting new libraries to come out of public librarianship for a long time’, and I am disposed to agree with him.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Buchanan John , Kempson Elaine
Published: March 2008

IT IS PERHAPS with wry understatement that the recent public declaration by the Library Association Council on the subject of library expenditure includes the remark that ‘The Library Association does not claim that libraries should be exempt from the economies which must now be borne by all’, for it has been manifestly apparent, since some dim realisation of national economic crisis first began to seep into the quasi‐cerebral thought processes of those who conduct government and local government, that the first neck upon which the sharpness of the axe would be tested has been library services everywhere.
Dear Edward Dudley …
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

IT IS NOW clear to me that you are a Machiavellian old cod of a higher order than even I gave you credit for and you must have been laughing yourself wet since Thursday January 15.
Comment
Authors: Enser AGS , Jannock Frank , Elliott Jon , Bingley Clive , Hughes Griff , Jones Ken
Published: March 2008

I SUPPOSE some of us who, professionally, have been subject to the whims of authority, have wished that, for once, we could have changed places with our lords and masters; that, instead of attending a committee or council meeting, merely as an officer, we could have sat as a Member.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Buchanan John , Kempson Elaine
Published: March 2008

‘I'M MINERVA. ASK ME. Out goes the image of the bespectacled, disapproving librarian, the woman who makes you feel frivolous for taking out nothing more weighty than philosophy. In comes the newstyle library hostess, smart, alluring, shaped for confidences.
Periodicals in public libraries
Authors: Oldman CM , Davinson DE
Published: March 2008

THE USE OF periodicals in public libraries is a neglected area of study. Luckham has examined practices in two libraries, but his approach is largely sociological. Several studies have been undertaken of periodicals activities in individual libraries Huws, Herts County, Stradling. They share the drawback of beginning from the assumption that the public library ought to supply periodicals, and proceed from there. The studies are supplier rather than user‐orientated.
The Shallow end
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

A GERIATRIC WARD was one of the things I used to try hard not to think about—some others being cancer, going mad, social engineering and the Third World. Now that I'm here in this one, I don't find it so bad. Not unbearable, anyhow, like the idea of being outside again.
Comment
Authors: Griffin Brian , Olden Anthony , Abbott Winifred D , Cook Ronald K , Tomlinson Norman , Revill Don
Published: March 2008

I RECKLESSLY ordered a brown ale, while my friend the Famous SF Author satisfied himself with an orange juice and his pipe: he's had to cut down on the drink, on doctor's orders. What with holding down a ‘proper’ job and producing SF novels to a publisher's deadline, his constitution has been undergoing some harsh punishment recently. In the end he had to throw up the ‘proper’ job and become a full‐time author. (In any case, he can't afford to drink at current pub prices.)
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Kempson Elaine , Buchanan John
Published: March 2008

K C HARRISON, City Librarian of Westminster, past‐President of the LA and present Chairman of the association's General Purposes Committee, has been invested a Knight (First Class) of the Order of the Lion of Finland for services to Finnish public libraries.
The Botswana National Library Service
Authors: Stiles DE
Published: March 2008

IT IS SOME TIME since any account of the development of libraries in Botswana appeared in print outside Botswana. I am therefore giving this brief review of developments over the last few years. Fuller information is given in our annual reports which are obtainable on request (price one rand).
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Kempson Elaine
Published: March 2008

THOSE FEW OF YOU, comparatively, on the receiving end of the much‐heralded £1000m cuts in government spending announced in mid‐July needn't feel lonely for long. The cuts were cosmetic in relation to the problem, like a smatter of eye‐black to prepare Edith Evans to play Ophelia, and there will be more in the annual November budget, and again next year. I have long reckoned that recession hits the world of books 1½‐2 years after the mainstream industrial economy, and the first sign of upturn in the latter means a bumpy ride still to come for us. So keep the purse‐strings tied up tight yet awhile.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Buchanan John , Kempson Elaine
Published: March 2008

I SYMPATHISE with the decision to invite commercial advertising into Scoclis news, the thrice‐yearly sheet issued by the Standing Conference of Co‐operative Library & Information Services, but even though the rate is modest, I should think they will have to ‘professionalise’ the present stencilled format if they are to get much custom. You have got to make an advertiser feel he is getting value for money, not just providing a sub. Perhaps if Scoclis news doesn't have much success in ‘inviting’ advertising, it will try selling advertising instead. Some bodies, not necessarily SCOCLIS, which solicit commercial funding for their activities don't always seem clear just who is doing whom the favour.
The IIB and the EPO
Authors: Houghton Bernard
Published: March 2008

AFTER BEING INDEPENDENT for 30 years, the International Patent Institute (IIB) is to become part of the European Patent Office which becomes operational next year. It is therefore appropriate to consider the institute's history and to examine its vital role under the new regime. The IIB was founded at The Hague under a diplomatic agreement of June 6 1947 originally signed by four countries—Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands—and at later dates by the governments of Monaco, Switzerland and Turkey. The agreement was signed by the United Kingdom on August 2 1965.
Biblio‐balderdash
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

I LIKE CATS about the house, even though they always seem to be on the wrong side of a closed door. They are useful in that they keep mice away, and they are pleasant to talk to because their answers can be freely and subjectively interpreted.
Comment
Authors: Stoakley Roger , Haylock JR , Jackaman Peter , Gerard David , Tomlinson Norman , Ellison JW , Molenda Claudia
Published: March 2008

THE RECENT SQUEEZE on local government expenditure has highlighted the dissarray that exists in the public library service in England and Wales, and the extraordinary measures being adopted by some authorities. Some of this disorder can perhaps be attributed to widely‐held attitudes prior to local government reorganisation. As a profession we have never been particularly good at co‐ordinating our approach to library services. Traditionally, many chief librarians looked upon their systems as their own unique empire. There was a deep‐rooted reluctance, perhaps even a fear, of pursuing common policies and practices with a neighbouring authority. The reason for those attitudes is not altogether clear, but they reflected an alarming narrowness of vision within our profession.
The Shallow end
Authors: Fines John
Published: March 2008

I FREQUENTLY HAVE the privilege of visiting the household of Robert Shallow, and I find pleasure in the robust chatter, only half‐humorous nostalgia, intellectual stimulus and good red biddy which he and his charming wife dispense joyfully to the weary traveller. 1 like bouncing around with the dear children, though I usually break my glasses. There is a price to pay. The red biddy has its effects, too, I notice, as I grow older.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Kempson Elaine , Labdon Peter
Published: March 2008

THE HARDCORE staff establishment at the Library Association has been in a positive tizzy of excitement since somebody ‘leaked’ to them a couple of months ago the news that NEW LIBRARY WORLD is to have a new Editor.
Centenary Carroll
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

You are old, dear LA, the young graduate said, You're a hundred years old, they say; And it's so long ago since you took to your bed, Now why don't you call it a day?
Comment
Authors: Day Alan , Mitchell LJ , Payne Roy , Davinson Donald , Labdon Peter
Published: March 2008

STARING AT all of us in the preamble of the Library Association's Royal Charter is the statement that one of the objects of the association is ‘to unite all persons engaged or interested in library work for the purpose of promoting the best administration of libraries’. Now, whatever else we may have achieved over the last hundred years, we have conspicuously failed in this particular objective. How many experienced librarians with long years of library service behind them are there up and down the country, in government departments, universities and industrial firms, who seem to take a perverse sort of pride in not being members of the association, instead of being safely tucked up with the rest of us? Their number must be legion, and that in itself is an indication of our failure. And how often do they admit, a little shamefacedly, that they really see no relevance in what the Library Association is doing, in relation to their own individual circumstances? And then comes their clincher: besides, they will tell you slightly aggressively, ‘if I joined it would cost me £x’.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Martin Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

TRY THIS ONE, if you are not susceptible to apoplectic fits!
Comment
Authors: Davinson Donald , Enser AGS , Ashworth Wilfred , Moore Nick , Tomlinson Norman , Duckworth Alan , Smith John
Published: March 2008

FOR TOO LONG there has been a tendency to adjure librarians to take note of the ‘new media’. There have been large numbers of courses designed to point out to librarians that there are more than books in a library, when for many years this must have been blindingly obvious even to the meanest of intelligences. Present concerns must instead be to accept that we have the media, and to spend more time thinking of how we use them, what we do with them, and who for.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen , Martin Clive
Published: March 2008

DIFFICULT to judge whether obstinacy, optimism or mere force of habit was the prime motivation for the reintroduction in Parliament in late January of another PLR Bill— effected by prominent campaigner Lord (Ted) Willis.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen , Martin Clive
Published: March 2008

THE NEWS will doubtless appear in the May issue of the Record, and several days after that they will send me a press release just in case the Record's prose style has defeated me, announcing that the LA's president‐elect for 1978 is to be Godfrey Thompson, Guildhall Librarian (City of London) and currently Treasurer of the la, as well as a member of our editorial board since its inception. (I had therefore better make it clear that it wasn't Godfrey who told me, or indeed anyone else on the board.)
The Shallow end
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

I HAVE BEEN wading in deeper waters for a few months. I hope to report in some future issue on how cold it was in Leningrad, how stunning was the Bolshoi Ballet and how difficult it was to find a local public library, friendly or otherwise, in Moscow.
Editorial
Authors: Bingley Clive
Published: March 2008

THIS IS my last dissertation as Editor of NEW LIBRARY WORLD, after upwards of six years in a job which I did not consciously either seek or assume. Having unexpectedly become the owner of nlw at the beginning of 1971, I rapidly found myself performing de facto the role of Editor, both by reason of the reincarnation of LW AS NLW from July 1971, and by default of the resources—of money certainly, of temperament perhaps—to pass the job on to anyone else.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

I AM INDEBTED to Verbatim: the language quarterly, February 1977 issue, for the information that the measuring unit of female beauty is something called the milli‐helen, which is defined as the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
Comment
Authors: Harrison KC , Cox John M , Smith John , Tomlinson Norman , Dore Jane , Radmore David , Day Alan
Published: March 2008

IT WAS DIFFICULT to believe the tidings that have only just reached me, the news that Stanley Snaith died in Dorset on December 19 last, a few days after his 73rd birthday. The rising generation of librarians may say ‘Who was Stanley Snaith?’, so all the more reason for this tribute.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Martin Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

MELVYN BARNES, Borough Librarian & Arts Officer of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (London), was asked to prepare a report for his libraries committee on the possibility of selling withdrawn library books to the public—that rumbling bandwagon which inevitably looks attractive to local authorities in hard times.
Comment
Authors: Brice Jennifer , Childs Nick , Shrigley Roger M , Berriman George , Morris Janina S , Day Alan
Published: March 2008

ANY GOOD DICTIONARY will define its terms, and this is a good precedent to follow. What is meant by ‘the affability factor’ comprises many elements which act together to create a favourable environment for a) first use of the library, and b) for the encouragement of repeat visits.
The Shallow end
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

AT EACH MAIN town in a tour of any part of the Soviet Union there is a free coach tour available. An Intourist guide describes the sights, explains the Soviet way of life and answers questions. Our guide on the sightseeing tour of Moscow was one Georgi—a pleasant and persuasive apologist for his country's regime.
The graduate profession
Authors: Steward Jean
Published: March 2008

SO LIBRARIANSHIP is to become an all graduate profession. The Library Association has at last turned its attention to our lack of status and this is its answer. It must be seen as the central proposal in the Paulin Report on the future of professional qualifications.
Commonplaces
Authors: Joy Lewis M , Hill Audrey W , Day Alan , Harrison KC , Bingley Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

A BIBLIOGRAPHY may seem to many to be as dry as dust and I must admit to having subscribed to that view about some bibliographies in the past. This is one, for a number of reasons, about which I feel differently. For me, after nearly a quarter of a century's involvement in a particular area of librarianship, browsing through the pages is an evocative experience, like a meeting with friends. Some whose work is recorded here I never knew but reading about them and studying their writings over the years has produced an illusion of their being old and close companions; and there are those who were friends whose voices can still be heard in memory. Some authors cited I hope yet to meet because their views and ideas are challenging and awaken a sympathetic response or make me want to start an argument. Still others are former colleagues from whom I learnt much and whose example has been inspirational, and then there are those who are staunch friends, without whose support and co‐operation my professional existence would be very dull indeed.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen , Martin Clive
Published: March 2008

AS THIS ISSUE OF NLW appears, the Library Association begins its Centenary Conference in London. I am delighted to have been invited to attend the inaugural session on October 4, and I shall do so full of goodwill towards the association and the profession, both for the short term of this conference and for the outset of the new century in British library affairs. Mind you, and present gravity apart, I expect we shall still get plenty of fun out of the la before its bicentenary turns up.
Bits and bobs
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

WRITING IN THE dog days is not easy, but it's not too worrying if what you write is to be published quickly, because then it will merge with all the other recess‐rubbish. However, if it doesn't appear until October, with the world back at work, it is likely to seem as out of season as a comic postcard at Christmas.
Comment
Authors: Munford WA , Shrigley Roger M
Published: March 2008

IT OCCURRED to me the other day that I have been using public libraries since 1920, beginning my association with them on a false declaration of age. I had not reached the minimum age for membership then locally prescribed and it seemed to me absurd that I should be excluded from the shelves of G A Henty in the children's corner of the lending library on a mere technicality. I confess, too, that my early type of ethical practice developed further when it became necessary, on each library‐visit, to delay my departure until there was on exit‐counter duty an assistant who would not notice that he was charging out to me two Hentys at a time, one, legitimately, on my fiction ticket and the other (shame, oh shame!) on the non fiction only. The librarian‐in‐charge of the department was a purist and had to be outflanked. Seven years later, after I had joined his staff, he and I had many a tussle over matters which doubtless seemed important to us both. Incidentally, it seems curious now that my acceptance of a junior post in a public library should have been so firmly disapproved of by friends and relations. There seemed, to them, to be no future in it. It seems even more curious, in view of my life‐long obsession with books that I should, myself, have regarded the post as no more than the stop‐gap which would make it unnecessary for me to return to school after the summer holidays; I had had enough of school discipline. My earliest aspirations in further education, leisure‐time, were motivated much more by business and commercial than by librarianship ambitions. A hard core perhaps remains: I was not displeased when a publisher friend told me recently that I could think like a business man! Well, Angel pavement period notwithstanding, I did not turn away from business ambitions until Frank Seymour Smith had joined the staff as our new deputy librarian. Only when I had had time to watch him in action did I decide to become a librarian like him. I doubt if most new entrants to the public library service join now against a background of so much doubt and disapproval. But then public libraries have come a long way since 1927.
Scott of ‘The countryman’
Authors: Gunston David
Published: March 2008

A NOTE arrives from Crispin Gill, present editor of The countryman, that unique rural quarterly that like so many magazines these days is not quite what it was, but which this year celebrates 50 years of successful publication. I am intrigued by the fine‐detailed illustration block at the head of the paper. It shows a farmer‐type in tweeds and soft hat contentedly smoking his pipe as he leans (on a summer's evening?) over a traditional five‐barred gate set in a field stone wall. His faithful collie stands at his heel, the village church nestles in the distance, a flock of birds (rooks?) wing their way over the horizon, a huge briar rose in full bloom angles in from one side, while beneath it an idealised song‐bird perches jauntily on a convenient dead bough, facing a tall clump of cow‐parsley. A sense of rustic peace pervades all. Everything is perfect, completely soporific, quite innocuous. A modern ad‐man's dream of the countryside, in fact. Precisely. And therefore totally the antithesis of everything that old J W Robertson Scott, the magazine's founder and original editor, stood for and believed in. Indeed, he coined his own description of it: ‘townee sentimentalising about the country’ was what he called such stuff.
The Shallow end
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

TWENTY‐SEVEN YEARS ago we had the Library Association Conference in London. I say ‘we’ because I wangled two half days off during the week and attended two sessions. On the strength of that I went around for years mentioning ‘my first conference in 1950’.
Comment
Authors: Palmer Bernard , Park Janet
Published: March 2008

IN THESE days, when all around us are cries of ‘woe! woe!’ because of the cuts in local government spending and the effects these are having on public libraries, it is as well to look back to another time of depression (and, indeed, earlier) to see what life in our libraries was like then. If it is difficult today, when establishments are cut by simply not filling vacant posts (like leaving drain covers off for people to fall down, it is so casual in effect), how much more difficult it was to keep one's chin up forty to fifty years ago! Yet chins were held high, beliefs in the worthwhileness of our job were maintained, and the service was kept going.
How we took the right road
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

I WAS GOING through some of my bookshelves here at home the other day, trying to make room for my latest acquisitions (and almost slipping into treasonable wishing that we had public lending libraries once again) when I came across a copy of Charge, by Arthur Seldon. This was the book published back in 1977, by Temple Smith, which gave some academic respectability to the relatively small but vociferous, poujadiste opposition to central and local government expenditure.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Martin Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

I MUST SAY, I was astonished to read in the editorial in the November issue of Assistant librarian the bald declaration that AL ‘is broke’. I mean, whatever will the printers think?
Libraries, truth and A J Ayer
Authors: Griffin Brian
Published: March 2008

A LIBRARIAN trying to make up his mind about the rôle of books, information, and culture in the modern world could do a lot worse than read A J Ayer's recent autobiography, Part of my life. Ayer's wide culture is unforcedly apparent. He grew up in a milieu in which learning the classics and composing Latin verses at Eton were the most natural things in the world: to that extent, he belongs to the world of C S Lewis, with whom he was later to clash at Oxford. His favourite authors range from Dickens, through Yeats, to e e cummings (a lifelong friend); and through people like Cyril Connolly he built up the right connections in Bloomsbury. His logical positivism placed him in touch with the current scientific ethos, and his eager appreciation of facts, of information, placed him in good stead during the war, when he was in military intelligence. In a sense, there can be little worth knowing that Professor Ayer does not know (and, of course, few people worth knowing).
Comment
Authors: Glossop Mike , Radmore David
Published: March 2008

A NOTABLE FEATURE of the changes which have occurred in librarianship in recent years is a reassertion of the importance of the individual. Within the organisational context, classical management theories, MbO and the like, which have been overly preoccupied with systems and processes, have given way to the Human Relations School, theories of social interaction and group dynamics, and participative styles of management. Similarly the trend towards subject specialisation, user education and information officers has made the individual user a growing focus of attention. These changes are reflected in the literature by an increasing number of articles advocating that training for librarianship should step beyond the subjects traditionally associated with professional education and embrace a wider range of interdisciplinary subjects more appropriate for the study of communications. Communication is, after all, the central concern of the library. The interaction between readers, information and librarians represents a social system where the behaviour, perceptions and values of the people involved are of crucial importance in many areas of library research. It would seem that librarians are beginning to realise that knowledge about libraries is fundamentally social.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

WAS IT ONLY the pure in heart (such as myself) who found the Great Christmas Holiday Shutdown the biggest bore of the year? Four days of actual Christmas lay‐off had me pining to be back at the office on the Wednesday morning, although most of Britain, including a number of academic libraries, reckoned it wasn't worth switching on the heating for only three days before the New Year holiday, and stayed in bed or sprawled in front of the telly for a grand total of 11 days.
The Shallow end
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

WILLIAM BELOE, in the year 1803, was appointed Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum. The department in those days also included prints and drawings and, unfortunately for Beloe, an unscrupulous character called Dighton had a mind to purloin some of them.
Comment
Authors: Beswick Norman
Published: March 2008

AT LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY we made a film to celebrate the Library Association centenary, and the cost was less than a tenth of what most people understandably predicted. We managed by confining ourselves to simple equipment and uncomplicated locations, and by exploiting the willing services of the university's modest and overworked Audio Visual Aids Unit (whose salaries and overheads were not in our budget). We had remarkable cooperation from librarians, teachers, administrators, students and members of the public in our East Midlands area. Now whether the results match the occasion and the subject is not for us to say, but you are cheerfully invited to test for yourselves by hiring or buying the film for your own institution or group at the rates quoted at the end of this paper.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

WADING THROUGH this month's pile of press‐releases, and finding it, yet again, ‘dry’ as far as Library Association news is concerned—when did I last see one from them?—I reflect moodily on the great PR fiasco of last year. I think I shall deliver a little homily on the subject.
Promoting the past
Authors: Arrowsmith Amanda
Published: March 2008

LOCAL STUDIES LIBRARIANS, museum curators and archivists are, to state the obvious, jointly in the business of making available sources of evidence on earlier times to the public. This may not be our only business: an archivist working in central or local government is responsible primarily for the management of the records of his authority, a local studies librarian may well have a wider reference or information services responsbility, and such factors as these will condition our ability to concentrate on promoting the past. But that aside, if we feel committed to the work we are doing, then we are committed not just to servicing the demand for local studies material but to stimulating this demand: that is, to increasing the availability of the material, and deepening the level on which it is used. In the case of all three of our services, however, resources are strictly limited; every penny, almost literally, has to count, The question then must be to what extent total independence, cooperation or mergers between our services obtain best value for money from what we might term the ‘global local studies resource’.
The lady and the libel
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

Candida Shallow: What are you doing, Daddy?
Comment
Authors: Duckworth Alan , Lindsay Margot , Palmer Bernard , Ashworth Wilfred
Published: March 2008

WITH ‘STAR WARS’ established as the brightest phenomenon since the skateboard, and inter‐galactic adventures all the rage, perhaps it is not a bad time to speculate on the librarian's role in outer space. Not that I've seen the film yet, and don't expect to for a while, seeing as we're still waiting for ‘The jazz singer’ at our local cinema. Nevertheless, as someone who may live long enough to see the start of real space adventure, if not long enough to see ‘Star wars’, I can't help but wonder just how the librarian will fit in.
Library security
Authors: Revill Don
Published: March 2008

APART FROM ESTIMATES of book losses there appears to be little or no information available on the value of items stolen from libraries. This article is intended to provide an overview of the security problems they face while mentioning some of the devices available to protect individual items or library areas.
Comment
Authors: Brice Jennifer , Jones OT , Joseph Tony , Bibble Quentin
Published: March 2008

A WIDE RANGE of further and higher education colleges offer courses to a varied section of the public of mixed ages and abilities. Originally established to provide the vocational and technical training necessary for a new diversity of trades, they offered subjects not within the scope of the established school system. Today, this function is maintained, with considerable expansion in their general educational work, and most offer comprehensive GCE O and A level studies, in a choice of more subjects than available in local schools.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen , Martin Clive
Published: March 2008

I HAVE learned, with considerable relief, that the Library Association is taking no notice whatever of the peculiar suggestion in NLW's editorial last month that they rush not to appoint a new Secretary to succeed Mr Hilliard in September.
Comment
Authors: Lawson Sarah , Apted Sheila , Dart Monica , Saunders Chris , Moss R , Duckworth Alan
Published: March 2008

ANY TIME YOU can buy a hardback Walden in good condition for sixty‐five cents, you should grab it. And so I did. Thoreau would have approved, for I contemplated just what sixty‐five cents was and whether I was likely to find another Walden for less. I set it to one side for further consideration while I browsed through other volumes in the little bookshop on 40th Street in Philadelphia. Here was a Proust for ninety cents, here was Billy Budd, here was an old edition of Hawthorne. The Proust, however, staggered under the weight of heavy inky under‐scorings; I already had a copy of Billy Budd; and the Hawthorne, I knew, existed in much better editions. Later there was a tempting French dictionary and an interesting cache of history books, but one by one Walden vanquished all comers. By the end of the afternoon it was the only possible purchase.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Moss Helen , Bunch Allan , MCCARTHY CAVAN
Published: March 2008

I DRAW, respectfully of course, the attention of the Chairman of the British Library Board to the fact that, notwithstanding his belief that the new BL building in the Euston Road will, in the fullness of time, upstage such other mighty institutions as the Library of Congress, the latter has in the meantime upstaged the BL.
A true cautionary tale
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

WHEN WE had the drinks in front of us and were settled comfortably, my friend Theo said well then, how have you been old son and I said so‐so, because I don't like to burden him—or you—with my troubles. Then I asked after his luck and he replied, ‘Everything is fine—except the wife's back.’ ‘Where did she go?’ I enquired and Theo said in a long‐suffering tone, ‘Oh very funny, I mean her back—her slipped disc.’
And yte wores
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

IT IS NOW five years since a piece appeared in this column entitled Worse and worse and worse (NLW July 1973). It was a jeremiad about shoddy goods, commercial television, the periodical Librarians for social change and the steady decline in the quality of everything everywhere.
Comment
Authors: Moss Raymond , Redmond Ernie , Preston Tony , Day Alan , Kelbrick Norman
Published: March 2008

THERE ARE few controversies which have dragged on so long as ‘Public Lending Right’ (PLR). Originally put forward in 1951 as ‘Brophy's penny’ the controversy has raged ever since. The late Sir Alan Herbert devoted the later years of his life to it. Bills got as far as Parliament and were then talked out. The details of this unhappy story are well known, especially to the sufferers, the authors.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Lawson Sarah , Fleming Edwin
Published: March 2008

WENT TO Brittany in July for a week's holiday with my dear wife, and found it agreeaby empty of both tourists and the flood of crude oil which had enveloped the coast a few months ago when the tanker Amoco Cadiz broke up. Plenty of rain, though, so we spent the week perambulating between restaurants, and returned lighter of pocket and heavier of tum, to find a charming letter from a librarian in Hong Kong, who said he had met my sister there recently and she had expressed great admiration for me. I replied that in that case it couldn't have been my sister and would he please send a photo of the lady.
A just so‐so story
Authors: Shallow Robert
Published: March 2008

ONCE UPON A time, there were three Younger‐Elders of the Britgild. Their names were Nor, Little friend of All; Llib Thims (afterwards known as Llib of the Thousand Bookshops); and, first among these friends and equals, Kire Noom.
Comment
Authors: Hubbard Geoffrey , Redfern Margaret , Pearce Mike , Rowat Martin , Moss Helen
Published: March 2008

BOOKS and resources are the staple of learning, whether in the general form of an aspect of a subject discipline—the textbook or its non‐book resource equivalent—or in the more specialised form of the learning resource ‘ … designed … with the learning needs of particular students on particular courses’. But the very development of specific learning resources, together with the development of new technologies in the more conventional areas of library work, has brought about the need for a close association between librarians and educational technologists.
Comment
Authors: Eastcott Chris , Palmer Bernard , Griffin Brian , Herring James , Stevens Eric , Radmore David , Pearce Mike
Published: March 2008

SATURDAY MORNING. The morning after the night before. The night before was the 5.30 to 9.00 shift. Time to have a quick perusal of the professional literature to see what our elders and betters have been writing. Time to read Alan Day's ‘Comment’ (NLW October) before the first of the punters arrive in search of information, with the light of science in their eyes.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Fleming Edwin , Lawson Sarah
Published: March 2008

PROMPTLY UPON the ending of the seemingly interminable Christmas/New Year holiday—I just had to go back to work between the two, because another plate of cold‐turkey‐plus‐cold‐Xmas‐pud would have driven me insane—there landed upon my desk the first issue of the LAR vacancies supplement, a sheet of job advertisements which is to be issued fortnightly while publication of the Times literary supplement Is suspended, and may even be continued thereafter on a permanent basis if demand warrants.
Comment
Authors: Ashworth Wilfred , Byon John , Gardner Frank M , Preston Tony , Kirby Steve
Published: March 2008

AFTER 17 years continuous service as a LA Council member it seemed strange to me to attend the first council meeting of 1979 as NLW'S reporter.
Comment
Authors: Ashworth Wilfred , Barnett Graham , Hodgson Julian , Munford WA , Brice Jennifer , Radmore David
Published: March 2008

ADVERSE WEATHER conditions greatly reduced the number of members attending the February Council especially those resident in parts east. Everyone who had made it seemed to take a while to warm to their task and passed the report of the Executive Co‐ordinating Committee like lambs. With mild interest they heard that the Secretary had recommended to the General Purposes Committee that the old Council Chamber should not after all, be divided into offices but instead be made into a joint members' and staff common room. ‘More modest extensions to the toilet accommodation’ (the imagination boggles!) are part of this reduced package which saves half the projected £40,000. For council meetings a platform with furniture suitable to the dignity of the association will be provided.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Fleming Edwin , Lawson Sarah
Published: March 2008

I DON'T KNOW whether you are yet straight in your minds about the present location of the various parts of my erstwhile, present and embryonic business empires, but it will certainly clear my mind of confusion if I try to set it down here once and for all—and you are welcome to photocopy it (without comeback) for the edification of your colleagues!
Comment
Authors: Pearce Mike , Thorpe Stephen , Revill Don , Munford WA
Published: March 2008

‘THERE is a need, which is hardly appreciated in the mainstream of the profession for the training of a new type of librarian…’ p 46.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Fleming Edwin , Bunch Allan
Published: March 2008

MY SELF‐RESTRAINT in refraining until thus far through the year from mention of the game of cricket is not, I'm afraid, due to a waning of interest with the onset of old age (it's my birthday next week), but to a ripe contentment with the Ashes victory in Australia during the winter, plus the realisation that cricket is hardly a suitable subject for discussion in the arctic weather conditions we have been experiencing during the first three months of 1979.
Commonplaces
Authors: Bingley Clive , Fleming Edwin , Lawson Sarah
Published: March 2008

THE LONDON ACADEMIC BOOK FAIR, which we organised on April 30, attracted a very respectable turnout of librarians, and not just from academic libraries either. It was good to see them, and I hope they found the day useful, with 131 stands to inspect and a busy but much less frenetic atmosphere than ruled at the London Book Fair last October.
Comment
Authors: Tyson Blake , Iwaschkin Roman , Mead Gillian , Reid David , Gillman Peter , Ashworth Wilfred , Bingley Clive , Fleming Edwin , Lawson Sarah , Hills Kate
Published: March 2008

AS A RESULT of present economic problems in Britain and attendant cuts in spending, there is a need to achieve maximum cost‐effectiveness in all sectors of public spending including libraries. This article examines a simple method by which economies could be made in buying multiple copies of books. It is assumed that unless librarians have freedom to buy a single copy of any book they choose, they will not achieve the breadth and depth required of first‐class libraries, be they in the public sector or in academic institutions. Perhaps second copies need cause little concern, but a pilot survey of a polytechnic library revealed cases where as many as four, six or even eight copies of the same edition had been bought on one occasion before the effectiveness of a lesser purchase could have been evaluated.
The golden gusher
Authors: Day Alan
Published: March 2008

NOT MANY authors are spared long enough to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their first ‘bestseller’ but last month J B Priestley could sit back and reflect upon the huge success of his picaresque novel, The good companions, first published 22nd July 1929. At first it achieved a modest but steady sale, seven thousand five hundred copies were sold by the end of the month, but from then onwards it took off in no uncertain fashion; at the height of the Christmas season his publishers, who had tentatively printed ten thousand copies originally, were sending out some five thousand a day. A year after publication it was still selling over one thousand copies a week at half a guinea a time. No wonder Priestley himself described it thirty years later as ‘this giant jackpot, this golden gusher, this genie out of the bottle’.
From the States
Authors: Palmer Casini Barbara
Published: March 2008

IT IS very agreeable to have the opportunity to write a quarterly commentary on the American library scene for New library world. At the same time, the task of covering one so diverse and far‐flung seems rather overwhelming. My perspective as a public library trustee, as editor of a topical journal in library science published by the Drexel University library school, and as a consultant in information services for education will doubtless influence my idea of what is important. Generally I hope to offer NLW readers a potpourri of news and commentary on topics that seem to be timely. Suggestions of topics that NLW readers would like to know more about will be gratefully received and considered.
The Bucktrout Boys
Authors: Marvill George
Published: March 2008

IN MY BOYHOOD DAYS, I got my reading matter, apart from the Gem and the Magnet, from the local branch of the public library. The library was near our home, in a Lowry‐like suburb of Leeds, full of gaunt churches and squarely‐built chapels, tall factory chimneys and long streety perspectives. Mr Bucktrout, the librarian in charge, was a fierce‐looking shortish gentleman with pince‐nez and a shock of grey hair. When we local boys called in to exchange our books, Mr Bucktrout would look sternly at us over his pince‐nez.
Bibbleo‐news
Authors: Bibble Quentin
Published: March 2008

BIBBLEOGRAPHIC Services, Inc have now been in business for over a year, and we wondered if readers of New library world might like to share some more unpublicised information. It should be emphasised that our service is strictly supplementary to and not in competition with those already in existence. Indeed we believe ourselves to be in what the philosopher O F Windegger called ‘a mutually exclusive category’.
The ILEA
Authors: Raddon Rosemary
Published: March 2008

THE ILEA is the body responsible for education within the London area. It is an elected committee of forty eight members with the majority of seats currently held by the Labour Party, and consists of inner London councillors of the GLC, plus representatives of the twelve inner London boroughs and the City of London, as well as seventeen additional members.
Personal column
Authors: Bingley Clive
Published: March 2008

A YEAR having now elapsed since I concluded the sale of Clive Bingley Ltd, and the contract of sale having contained, at my insistence, a provision that I would remain with the company for not less than six months (to ensure a satisfactory transfer to the new regime) and not more than twelve months (to prevent the new regime being lumbered with an old fuddy‐duddy), I have now resigned my employment with Clive Bingley Ltd, and with the associated companies set up last year to encompass its projected expansion, namely K G Saur Ltd and KGS Reference Services Ltd. In lieu of my former directorships, I have agreed to act as a consultant to these companies for as long as either of us thinks I can be of service to them, a status which recognises the role 1 have in practical terms been playing during the months since the companies abandoned Pembridge Road for plushier new offices in the West End of London.
Community information
Authors: Bunch Allan
Published: March 2008

IT IS SAID THAT ‘charity begins at home’ but, as far as English law is concerned, charity begins in 1601 with an Act of Parliament of Elizabeth I. The preamble to this act lists some of the activities regarded as charitable at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although many of them are now enshrined in central and local government, the 1976 Goodman report stated that ‘Charity will never be altogether superseded by state activity even in the field of poverty and social welfare. There will always be gaps in the services run by the state.’ In addition to the nationally well‐known charities, there are numerous small charities at local level, which give valuable help and support to community groups and activities. Running or setting up a charity, there is a fair body of law covering the subject, so more than welcome is a recently published layman's guide called Charity trustees' guide, written by A R Longley. It highlights some of the most commonly asked questions about charities and indicates where the answers may be found. There is a bibliography of books, pamphlets and leaflets and a list of useful addresses. Published by the National Council of Social Service, the guide costs £1.25 from McDonald & Evans, Distribution Services Ltd., Estover Road, Plymouth.
The Shallow end
Authors: SHALLOW ROBERT
Published: March 2008

‘This Heads of Departments meeting was originally called to discuss the implications of a seven and a half per cent cut in expenditure and I must say I had some pretty sharp comments to make on the way you people spend the money I fight and sweat to squeeze out of the finance scrooges and the council. The book fund, particularly.