The Library World Volume 59 Issue 1

Abstract

OUR fifty‐ninth volume is opened by this issue of the Library World, which has survived longer than any other independent library periodical. Some reflections, which may indeed seem repetitive, seem to be natural in the circumstances. We have a sense of gratitude to the number of readers, who as writers and subscribers have sustained us so long and will we trust continue to do so. From the first we have adhered closely to the thesis that our business was with the conduct of libraries and the activities, even personal ones, of librarians but not with their private affairs. We have endeavoured to initiate and to describe methods many of which are now commonplace in their acceptance. Thus J. D. Brown our founder and first Editor published in this his series on charging systems; Louis Stanley Jast his serial on his own cataloguing methods; Dr. E. A. Baker made known his views on the annotation of books; J. D. Stewart and Berwick Sayers wrote for those pages their study, afterwards published as the book The Card Catalogue—these are a few examples. The lighter forms of librarianship writing may be said to have been initiated in this country in our pages, for example the reports of the Pseudonyms' meetings which, it must be confessed, have a vague relation only to what actually took place at them; and the over‐thirty years' serial, Letters on Our Affairs, initiated in 1913 by one who became a world famous librarian, established, especially in its first decade, this style of critical writing which has had so many imitators.

Citation

(1957), "The Library World Volume 59 Issue 1", New Library World, Vol. 59 No. 1, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009414