A Handbook for Media Librarians

Citation

Holland, M. (2008), "A Handbook for Media Librarians", The Electronic Library, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 930-931. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470810921736

The “media librarians” in the title of this book are information professionals working in newspaper and television libraries in the UK. The handbook begins with an overview by the editor setting out the issues that face commercial and public service media libraries. Clearly, like commercial libraries, they have been through a lean time, struggling with unit closures and issues of training and professional recognition. Perseverance in the face of adversity has created strong professional associations. Katharine Schopflin, the editor, is a former chair of the Association of UK Media Librarians (AUKML), as is Ian Watson, who contributes the chapter on “Legal issues for news databases and archives”. A number of other contributors are AUKML members.

The book divides into those chapters which address specific library types. Graeme Boyd writes about “Picture libraries and librarianship”, Colin Hunt about “The regional news librarian”. Other chapters deal with general issues through examples drawn from national newspaper and television libraries. Linda MacDonald, Katy Heslop, Joanne Playfoot and Katherine Schopflin contribute “The virtual media library” (I and II), offering practical advice on managing intranets and subscriptions to databases. Creating the right virtual space is important to the success of media libraries where many users will be accessing information remotely. Hazel Simpson's chapter on “Cataloguing television programmes” gives an insight into the BBC's internal catalogue INFAX, the subject of some fascination for colleagues in academia who have a research interest in media and the BBC. Schopflin has added an afterword on Independent Television News (ITN). The final chapter, “Swimming upstream in a media library”, is a personal work history – perhaps better framed as a career case study – by Carol Bradley Bursack, a columnist and newspaper researcher with The Forum, an American newspaper. This book is well written and the editor has managed a consistent of quality across all contributions. Each chapter has an editor's introduction to give a wider context. As we might expect, the book has a comprehensive index; however, references are thin. A quick check on Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) suggests there is very little on this topic in any case. Some contributions to the literature are in fact made by contributors to this title!

Criticisms are minor. Readers working in other sectors will recognise the challenges that media librarians face in training, budget management, negotiating with vendors or marketing to end users, but it is not obvious that media librarians themselves recognise that these apply across the profession or draw on a wider body of professional knowledge. No mention is made of the work by the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) in digitising and cataloguing material from the ITN archives. Having worked on digitising three independent local radio (ILR), archives the reviewer would have liked to know something about radio, or an explanation of why libraries or information departments don't exist in the radio sector.

This handbook gives us the view from the practitioner, sharing insights with colleagues in the media sector and with colleagues in academic, public and special libraries who would not otherwise gain access to the depth of experience it represents. Any researcher or information professional who has contact with media industries or who wants to work in a media organisation should read it.