Access, Delivery, Performance: The Future of Libraries without Walls – A Festschrift to Celebrate the Work of Professor Peter Brophy

Mike Freeman (West Midlands CILIP, Coventry, UK)

New Library World

ISSN: 0307-4803

Article publication date: 2 October 2009

114

Keywords

Citation

Freeman, M. (2009), "Access, Delivery, Performance: The Future of Libraries without Walls – A Festschrift to Celebrate the Work of Professor Peter Brophy", New Library World, Vol. 110 No. 9/10, pp. 476-477. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800910997526

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


A welcome and timely Festschrift from the reputable professional press of Facet Publishing in honour of the noted librarian Professor Peter Brophy. His distinguished and lengthy career, particularly in the research and statistics arenas, has had a significant and lasting impact on the profession and practice of librarianship in this country and this Festschrift rightly and competently celebrates his work.

A glittering array of eminent contributors, ranging from Alan McDougall's helpful and comprehensive Introduction through to Michael Buckland's interesting account of the birth of Lancaster University Library and the Lancaster Library Research Unit – a radical milestone in library research. It is difficult to remember now how small and unorganised library research was before the mid‐1960s in the UK – “doctoral study related to libraries was rare and dealt with historical bibliography and library history... there was no tradition of serious research into practical library problems”.

This Festschrift also contains excellent readable and informative papers from a wide range of eminent library practitioners, such as Jenny Craven's article on library services to visually impaired people, where Peter Brophy as Director of CERLIM made a significant impact on library services for this disadvantaged group. Similarly, John Dolan's well written and thoughtful overview of public libraries and their key role in sustaining democracy and education provides a useful insight into the problems and opportunities facing the public library sector today.

The Festschrift has an excellent and comprehensive bibliography of Peter Brophy's writings and a good index, and the work is well produced, readable and of value to most LIS practitioners, particularly perhaps those in the academic libraries sector. It is a real pleasure to see such a stimulating and influential librarian celebrated so well by so many of his peers.

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