David Baker, Ian Ellery, Iain Reeman and Ann Wood
This paper summarises the development, current position and future proposed enhancement of the University of East Anglia (UEA)'s electronic document delivery service. The service…
Abstract
This paper summarises the development, current position and future proposed enhancement of the University of East Anglia (UEA)'s electronic document delivery service. The service has been developed in conjunction with the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC) and began in September 1993. It now handles up to 20 documents a day, via the Library. It is hoped to transfer to desktop delivery, subject to copyright restrictions.
The management of children′s literature is a search for value andsuitability. Effective policies in library and educational work arebased firmly on knowledge of materials, and on…
Abstract
The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.
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LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER : BEFORE Opening, as we do, a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD, especially as with it we reach the venerable age of sixty‐one, does suggest retrospective…
Abstract
LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER : BEFORE Opening, as we do, a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD, especially as with it we reach the venerable age of sixty‐one, does suggest retrospective and prospective view. The magazine is the oldest amongst independent library journals, though others existed before 1899 in different forms or under other titles than those by which they are known to‐day. When at the end of last century it was felt that utterances were needed about libraries, unfettered by uncritical allegiance to associations or coteries, librarianship was a vessel riding upon an official sea of complacency so far as its main organisation was concerned. It was in the first tide, so far as public libraries were concerned, of Carnegie gifts of buildings, not yet however at the full flood. The captains were men of the beginnings of the library voyage; who were still guided themselves by the methods and modes of the men who believed in libraries, yet feared what the public might do in its use of them. Hence the indicator, meant to show, as its name implies, what books were available, but even more to secure them from theft, and to preserve men and women from the violent mental reactions they would suffer from close contact with large numbers of books. There were rebels of course. Six years earlier James Duff Brown has turned his anvil shaped building in Clerkenwell into a safeguarded open access library in which he actually allowed people, properly vetted, to enter and handle their own property. This act of faith was a great one, because within a mile or so some 5,000 books had been lost from the Bishopgate Institute Library, which has open shelves, too, not “safeguarded”. Brown's “cave of library chaos” as a well‐known Chairman, who by one visit was convinced of its good sense and practicability, called it, focused the attention of scores of librarians—so much so that Brown had to beg them to keep away for about a year, so that the method might be better judged after sufficient trial. It also focused the attention of the inventors of the indicator, who, presumably, had more than a benevolent interest in its sales. So there was war against this threat and for several years this childish contention raged at conferences, in private conversations amongst library workers, and in letters to the press aimed to convict Brown and all his satellites of encouraging dishonesty, mental confusion and other maladies public. Hence Brown, L. Stanley Jast, William Fortune and others initiated this journal to teach librarians and library committees how libraries were to be run. That, in extreme brevity, is our genesis. For sixty years it has encouraged voices, new and old, orthodox or unorthodox, who had something to say, or could give a new face to old things, to use its pages. Brown was its first honorary Editor, and with some assistance in the later stages remained so for the thirteen years he had yet to live. Nearly every librarian of distinction in his day has at some time or other contributed to these pages. So much of our past may be said and we hope will be allowed.
Digest of Education Statistics. 1962— . A. $7.00/U.S.; $8.75/foreign. Published by U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for…
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Digest of Education Statistics. 1962— . A. $7.00/U.S.; $8.75/foreign. Published by U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statis‐tics, 400 Maryland Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20202. Available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. Indexed: ASI. S/N 065–000–00037–7. Su‐Docs ED 1.113: Depository Item No. 460‐A‐10. Following a pattern of collecting statistics on education which began under the direction of the U.S. Office of Education in 1870, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has issued the Digest of Education Statistics (DES) annually since 1962, except for when it published a combined edition in 1977–78.
THE changes in London local government which came into operation on 1st April, 1965, cut across the existing regional library bureaux organisation.
Those responsible for purchasing reference books for libraries rely to a great extent on reviews that appear in those journals which, broadly speaking, constitute the library…
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Those responsible for purchasing reference books for libraries rely to a great extent on reviews that appear in those journals which, broadly speaking, constitute the library press. The idea of a library press, though it is usually identified with a number of periodicals—known either by their brief names, such as The Booklist, or by their initials, LJ, RQ, and WLB, probably should be extended to include such standard “authorities” as ALA's Guide to Reference Books and many of the volumes in Bowker's buying guide series. In these periodicals and monographs, librarians take it upon themselves to express judgments on new books that do in fact have an influence on purchase decisions.
JAMES G OLLÉ, CLIVE BINGLEY, FRANK GARDNER, TINLEY NYANDAK AKAR, MELVYN BARNES, JFW BRYON, BILL CHAVNER, KEN JONES and BRIAN C SKILLING
BY NOW, many readers of NLW will have made a pilgrimage to Birmingham to see the new central library, and many others will have resolved to do so at the earliest opportunity.
IT SEEMS THAT librarians, in common with many other forms of mankind, do not learn from history. One of the more interesting sessions of the recent La Public Librarians'…
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IT SEEMS THAT librarians, in common with many other forms of mankind, do not learn from history. One of the more interesting sessions of the recent La Public Librarians' Conference in Aberdeen dealt with the need for many more librarians in school libraries, and the kind of qualifications which would best fit them for the work. Clearly, professional training in librarianship and knowledge of the educational process are both relevant and valuable.
DURING much of the Second World War, the affairs of the Library Association were conducted for the Council by an Emergency Committee. The record of its meeting on 10th June 1941…
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DURING much of the Second World War, the affairs of the Library Association were conducted for the Council by an Emergency Committee. The record of its meeting on 10th June 1941, includes the following: “A resolution having been received suggesting that a committee be formed to consider post‐war reconstruction, it was resolved that by means of a notice in the LIBRARY ASSOCIATION RECORD, Branches and Sections should be invited to formulate suggestions for the consideration of the committee. A draft questionnaire for the purpose of an enquiry into the effects of the war on the public library service was approved”. In July, the Committee reported “further arrangements … for carrying out an exhaustive survey designed to give the necessary data for full and detailed consideration and ultimate recommendation as to the future of public libraries, their administration and their place in the social services”. The promised notice appeared as an editorial in September.
IN The verdict of you all, Rupert Croft‐Cooke has some uncomplimentary things to say about novel readers as a class, which is at least an unusual look at his public by a…
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IN The verdict of you all, Rupert Croft‐Cooke has some uncomplimentary things to say about novel readers as a class, which is at least an unusual look at his public by a practitioner whose income for many years was provided by those he denigrates.