bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Libraries and the Student of Railways
Authors: Highet Campbell
Published: March 2008

THE ACCUMULATED MASS OF RAILWAY LITERATURE in the form of books, periodicals, papers to learned Institutions, Parliamentary papers, and so on, has grown to gigantic proportions in recent years, and today as our own British railway system is shrinking the volume of that literature is increasing in inverse proportion to the shrinkage. That is only reasonable because much of the history of railways, not only of this country but of the world, has not yet been adequately documented, and if the railway is, as well it might, almost wholly surpassed by road and air transport, the omission must be repaired as soon as possible, if only to leave for posterity a record of a phase in the life of Man: and it must be done before any more valuable material is disposed of as salvage.
A Lifetime of Hero‐worship
Authors: Brill Barbara
Published: March 2008

IN SAMOA seventy‐five years ago this December, Robert Louis Stevenson died far away from his ‘hills of home’. Samoa has chosen to commemorate this occasion with a special issue of postage stamps, each one carrying a head of Stevenson and scenes from some of his well known books. From Treasure Island, Long John Silver is shown hurrying up the beach with his parrot, Captain Flint, on his shoulder, while the schooner, Hispaniola, is lying at anchor in the background with sails furled, flying the Jolly Roger. From Kidnapped, Alan Breck is seen striding over the moors on a stormy evening with David Balfour in the distance. From Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mr Hyde is shown walking out into the foggy night while Dr Jekyll drinks the evil potion. From Weir of Hermiston, Archie Weir and Christina Elliott are seen meeting at the Weaver's Stone.
A Librarian of No Importance
Authors: Ollé James G.
Published: March 2008

WHILE SO MUCH remains to be done on the lives of librarians who were truly eminent, it may seem perverse to explore the career of a librarian who was in no way outstanding. But the character of an age may sometimes be revealed as well by the lives of the obscure as by those of the great, and that is my main reason for returning to the life of Henry Bond.
Hilaire Belloc's Centenary
Authors: Collingwood Frances
Published: March 2008

SIR JOHN SQUIRE once said, ‘The man who attempts to survey the writings of Belloc will think he is undertaking the literary history of a small nation’. And, with that wise comment in mind, these few remarks in commemoration of Hilaire Belloc's birth centenary will be mainly focused on the man himself, as far as that is possible.
James Hogg and The Ettrick Shepherd
Authors: Mack Douglas S.
Published: March 2008

IN 1947 JAMES HOGG'S NOVEL The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner was republished with an enthusiastic introduction by André Gide. Gide wrote that he had read the novel ‘with a stupefaction and admiration that increased at every page’, but nevertheless he was unable to find a cultured Englishman, American or Frenchman who had read the book or knew anything about its author. Since 1947 Hogg's novel has won a high reputation, a reputation which has been further enhanced by its recent publication in the Oxford English Novels series.
The Publishing of Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell
Authors: Hargreaves G.D.
Published: March 2008

IN 1846, Charlotte Brontë was attempting to find a publisher for the sisters' first book—a selection of their poems. It was a bad time for poetry. In the earlier years of the century it had flourished remarkably with the rise of Scott and Byron, whose popularity brought record sales, but by the 1840s the demand had declined, and while prose fiction had a reasonable market, poetry was unwanted. Even the arch‐publisher of Victorian poets, Edward Moxon, was not keen to undertake the Poems (1844) of the established Elizabeth Barrett, and showed some reluctance even in the publication of Wordsworth. By 1848 Charlotte had come to appreciate ‘that “the Trade” are not very fond of hearing about poetry, and that it is but too often a profitless encumbrance on the shelves of the bookseller's shop’. It is little wonder, therefore, that of 1846 she later wrote: ‘As was to be expected, neither we nor our poems were at all wanted…. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom we applied.’
The Catnachs of West Africa
Authors: Fordyce A.J.
Published: March 2008

A FEW YEARS AGO I worked for a while in a university in Northern Nigeria. Its main campus was at Zaria, a hundred miles or so to the south, but the department in which I worked was housed—somewhat incongruously and pending the erection of permanent buildings—in the old Airport Hotel at Kano. One's lectures were punctuated by the occasional roar of a VC10 taking off for Rome and London, but the inconveniences of the place were more than compensated for by the old city of Kano itself. A drive of four or five miles from the airport led one past the Sabon Gari, the Strangers' Quarter where all those from Southern Nigeria lived, along the walls of the city and to the Nassarawa Gate. Once inside, one stepped back almost five hundred years into the Arabian Nights, one felt. Certainly the atmosphere of the city with its mud‐walled houses dominated by the huge mosque, and the colossal market‐place with its leather and metalwork, its occasional veiled Touaregs, armed with yataghans, strolling among the white‐robed inhabitants, the stalls with Maria Theresa dollars and the sight of the occasional camel‐train leaving for the Saharaall these captivated me, and like many expatriates I fell in love with the place and its people, and became convinced of the superiority of the pure Islamic culture to the effete and westernized south.
The Hero without a Name: B. Traven's “The Death Ship”
Authors: Braybrooke Neville
Published: March 2008

THE DEATH SHIP is the most famous of all B. Traven's books. When it first came out in Germany in 1935, it sold over 200,000 copies before it was banned. It is subtitled ‘The Story of an American Sailor’—although it could as well be called ‘The Story of a Hero without a name’. Perhaps the term ‘Hero’ needs definition in this context, since ‘the song of the real…hero of the sea has not yet been sung’, writes the author in the first chapter.
The Bavarian State Library
Authors: Phillips John A.S.
Published: March 2008

THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE between the larger German and English libraries is that, whereas English libraries like the British Museum and the Bodleian are not lending libraries, the German state libraries are. Hence the difference of emphasis in structure and organization or—put another way: the extreme simplicity of English set against the extraordinary complexity of German libraries. In the Bodleian one is still a person with a name. In the Bavarian State Library one is a computerized number. In the Guildhall Library in London uniformed assistants bring the books to one's place. In the New York City Library small boys dart about on roller skates in the magazine to fetch the books from the stacks. In Munich the books are delivered along rollers controlled by some magnificent robot to one of the five counters to which as a Reader one has been assigned—that is, if the books which one has ordered are present. Often they are not, which is obviously the disadvantage of allowing readers to take them home. Yet even to have obtained confirmation of their absence is an achievement which may have taken days!
To My Mother, but for whom this article would not have been written
Authors: Joseph Tony
Published: March 2008

MANY LIBRARIANS collect books. I collect authors' dedications. I find this a fascinating pastime. Skim through any shelf of books that takes you fancy, and you will be surprised how many dedications even so casual a search will reveal. You will be surprised too how varied they can be.
The High Purposes of Literature: Robert McLellan and his work
Authors: Leach Allan
Published: March 2008

MY INTEREST in Robert McLellan's work is a fairly recent one, dating as it does from shortly after my arrival in Scotland five years ago. Several pointers made me anxious to know more of his plays and other writings, not least an article by Miss Moira Burgess. I found, however, that an interest was easier to arouse than to satisfy: bibliographies listed practically nothing by him; my own local collection catalogue (McLellan has been an Arran resident since 1938) showed only two articles, one by and one about him, and inquiries of colleagues elicited only surprise that they could find no more than I had done.
Days of Industry: Anna Jameson 1794–1860
Authors: Agelasto C.P.
Published: March 2008

IN THE DAYS BEFORE TYPEWRITERS, stenographers, and tape‐recorders, when every word of a book was written by hand, revised by hand, and eventually printed from the handwritten manuscript, the industry required to produce such a history as that of Gibbon is remarkable. How much more remarkable the industry of women writers, in days when authorship for women was not always regarded as a respectable profession. Consider the output of Jane Austen, compelled to write in a corner of the family sitting‐room, and to conceal her papers hastily if a caller arrived, or Mrs Trollope, nursing her dying son by day, and writing all night to support her family.
Some Early Whitehaven Printers
Authors: Hay Daniel
Published: March 2008

THE ART OR PRINTING was first introduced into Cumberland in 1735 when Thomas Cotton came to Whitehaven at the invitation of Sir James Lowther. Whitehaven was at that time an expanding town with a growing trade with Ireland and the colonies of Maryland and Virginia.
The Dedication of John O'Hara
Authors: Ready William
Published: March 2008

THE RELICS OF A WRITER, his manuscripts, typescripts and memorabilia, have no life of their own, but they give life: they generate and resurrect. Too often they are abused, their products peddled to advance a thesis of no virtue, but this is the nature of things. Yet without them, properly handled, as they should be in an archive, there is no revelation: and not just for scholars either, less for them than for those who love O'Hara. Just a contemplation of them can bring some of him back to those who love and have some inkling of the concern and the care he had for his craft and his creation. He was a concerned man; he had a conscience. He sought and engaged the craft and sullen nature of his gift until it became as much a part of him as his fist. It became as much a part of him as his mind and body; it became his life. No photostat, microform, information retrieval can ever, will ever, replace the true relics, so that the place that holds them becomes for all who need or desire them a singular place, a side altar as well as a memorial. This is both meet and proper, for John O'Hara was a religious writer. He was not unique in this—all good writers are, one way or another—but he was one, especially; a moralist, in a Brooks Brothers shirt, in his bespoke shoes off Peal Brothers. Writing was his rod and his staff. To die in harness, shining in use, was his good luck that we must be thankful for. Requiescat in Pace, as he wrote of Philip Barry, another of them, in his dedication to him of The Farmers Hotel, a book that notched me. O'Hara knew what he was about. He was like one who keeps the deck by night, bearing the tiller up against his breast; he was like one whose soul was centred quite in holding course although so hardly pressed. And veers with veering shock now left now right,
The East African School of Librarianship
Authors: Plant Robert
Published: March 2008

THE EAST AFRICAN SCHOOL of Librarianship was the brainchild of S. W. Hockey, at one time Libraries Organiser in East Africa for the British Council. In 1960 Hockey submitted a report to the Governors of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, proposing the establishment of a joint librarianship school for the three territories. This was at a time when a big expansion of the public library service was taking place, or at least was being planned, throughout the region, but Hockey also foresaw that a fast growth of school and specialist libraries was bound to come within the decade. It would have been difficult at that time to find a single fully qualified African librarian in any of the three countries.
Samuel Brown and George Miller: A Mystery
Authors: Durbidge L.G.
Published: March 2008

THE STUDENT OF PUBLIC LIBRARY HISTORY soon accepts without surprise accounts of opposition to the public library. It is perhaps remarkable that a forerunner or pioneer of the public library idea should have encountered it when what he did was of his own volition and to some degree at his own expense, and when he laid no claim to public finance for his idea.
Playwright of the Western World
Authors: O'Riordan John
Published: March 2008

‘WHY MUST EVERYBODY IN IRELAND’, says Sean O'Faolain, in one of his recent flashes of inspiration, ‘live like an express train that starts off for heaven full of beautiful dreams, and marvellous ambitions and, halfway, Bejasus, you switch off the bloody track down some sideline that brings you to exactly where you began?’ Such highly coloured comment might equally well be applied to the characters and situations we find in the plays of that Dublin genius—the centenary of whose birth we are commemorating this year—John Millington Synge. The writings of both authors, incidentally, are characterized by a rueful, amusing, gently self‐mocking tone about Ireland and the Irish. Both adopt a wider, detached, almost continental view of their country. Synge, in particular, refers to Ireland as the furthermost corner of Western Europe and himself as an Irish European.
Marjory Fleming—Myths and Mists
Authors: McNeill Carol
Published: March 2008

ON THE 15TH OF JANUARY 1803 Marjory Fleming was born in a house in the High Street of Kirkcaldy; and in her short life of almost nine years she wrote the diaries and poems which have made her something of a legend. But was she really a child genius, protegée and dear friend of Walter Scott, and the toast of literary Edinburgh—as some of her biographers would have us believe? The mists of Victorian sentimentality are hard to pierce, and facts have become confused by romantic embroidery.
The Wolseley Library in Hove
Authors: Dove Jack
Published: March 2008

IN THE PERIOD 1925 to 1927, at the request of Viscountess Wolseley, the Corporation of Hove erected and equipped at Hove Central Library at a cost of £1100 a room known as Viscountess Wolseley's Room. This room, established and endowed by Viscountess Wolseley, was dedicated to the study of agriculture and horticulture. It was built on the site of a former roof garden; semicircular in design, it was intended to be the repository of books, prints, documents and other objects which would form sources of local history. The official opening was on 31 July 1928, and to mark the opening Viscountess Wolseley arranged a series of exhibitions to display aspects of social life in Sussex in bygone days.
Dewey Decimal Classification: A Vigorous Nonagenarian
Authors: Tait James A.
Published: March 2008

THE FLAVOUR of the eigtheenth edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification can perhaps best be appreciated by a quotation from its preface: ‘The Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee hopes that this Edition 18 will prove to be a happy combination of the high principles of Edition 17 and the ease of use of Edition 16.’ This reference to ‘high’ principles might raise the eyebrows of the founder of the scheme. Ease of use he would heartily endorse. The high principles referred to are the concepts of subject integrity and the hierarchical nature of the schedules and the notation. These particular high principles were suddenly discovered by the editors of Edition 17, though they had been implicit in all classification schemes since 1876, with the exception of J. D. Brown's Subject Classification. In this country we would prefer to call subject integrity ‘classification by discipline’. In spite of this emphasis on classification by discipline, the conflict between this concept and the opposing one of ‘facet analysis’ which was present in previous editions is still present in Edition 18. The two processes work in opposite directions and the basic problem is to decide where classification by discipline should cease and facet analysis begin. Derek Austin, in a talk to the Cataloguing and Indexing Group of the Library Association in April 1967, pointed this out. For example, in 630 Agriculture the method of facet analysis is clearly at work. We have the energy facet stated at 631–632 under operations and problems in agriculture. The crop facet follows at 633–635, with the ability to qualify certain crops by operation and problem. This is pure facet analysis. But, as Austin points out, at 658 Management we find classification by discipline in operation:
The Novels of James Kennaway
Authors: Mackay Hugh
Published: March 2008

MANY WRITERS have something to say to us; a few speak to one's condition. For some of us, of this time and place, James Kennaway was one of those few, and this is why news of his death in December 1969 had for many people to whom he was known only through his work the impact, almost, of a personal loss.
Printer to Sir Walter Scott
Authors: Collingwood Frances
Published: March 2008

THE LIFE OF JAMES BALLANTYNE, Scottish printer, is so interlaced with those of his brothers, John and Sandy, and with the misfortunes of Sir Walter Scott, that it is impossible to give any sort of account of him as a single personality. He was bedevilled by influences that twisted what might have been a prosperous career into a condition that came to near financial disaster.
The Professor and I
Authors: Hay Daniel
Published: March 2008

‘I KNEW Sandy was really ill, at that time’, she said; ‘he had gone back to reading Walter Scott. He always does when he is very poorly.’
Galt on Scott
Authors: Timothy Hamilton B.
Published: March 2008

These notes on Sir Walter Scott by John Galt, here published for the first time, have been transcribed by Dr Hamilton B. Timothy, Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Galt Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, from a manuscript among the material given him by Henry Gordon Harvey Smith, Q.C., a great‐grandson of John Galt, and his sister, Mrs Muriel Harvey Turner, of Winnipeg. John Galt's youngest son, Alexander, with whom Galt's widow made her home after the novelist's death in 1839, became the Hon. Sir Alexander Galt and Canada's first Federal Finance Minister; from him John Galt's library and miscellaneous papers passed to his youngest daughter, Annie Prince Galt, who married Dr W. Harvey Smith, a distinguished opthalmologist. (In 1930 he had the rare honour of holding at the same time presidency of both the British Medical Association and the Canadian.) His carefully augmented collection of Galt family papers, inherited by his son and daughter, has now been passed to Dr Timothy for use in connexion with his study, The Galts: a Canadian Odyssey. At the same time the family collection of John Galt's writings—in sixty‐eight volumes, many from the novelist's own library—was presented to the library of the University of Western Ontario. For permission to print these interesting notes we are indebted to Mr Harvey Smith and Mrs Turner. The annotations initialled C are by Dr Robert Hay Carnie of the University of Calgary.
T. S. Eliot and Children
Authors: Braybrooke Neville
Published: March 2008

T. S. ELIOT often showed a preoccupation with childhood, and at times this preoccupation showed itself as a search for a lost Eden. In Burnt Norton the leaves are alive with the laughter of children:
Heritage of Trees
Authors: Baines Ruth
Published: March 2008

LIME GREEN and olive, emerald and bottle—the trees of England are coming into leaf again and our woodlands show a myriad shades of green. A legion of poets will turn in their graves if the Forestry Commissioners ever succeed in their apparent aim of substituting serried ranks of conifers for Britain's age old variety of trees.
Righter than Right: A Scot on Libraries in the Days of Louis Napoleon
Authors: Jones Graham
Published: March 2008

THE NEW REFORMATION SOCIETY, founded apparently at the end of 1860, finds no place in Greenwood's Free Public Libraries (1886), and from its title appears to deserve no such place. But Greenwood was an Englishman and a Liberal, and the Society owes both its character and its relevance to libraries to its founder, the Scots‐born businessman, Alexander Alison. Since in Britain authoritarian politics are never taken seriously, the man and the body deserve some attention.
Theodor Fontane and the Daughters of Albion
Authors: Phillips John A.S.
Published: March 2008

ONCE when Theodor Fontane, the celebrated nineteenth‐century German poet, was invited by his friend Wilhelm Wolfsohn to write an article about English women, the poet replied that he knew no more about English womenfolk than he knew about Patagonians, that they were large, or about Caribbeans, that they were supposed to eat human flesh. Yet later on, at the beginning of his last and longest stay in England (1855–9) he was prepared to offer his wife a most trenchant criticism on this subject after an encounter with a redoubtable English woman, the sister of an admiral, who ‘shamefully annoyed’ the poet by reproving him for appearing at the breakfast table unshaven.
Acquisitions and Collections
Authors: Ready William
Published: March 2008

THERE IS TREASON ABROAD in the world of learning; le trahison des clercs is rising among us today and is more virulent than was the original conspiracy. The current conspiracy is against collections. We are surrounded now by those who are wedded to the University in an unholy sacrament whereby the bride, the shrine of learning, the Library, is being degraded to becoming a mere machine of information that will spew out facts at the touch of a button, facts which are replacing knowledge. There are buildings within our present experience that are called Libraries, wherein books are of minor importance. There are scholars who have told space‐hungry and building‐conscious administrators that electronics and new means of communication have replaced the book as a major matter of the Library. Information has set in.
A Competent Man
Authors: Wilson Raymond
Published: March 2008

IN JANUARY 1899 an advertisement appeared in the national daily newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian, the Leeds Mercury, the Birmingham Post and the Standard: ‘Wanted a competent man as Chief Librarian and Secretary, Salary £100 per annum. Copies of testimonials and particulars as to character, ability and experience to be sent to Hon. Secretary of the Stanley Library, Town Hall, King's Lynn, on or before the 27th inst.’
A Choice of Pseudonyms
Authors: Joseph Tony
Published: March 2008

ELIZABETH, Queen of Roumania between 1881 and her death in 1916, was a writer. For many years she turned out verses and stories purely for her own interest and that of her private circle, but then one day it occurred to her that as what she wrote seemed to go down well with friends and acquaintances, it might reasonably, therefore, be worth publishing. At the same time, though, she did not wish to publish under her own name. What name should she use instead? She wanted it, she said, to be something Latin, as she now belonged to a Latin country, and eventually she fixed upon the combination Carmen Sylva (carmen being the Latin for song, silva for forest), explaining: ‘I began in the woods and found my best songs in roaming through the forests of my home on the Rhine.’ It was certainly one way of choosing a pseudonym.
Baildon: the Development of a County Branch Library
Authors: Marsterson W.A.J.
Published: March 2008

THE WEST RIDING COUNTY LIBRARY celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1971. Its history has already been written, and adds considerably to our understanding of the development of library services during the present century. The present study seeks to add some local detail to the story of that great library system, by following the development of one of its branches.
Visitors
Authors: Hay Daniel
Published: March 2008

THE TELEPHONE rang and after the usual signs that the call was coming from a box somewhere I said, ‘Whitehaven 3504.’ The time was 9 p.m. and I had been half expecting a family call; but this, obviously, was not it. The voice that came over the line was quite markedly North American.
Reminiscences
Authors: Murison W.J.
Published: March 2008

IT MAY BE APPROPRIATE to open with a quotation, and who better to pull the curtains than Viscount Eccles who once made a very wise statement: ‘If a man has good manners and is not afraid of people, he will get by—even if he is stupid.’ Ministers did not make encouraging remarks like that when I was young. You will probably agree that if a man is to make any headway in his chosen profession he will need his fair share of opportunities at the right time. There is a strong element of time and chance in our lives, and I have been fortunate.
Chronological Order
Authors: Hodges Kenneth
Published: March 2008

A LIBRARY that moves towards becoming an information centre mirrors those attempts made in the political sphere to construct a community out of a fragmented reality, rife with escapism. Mircea Eliade, in discussing the myth of the élite, calls the fragmentation which modern, man experiences part of a complex process, the cyclic mythological behaviour characteristic of archaic and traditional societies where Chaos is followed by a new creation.
The Boys' Friend
Authors: Collingwood Frances
Published: March 2008

NO TRIBUTE to the gallant R. M. Ballantyne could have been greater than the action of the boys of Harrow School who, upon receiving the news of his death in 1894, spontaneously decided to start a collection so that a monument might be erected to perpetuate his fame. To them, as indeed to so many nineteenth‐century boys, Ballantyne was that admirable man who had provided them with the sort of adventure stories for which they craved.
A Touch of Class: Impressions of Hillhead Library, Glasgow
Authors: Whatley Allan
Published: March 2008

HILLHEAD is Glasgow's West End, densely populated by mainly middle‐class citizens. The district has been crying out for a library service for fifty years. Now it must be very proud to have acquired such a magnificent building and stock, together costing £620,000. Byres Road, just over half a mile long, is the busy hub of this district. It is a road connecting two of the city's main radial arteries and is part of an inner ring road. It is continuously lined with shops, banks, pubs, cinemas; in fact, it resembles the High Street in a town of 60,000 population.
The Literature of Retirement
Authors: Green Muriel M.
Published: March 2008

MEN AND WOMEN about to retire are not always fortunate in having lectures on retirement available in their locality as, for example, Londoners have in the twelve‐week courses at Morley College (61 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1), where the Greater London Council, the Inner London Education Authority, Shell, and other big employers allow their staff afternoons off to hear specialists speak on pension problems, taxation, health, part‐time work, psychological and other problems of retirement.
Nineteenth‐Century ‘Swingers’: The Movable Press at the British Museum
Authors: McCrimmon Barbara
Published: March 2008

IN A LIFETIME OF SERVICE to the British Museum Library, Richard Garnett was especially proud of one contribution for which he had difficulty in getting recognition. This was the ‘hanging’ or ‘sliding’ or ‘swinging’ extension press, a movable book case which he claimed the honour of having introduced into the library in 1887 to accommodate some of the overflow of acquisitions then plaguing the Department of Printed Books. Unfortunately, he let another share in the invention and came close to losing all credit for it.
Tuition in Library Use as a part of Open University Preparatory Courses
Authors: Pearce B.L.
Published: March 2008

SURVEY IN JULY 1971: ‘Librarians and tutor librarians from technical colleges, colleges of education and of further education scattered throughout the country converged on Coombe Lodge … to discuss the changes taking place within FE and their likely impact on the library service.’
Reading Habits and Book Supplies in Cameroon
Authors: Kelly Michael
Published: March 2008

CHINUA ACHEBE wrote once from the Nigerian situation that local reading was entirely for profit, exam‐passing, promotion, and never for pleasure. Almost the same comment is appropriate for Cameroon. I have dealings with students at primary and secondary and university levels, and with teachers and civil servants, religious, businessmen, military personnel. I give advice about courses of study and textbooks. I lend books and order books from England for interested parties. I have only once in five years found a Cameroonian reading for apparent relaxation or pleasure: a provincial Divisional Officer, caught in his residence with a copy of Churchill's memoirs. Could that have been ‘business’ reading? The only other Cameroonian I know who regularly reads Churchill, and Macmillan, does so for political and stylistic reasons, which are for ultimate profit, overtly admitted, rather than for sheer interest and fun.
A Storm in a Chalice
Authors: Olden Anthony
Published: March 2008

DUBLIN DID NOT LACK literary talent in 1924. When Francis Stuart, his wife Iseult, and Cecil Salkeld decided to bring out a new periodical devoted to the arts, they found little difficulty collecting material. W. B. Yeats and Joseph Campbell contributed poems, Liam O'Flaherty a short story. Lennox Robinson—dramatist, director of the Abbey Theatre and secretary of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust's Irish office—was too busy to write anything specially, but offered a story written years previously in New York, ‘The Madonna of Slieve Dun’. The first issue of To‐morrow: a New Irish Monthly (price sixpence) appeared in August. Within six months the Carnegie Trust's Irish Advisory Committee was suspended and Robinson, its secretary, dismissed.
Librarians—Italian Style
Authors: Roxas Savina A.
Published: March 2008

AFTER spending the necessary time in Italy required for the field research for my doctoral dissertation on library education in Italy, I realized how little is known today about Italian librarians and their contributions to the development of Italian librarianship. As a gesture in view of this state of affairs I would like to present brief sketches of two of Italy's eminent librarians: Guido Biagi and Giuseppe Fumagalli, each of whom was ahead of his time in Italy in promoting the liberal use of libraries by the general public.
Macvey Napier (1776–1847): Literary Man of Parts
Authors: Ballantyne George H.
Published: March 2008

EDITOR, author, lecturer, lawyer, legal administrator, librarian: Napier was each of these. In the first capacity he was best known; in the last, least. Educated with a view to becoming a lawyer, he was admitted Writer to the Signet in 1799; became librarian to the Society of Writers to H.M. Signet in 1805; lecturer in Conveyancing at Edinburgh University in 1816 (later Professor); editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1813, and of the Edinburgh Review in 1829; and Principal Clerk of Session in 1837.
A. E. Housman's Shropshire
Authors: Offord John
Published: March 2008

IN 1896 A. E. Housman was an erudite Professor of Latin at London University with a growing reputation both for his translations from the more obscure classical authors and for acrid criticism of scholars whose work failed to maintain his high standards. The same year his book of verse, A Shropshire Lad, was published, causing his name to be inextricably linked with Ludlow, the Wrekin, Wenlock Edge, Shrewsbury and the River Severn. Whilst the book was slow to gain popularity, it eventually attained the rare honour of being read by those who normally did not read poetry, its public undoubtedly widened when the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams put some of the poems to music in his famous song‐cycle ‘On Wenlock Edge’. The general public acclaim conferred on a somewhat reluctant Housman the title of ‘The Shropshire Poet’.
STACK ROUTINE:
Authors: WHATLEY ALLAN
Published: March 2008

AS FAR AS I know very few libraries have a designated post of Shelves Assistant. Firstly, it is necessary for there to be a reference library of ancient vintage and of considerable size, say, upwards of half a million items. Secondly, the library building must be near to the end of its available shelf space but with little prospect of getting an extension or a new building for ten or twenty years.
MOBILE MANAGEMENT
Authors: JOHNSON GORDON
Published: March 2008

OPERATING a mobile library service is not a subject currently considered in library schools to any great extent. Perhaps this is as things should be, for what the librarian in charge needs ideally is a course in transportation management, including a basic grounding in the mechanical aspects of vehicles.
AMERICA'S PACEMAKER FOR WHITFORD
Authors: McFARLANE GAVIN
Published: March 2008

• Life plus 50
SOUND LIBRARIANSHIP IN STRATHCLYDE REGION: AUDIO SERVICES, SUMMER 1977
Authors: BORLAND MADGE
Published: March 2008

The practical spin‐off from expensive research projects is not always apparent. Ms Borland's survey was not funded, promises to be useful, and is remarkably up‐to‐date. LR asks contributors of survey‐type articles to state the date at which data‐gathering was completed.
BOOKS, LIBRARIES AND BACKS TO THE LAND
Authors: NOAM ASHER J.G.
Published: March 2008

“Deep in all of us”, wrote a Homes and gardens sub‐editor in April 1965, headlining Elspeth Huxley's article A cottage on a hillside, “is a craving for a quiet country retreat, old, mellow and secluded.” If true, this had clearly been true of England at least for a very long while. “Of late there has been a positive spate of books about living in the country”, wrote Philip Gosse in 1935. “The rustic life is all the rage.” “The cult of the country cottage”, declared J. Gordon Allen in 1912, “which was thought a few years ago to be merely a passing whim, has recently developed apace”. The manner in which a sizeable proportion of the English middle class were persuaded over several decades to forsake or at least to contemplate forsaking urban living is of some interest to, amongst others, sociologists and social historians. Since we are concerned here with the bibliographical aspects of this radical shift of attitudes, it would be as well to dispose at the outset of one possible analysis: namely the idea that literary precedents had much to do with this. Agreed, masters of urban living much earlier than the English—the Romans—invented apparently the away‐from‐it‐all stance: Horace, generals returning to the plough with Rome saved, the Georgics. Agreed also, their Augustan imitators had much to say about places in the country. But consider Wootton's
D. E. EDWARD, GEORGE DOUGLAS BROWN, AND “THE POOR OF COYLTON”
Authors: CAMPBELL IAN
Published: March 2008

When the brilliant and solitary author of “The house with the green shutters” died young, not a little tidying‐up remained to be done. That, in the absence of a public library in rural Ayrshire, is what the librarian of Ayr Burgh set out to do.
CO‐OPERATION: NON‐BOOK MATERIALS
Authors: PINION CATHERINE
Published: March 2008

It would not be amiss to begin by considering definitions. “Co‐operation” is understood to be the means of making existing resources available to other libraries and organisations, thereby improving services. The interlending of printed materials between libraries is but one form. More specialised co‐operative effort is reflected in schemes such as SINTO, HULTIS and LADSIRLAC which involve the maintenance of adequate subject coverage within an area, and the means whereby librarians can meet to discuss and solve common problems. In its fullest sense, however, co‐operation has come to mean more than just a method of making existing resources available to the widest number of people; it has come to include the means whereby libraries (and other organisations) can work together towards new objectives which they might be unable to reach on their own. As Dr. Jefferson says in Library co‐operation:—
FICTION: THE NEW SUTHERLAND CLEARANCE
Authors: GRIFFIN BRIAN
Published: March 2008

Fiction and the fiction industry is a first‐class piece of cultural journalism, and is bound to be a lively source of instruction for anyone at all concerned with that “industry”, be he librarian, bookseller, publisher or novelist. Every page abounds with facts and figures, and every page is interesting. Dr Sutherland is exhaustive in his survey, without being exhausting; he is both hard‐headed and light of touch. For the most part, he lets his subject speak for itself.
NEITHER BROWN NOR BEAUTIFUL: MOLE RE‐EMERGES
Authors: BEST GRAHAM
Published: March 2008

First appearing in 1903, the Manual of library economy has been with us for seventy‐five years. Like any other septuagenarian, it has witnessed many changes during its life. Each successive edition has attempted to update and make relevant the content of the book to the most recent contemporary developments and conjectured future trends in practical librarianship.
THE RESOURCES OF NOSTALGIA: LOCAL STUDIES LIBRARIES
Authors: PETTY M.J.
Published: March 2008

Within the framework of the Reference, Special and Information Section, the Library Association now has an organisation which can put the views of librarians who have special responsibility for local studies. It has become apparent that the problems facing such librarians in metropolitan areas differ somewhat from the situation experienced by local studies librarians in the Shire Counties. The organisation of local studies differs widely both between these types of authority and within authorities themselves.
STAFF PARTICIPATION IN ACADEMIC LIBRARY GOVERNMENT
Authors: ANDERSON ALEX
Published: March 2008

Conventional wisdom has long held that senior staff in university libraries should have parity with their teaching colleagues not merely in salaries and general conditions of service but also in eligibility to participate in general university government through Senate, faculty boards and the like. The case for such participation and the benefits deriving to the university and to the library were well stated in the Parry Report twelve years ago; and in the US a whole monograph has been devoted to the topic of faculty status. That senior staff should also participate in the government of their libraries through departmental meetings, as their teaching colleagues do, is a proposition less frequently stated until more recently, in line with the increasing emphasis placed on the teaching side on participation at departmental level.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AS LEARNING
Authors: YOUNG RONALD G.
Published: March 2008

Policy planning and local government is one of these rare books which both illuminate and excite—and should be on every bibliographical list given to students of local government.
MAKING ROOM FOR BOOKS
Authors: CANE V.R.
Published: March 2008

For every library, at some time, the question of removing some older books in order to make room for new ones must arise. In a personal library the owner can scrutinize each book and decide how inconvenient it would be to have it stored in a box somewhere rather than available on the shelves. A large library with many users requires some strategy for identifying the books to be scrutinized and perhaps stored; only two possible criteria can really be used, date of publication and use. In the case of periodicals, relegation by date is necessary if runs are to be kept in sequence. We discuss in this paper, therefore, only the problem of relegation of monographs, and restrict ourselves to relegation by use.
THE DISTANT DECADE: CAITHNESS COUNTY, 1925–1935
Authors: HAY DANIEL
Published: March 2008

Basically I doubt whether the Wick Public Library, which I first knew as a child, and later as an assistant, has altered much externally, unless it has been extended in some way at the back. It was a handsome building, standing on a road junction; one wing containing the newsroom with museum above lay along Sinclair Terrace, the other at right angles to it lay down Cliff Road which led to Bridge Street. This wing had a large room on the ground floor originally designed as an amusements room, but as I remember it used as a stock room for the Caithness County Library when it was formed. Above it was a room planned as a ladies' magazine room, but used in the 1930s as a work room.
BEYOND ALTHUSSER
Authors: SHARPLES STEPHEN
Published: March 2008

The title of Barry Hindess' book suggests yet another text which claims to set out the most useful methods for social science. It is nothing of the kind. Instead it is a brilliantly iconoclastic work which systematically sets about dismantling a great deal of sociology's claim to produce knowledge. For good measure Hindess throws in also major assaults on philosophers of science and social science such as Schutz, Husserl, Popper and Winch.
THE OVERSEAS LIBRARY CONSULTANT
Authors: STEPHEN PARKER J.
Published: March 2008

The overseas library consultant is not a new phenomenon on the world library scene, but has become increasingly familiar in recent years. Whilst there are earlier isolated examples of the employment of foreign librarians as consultants or advisers, their use on anything like a regular basis was first undertaken in the years between the two world wars by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which sent a number of leading British and American librarians on advisory missions to East, West and Southern Africa, to the West Indies and to Australia and New Zealand in connection with its programme of aid to overseas library development. This programme continued, on a somewhat reduced scale, after the Second World War, when it was gradually overtaken in importance by the work of other agencies such as the British Council, the United States government aid agencies and the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations — in particular, by Unesco.
AFRICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES: A CONSUMER VIEWPOINT
Authors: WILLIAMS GEOFFREY J.
Published: March 2008

My first experience of an African university library was at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone in 1963. The library, serving one of the earliest established universities in Sub‐Saharan Africa, was then housed in a linked series of wooden buildings (formerly part of a military hospital) ventilated by louvred windows and fans, in which library staff struggled valiantly against the trials of Freetown's hot and humid climate. The book stock, some of it dating from the last century, was climate‐stained and insect‐eaten and successive dustings of laterite had left its unmistakeable imprint (and smell). Whilst I was at Fourah Bay the library moved to occupy the first stage of new and air‐conditioned premises. This included a room in which the rich collection of early Sierra Leoneana could be brought together. A few years later I moved too, to Ahmadu Bello University in the savanna belt of northern Nigeria where, for much of the year, the book collection (and readers) baked in a poorly ventilated concrete box. That library as well has since moved to a more spacious and air‐conditioned building. Since 1974 I have been at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. Here, at 1250 metres elevation on the Central African plateau, climatic problems are much less acute, and we are also fortunate in having an exceptionally well designed library with a book stock founded in the heady years of Zambia's immediate post‐independence period when copper prices were booming, and funding relatively easy. Today the major problem is that of maintaining the high standards of library provision established in those more affluent early years. Apart from lengthy association with these three libraries, I have also had a more casual acquaintance with university libraries in a number of other African countries (and elsewhere). In making these comments on the African university library, I do so as an expatriate (geographer) academic able, I hope, to view sympathetically these libraries relative to other such libraries in the world, and to do so in the context of the particular constraints of the African/Developing World situation. Despite an interest in things bibliographical I can claim no specific library expertise.
VISITORS TO BRITAIN
Authors: WISE MICHAEL
Published: March 2008

The foreign student likely to come to the UK to study Iibrarianship will probably be enrolling for a postgraduate course or a Master's qualification of at least one year's duration. There will also be those (although fewer in number) who come for a three year degree or for a doctorate. A surprisingly large number — especially during recent inflationary years when sterling has declined before many firmer currencies — are privately sponsored individuals from countries where library education is well developed, and there has been a minor manifestation during the seventies of interested younger inhabitants of what used to be called the Dominions, coming to live and study in Europe and to make contact with what they can discover of their origins. Along with these have been a smaller number from the United States and the European continental countries.
THE COMPANY, THE COMMON MAN, AND THE LIBRARY: LEADHILLS AND WANLOCKHEAD
Authors: JACKAMAN PETER
Published: March 2008

Of all industrial activities in these islands that of mining is perhaps the oldest. The extraction of the mineral wealth of the country — tin, iron, copper, gold, coal and so on — has been carried out since Roman times in most parts of the UK. The scale on which this was done in different periods and locations varied considerably. Coal mining, for example, as soon as it advanced beyond a quite primitive stage, involved fairly large units of exploitation with several hundred people employed, while tin mining in Cornwall was carried out often by fairly small family units of between thirty to forty individuals, lead mining falling mid‐way between these mo extremes and employing between 50 and 200 men usually. The principal lead mining areas in Great Britain were: [1] Durham and Northumberland (the North Pennine field) [2] the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire [3] the Derbyshire Peak [4] Flintshire [5] Cardiganshire and south west Montgomery and [6] the Lanarkshire and Dumfriesshire borders. Of these the Scottish field was the smallest, contributing about 5% of the total British output. Commonly a major problem facing those trying to exploit these mineral resources was the isolated location of many of the mineral areas. Employers had to attract workers to the mining location. To do this they found it necessary to resort either to the forcible pressing of paupers and felons, thereby instituting a form of serfdom to bind the worker to the mine for life and, effectively, to bind his children after him, or to providing conditions and amenities which would prove attractive to free workers.
CATALOGUE STRATEGY: HELD UP AT THE LIGHTS?
Authors: ESCREET P.K.
Published: March 2008

Writing primarily for an American audience, two recent authors take as their starting point the fact that over the last decade the success of automated cataloguing systems have thrown into sharper relief the deficiencies of the card catalogues into which their products have so often been filed. (Just how often is suggested by the fact that OCLC printed over 52 million cards in 1975). These deficiencies, coupled with the approach of 1981, when the Library of Congress is to close its card catalogues and to adopt AACR2, have driven libraries to give serious consideration to alternatives to the card catalogue.