Search results

1 – 10 of 10
Per page
102050
Citations:
Loading...
Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 31 December 1998

Kate Folkard

Many young people may need support during their transition to independence, particularly if they have been forced to leave home or care before they are ready for independent…

51

Abstract

Many young people may need support during their transition to independence, particularly if they have been forced to leave home or care before they are ready for independent living. A good practice guide has just been published jointly by the Chartered Institute of Housing and Local Government Association.

Details

Housing, Care and Support, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-8790

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 March 1907

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with…

47

Abstract

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with advantage be devoted again to the consideration of its value as a modern library appliance. Passing over (a) the decision of that curiously constituted committee formed in 1879 to consider and report on indicators, and (b) the support which it received in 1880 from the Library Association, it may be said that for the next fourteen or fifteen years the indicator system was the popular, almost the universal, system in vogue throughout the country. Of late years professional opinion as to its value has undergone a remarkable change. The reaction which has set in was brought about chiefly by the introduction of Open Access in 1894, with the many reforms that accompanied it, though much, doubtless, was due to the prevalence of a more exact and systematic knowledge of librarianship, and to the natural evolution of ideas. It is not, however, intended in this paper to compare the indicator with the open access system, but with others suitable to the requirements of a closed library.

Details

New Library World, vol. 9 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 March 1909

A classification scheme by its notation does not do more than locate the subject; therefore, after the books are classified according to the scheme adopted, a secondary…

33

Abstract

A classification scheme by its notation does not do more than locate the subject; therefore, after the books are classified according to the scheme adopted, a secondary arrangement must be provided for the shelves, whereby books in a given class may be arranged in some order to accelerate finding and to differentiate one book from another. There are several methods in vogue of so arranging books in a given class, but one's choice will be, to some extent, determined by the System of issue in use. The usual methods are by:—

Details

New Library World, vol. 11 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 November 1916

The recent resolution of the Aberdeen Libraries Committee to stock shilling books, which was commented upon somewhat acidly by our contributor “Eratosthenes” last month, has…

26

Abstract

The recent resolution of the Aberdeen Libraries Committee to stock shilling books, which was commented upon somewhat acidly by our contributor “Eratosthenes” last month, has aroused rather widespread interest. In particular it has given rise to an article in the Newsagent in which it is argued that the admirable policy of certain publishers in recent years of publishing standard works at cheap prices, has completely demoralised the argument for the lending department of public libraries as at present organised. As anybody can buy whole sets of books at a shilling a volume, the supposed necessity of a public institution providing books vanishes. The public library, if it is to retain its utility, ought to eschew such works and confine its function to more expensive works not attainable by persons of ordinary means; and much else. This is an example of the rather cheap trade reasoning in which a certain type of journalist delights to indulge. The aim of the public library, in his view, is so to adjust its activities that it shall not spoil the chance of a book‐seller selling one or two copies of a work in any given town. In actual fact its business is nothing of the kind; it is to supply the representative literature, first of this country, and then of the world, so far as its limited means permit, and price is an entirely secondary or tertiary consideration. It would be as reasonable to exclude daffodils from public parks because bulbs are cheap, and every man who wants them can buy them for himself, as to exclude any great book from a library because it happens to be cheap. Writers often enunciate good principles from low motives, and the principles which should determine the librarian against the cheap book are the qualities of fragile paper, poor type, poor sewing and poorer binding, which must necessarily accompany cheap books. Cheap “libraries,” which parade in the guise of text books or manuals of knowledge, should be excluded for reasons already given in these pages; they pretend to do what in most cases it is impossible to do. Bishop Mandell Creighton, in addressing library students at the London School of Economics, stated as a postulate of reading, that the student should always go to the largest book on his subject, and that in an equal amount of time he would gain more knowledge from the large book than he would from any brief conspectus of his subject. The fact that a journal should presume, from obviously inadequate knowledge, to question the utility of public lending libraries, in which shilling books form but an infinitesimal fraction of the stock, is surprising only to those among us who do not know that every journalist imagines he has been divinely inspired by Providence to expatiate upon libraries.

Details

New Library World, vol. 19 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 August 1915

Before the appearance of our next issue, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association will have taken place. In many ways, as indicated last month, it will be an interesting…

23

Abstract

Before the appearance of our next issue, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association will have taken place. In many ways, as indicated last month, it will be an interesting meeting, largely because it is in the nature of an experiment. International conditions, the state of national and municipal finance, the absence of library workers with the colours, and the omission of social events, all tend to influence its character. It is possible, however, that these very circumstances may increase the interest in the actual conference business, especially as the programme bears largely upon the War. The programme itself is formidable, and it will be interesting to see how the section on the literature of the war, for example, will be treated. Probably the Publications' Committee have in mind the book symposia which are a feature of the meetings of various library associations in the United States. These consist of a few minutes' characterisation, by an opener, of a certain book or type of literature, and a discussion after it. The experiment was attempted in London last year at one of the monthly meetings, but owing to a misapprehension the speaker gave an excellent lecture on Francis Thompson of more than an hour's duration, when he had been expected to give a brief description of Francis Meynell's biography of that poet. If any gatherings for a similar purpose are arranged, we hope the speakers will be primed sufficiently to avoid that error. As for social events, their omission is less likely to be felt in London than anywhere else in the Kingdom. London is a perennial source of social amusement in itself, and the evenings can readily be filled there—“chacun à son goût”—really better than by attending pre‐arranged gatherings.

Details

New Library World, vol. 18 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 October 1912

THE recent Home Office Return showing the names of all places in the British Isles in which the Public Libraries Acts have been adopted, and supplying the statistical information…

26

Abstract

THE recent Home Office Return showing the names of all places in the British Isles in which the Public Libraries Acts have been adopted, and supplying the statistical information regarding issues, income and expenditure, etc., is an interesting testimony to the extent to which the Public Library has entered into the life of the community. The summary of the statistics (which are for the year ending 31st March, 1911) gives the following results. The population of the places in which the Acts have been adopted is 26,370,582; the total number of volumes in the libraries is 10,995,115 (of which 3,366,549 are in reference libraries); the total issue is 54,690,222; and the total expenditure is £814,932. These figures vary considerably from other recent surveys, but this is caused by the method of compilation of the Return. Duly recorded reference issues are included, for example, and no allowance is made for the millions of unrecorded references. According to this Return there are six library systems in the British Islands issuing over one million volumes per annum. These systems are as follows:—

Details

New Library World, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 October 1983

W A Munford

A thousand is a good old age; even Methuselah failed to achieve it. It is even a good age for a journal. I have spent many a happy hour in the Cambridge University Library's…

19

Abstract

A thousand is a good old age; even Methuselah failed to achieve it. It is even a good age for a journal. I have spent many a happy hour in the Cambridge University Library's department of dead periodicals and I know that those that have failed to achieve the present magic number are indeed many. James Duff Brown did better than he knew when, in July 1898, his new sixpenny monthly found its way into the libraries. Its pre‐history also is not without interest but as I discussed this in fair detail in LW 800 (February 1967) and subsequently in James Duff Brown (pp 51–58) a few sentences of summary may now suffice. JDB founded LW primarily to assure himself of a continuing and regular journalistic medium on the justified assumption that MacAlister's Library was unlikely to remain the LA ‘organ’ after 1898 and that Henry Guppy (1861–1948) as volunteer editor of the projected new LAR was most unlikely to offer him comparable scope. For by 1894 JDB had become MacAlister's right‐hand man for the public library side of the Library; after 1894, when the open access revolution began in Clerkenwell, he had also become a very controversial one. It is far from easy now to visualise a state of affairs in which public library readers were not themselves admitted to the shelves. Nevertheless, the early libraries issued books only on request and after they had been found by members of the staff. Civil wars frequently follow revolutions and the open access one was no exception; until his death in 1914 JDB faced much well‐entrenched opposition.

Details

New Library World, vol. 84 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 March 1908

WHEN David Laing, sometime the learned librarian of the Library of the W.S., wrote that a very good social record of most countries possessing a romance literature of any fair…

30

Abstract

WHEN David Laing, sometime the learned librarian of the Library of the W.S., wrote that a very good social record of most countries possessing a romance literature of any fair extent could be written from their popular songs and ballads and historical tales, he made no very debatable postulate. He merely showed a greater appreciation of the value of romance literature than most people—even librarians—would on first thought consider it deserving of. But his opinion of its value as historical material was shared by no less eminent a literary scholar than Sir Walter Scott, who drew from the springs of romance when compiling his Tales of a Grandfather, and that this work did not suffer through Scott's utilization of romance literature in its compilation is proved by the fact that it is, despite its eighty years of existence, the most popular, as well as “the soundest thing” (to quote Saintsbury) that exists on the matter of Scottish history.

Details

New Library World, vol. 10 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 July 1908

THE catalogue, as a library appliance of importance, has had more attention devoted to it than, perhaps, any other method or factor of librarianship. Its construction, materials…

75

Abstract

THE catalogue, as a library appliance of importance, has had more attention devoted to it than, perhaps, any other method or factor of librarianship. Its construction, materials, rules for compilation and other aspects have all been considered at great length, and in every conceivable manner, so that little remains for exposition save some points in the policy of the catalogue, and its effects on progress and methods. In the early days of the municipal library movement, when methods were somewhat crude, and hedged round with restrictions of many kinds, the catalogue, even in the primitive form it then assumed, was the only key to the book‐wealth of a library, and as such its value was duly recognized. As time went on, and the vogue of the printed catalogue was consolidated, its importance as an appliance became more and more established, and when the first Newcastle catalogue appeared and received such an unusual amount of journalistic notice, the idea of the printed catalogue as the indispensable library tool was enormously enhanced from that time till quite recently. One undoubted result of this devotion to the catalogue has been to stereotype methods to a great extent, leading in the end to stagnation, and there are places even now where every department of the library is made to revolve round the catalogue. Whether it is altogether wise to subordinate everything in library work to the cult of the catalogue has been questioned by several librarians during the past few years, and it is because there is so much to be said against this policy that the following reflections are submitted.

Details

New Library World, vol. 11 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Access Restricted. View access options
Article
Publication date: 1 February 1908

44. The Author and Title Catalogue should comprise entries for all books under authors' names, under titles where necessary, and under series if any, and should include references…

20

Abstract

44. The Author and Title Catalogue should comprise entries for all books under authors' names, under titles where necessary, and under series if any, and should include references under any other names or words necessary to its use as an efficient means of reference : the whole arranged in one alphabetical sequence.

Details

New Library World, vol. 10 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

1 – 10 of 10
Per page
102050