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…
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.
CLEMENT JEWITT, MARTIN DUDLEY, ALAN DAY and JFW BRYON
The purpose of this article is to examine a little some of the ways in which the principles of librarianship may be producing beneficial effect in other fields, owing to the…
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to examine a little some of the ways in which the principles of librarianship may be producing beneficial effect in other fields, owing to the mobility of trained librarians caused partly by those dark aspects of the body economic, job stagnation and redundancy, and partly by growing opportunities.
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.
DAVID COLEMAN, CLIVE BINGLEY, JFW BRYON, WA MUNFORD and LIZ BOWMAN
The coming year will see many enthusiastic librarianship graduates emerging from colleges and universities up and down the country and taking their first professional posts…
Abstract
The coming year will see many enthusiastic librarianship graduates emerging from colleges and universities up and down the country and taking their first professional posts. Successful job applicants will be seeking to make their mark with an attitude of enthusiasm, efficiency and professionalism. However, so many newly qualified librarians fail to maintain such an attitude. Why? At a recent conference, Pat Coleman warned librarianship students that they “would feel frustrated in their first professional post after completing their courses, and that they would have difficulty in trying to bring about change”. Anna Smyth also expressed some concern at the fate awaiting many of our young colleagues; “If they remain unfulfilled, unstretched and uninterested for long they may well become bored, frustrated and cynical — a well known syndrome within librarianship”.
JFW BRYON, JIM BASKER and RUTH KERNS
Not until the prsesent writer retired from active librarianship, and became dependent upon solleagues' home reading collections, did he have revealed the inadequacy of subject…
Abstract
Not until the prsesent writer retired from active librarianship, and became dependent upon solleagues' home reading collections, did he have revealed the inadequacy of subject stocks in public libraries, including his own. Admirable books he had never heard of (but should have done) were found, it is true, but others, known to be invaluable to interested readers, were not. In particular, it became obvious that in many, possibly most, public libraries the selection available on the shelves at any one time, on any subject, is usually inadequate and unrepresentative, consisting of the books no one has chosen to borrow, while catalogue checks have indicated surprising, sometimes distressing, gaps. These latter are the more alarming phenomenon: if funds are insufficient for suplication of standard works, politicians may be blameworthy, but if they are not bought at all, it suggests that librarians do not know which are the best books.
JFW Bryon, ELISABETH RUSSELL TAYLOR, HAZEL TOWNSON and RUTH KERNS
British public librarians have long been ambivalent about fiction stock, accepting its contribution to loans statistics, but reticent, even shamefaced, about its content. Once…
Abstract
British public librarians have long been ambivalent about fiction stock, accepting its contribution to loans statistics, but reticent, even shamefaced, about its content. Once there were frequent articles in the professional press on “the fiction question” as it was called: today there are fewer such, while the volume of research, and the number of conference papers on fiction is disproportionately small compared to the staff time, money and shelf space allotted to it. Whether librarians have made a conscious decision, or the climate of the times has changed, there is now less professional agonizing over novels' role in the book stock. Strangely, however, the result seems to be much the same: observation in a number of libraries suggests that there is still a residual reluctance to accept fiction as a legitimate, important part of the service, needing and deserving as much professional thought and care, and as adequate a level of provision, as the remainder. For example, do stock editors spend as much time, proportionately, to checking the quality of their fiction as they do to subject books.
JFW Bryon, Roman Iwaschkin, Ruth Kearns and Bill Anderson
British public librarians welcomed the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 with relief: for the first time a government department was made responsible for public libraries and…
Abstract
British public librarians welcomed the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 with relief: for the first time a government department was made responsible for public libraries and (it was hoped and assumed) norms were going to be established. Communities, Clause 7(i) said, were entitled to “a comprehensive and efficient service” and, innocent as we were, we thought we had gained an advantage over academic and special libraries, which had no such legal warrant for minimum standards. Few would claim that anything of the kind has been achieved.
FRANK WINDRUSH, DAVID STOKER, ALAN DAY, JFW BRYON, DON REVILL, KC HARRISON, DAVID T LEWIS and FRANK JANNOCK
ENVY, GREED and a desire for possession are not particularly attractive qualities to display in print but if they are recognised and acknowledged in what follows, then at least my…
Abstract
ENVY, GREED and a desire for possession are not particularly attractive qualities to display in print but if they are recognised and acknowledged in what follows, then at least my argument may not suffer unduly.