Comprehensive and Efficient? 4. Bibliographies

Abstract

Until 1950, British librarianship was unimaginably handicapped by the lack of a national bibliography. Try to visualise the difficulty of providing a competent (let alone comprehensive) service without BNB's weekly issues as aids to selection, or its cumulations for bibliographical checking, and the problems caused by reliance solely on trade listings. Today, with so many national and international bibliographies (general and subject) indices and abstracts available a vastly improved service is feasible, yet not every colleague has taken advantage of the opportunities by acquiring the maximum range possible and using them to the full. McColvin wrote in his famous Report that reference service was the great failure of British public libraries: he might justifiably have added that within reference provision generally, the weakest aspect has been the bibliographical.

Citation

BRYON, J. (1985), "Comprehensive and Efficient? 4. Bibliographies", New Library World, Vol. 86 No. 6, pp. 105-106. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb038640