Search results

FOR SOME years now Leicestershire Libraries and Information Service has organised a programme of children's summer activities—very varied activities such as storytelling in parks, special events in libraries and a ‘Magic Bus’. The aim of all these has been to encourage library use, to introduce specific titles to whet children's appetite for books and reading by means of a carefully structured programme of storytelling sessions and reading aloud, fun and games, craft sessions, drama, and competitions. Most libraries do something like this but does it actively lead to more reading—reading for enjoyment, stimulation and emotional satisfaction rather than for information related to school work and increased functional literacy? Comments received from teachers, parents and librarians showed that through the Reading Tree, children did read more for pleasure.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS subject headings are relatively unusual in this country and they do provide for some relatively unusual headings. ‘Ground effect machines’ and ‘one‐leg resting positions’ are just two examples. ‘Ground effect machines’ refers to such things as hovercraft. ‘One‐leg resting position’ however could cover books on anthropology or art. ‘Negative income‐tax’ sounds like something we would all like to receive but it's not exactly the first term which springs to mind to describe income benefit schemes. However, despite these oddities, our subject catalogue seems to be fairy well used and our new guide cards make it even easier to use.

‘WHAT A novel arrangement. Is any reason given?’

Computers have been used at Brunel University Library for acquisitions and circulation since the early 1970s. Over the years there has been a move away from locally written systems running at the university's computer centre to stand‐alone turnkey systems in the library. This has involved the transfer of the ALS card‐based system to BLCMP's CIRCO system. The implementation of BLCMP's Integrated Library System (BLS) is also described with special reference to the replacement of a card catalogue by an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) developed from the short title file of an early circulation system.

A GREAT deal is being, and has been, said about the role of public libraries in the provision of information of all kinds to the community. Sometimes there are full blown experiments such as that in Sunderland, but more likely is the gradual, evolutionary approach that most libraries have taken in recent years. Examples of libraries taking initiatives abound, ranging from stocking leaflets, to actually getting into an advice giving role, or to seeing information as simply an adjunct to more radical experiments in community librarianship. The gradualism may however be replaced, in such places as Corby, Shotton and Consett, to name three steel towns, with a more sudden push into the consideration of the underlying purpose of information services to a community.

WHEN YOU meet people for the first time and they ask what you do, do you ever hesitate about telling them you're a librarian? Do you ever qualify your self‐description with some such phrase as ‘can't you tell by looking at me?’ or ‘I don't just stamp books you know’? Do you sometimes feel diffident about describing your work? I do. The reason I react in this way is that I know people outside our information world think they know very well what we do, but in fact have very little idea. We seem to have a very strong popular image which it is difficult if not impossible to shake off.