The Library World Volume 67 Issue 4

Abstract

IN 1946 there was in the British Isles a clear image of librarianship in most librarians' minds. The image depended on a librarian's professional environment which was of the widest possible range, not less in variation than the organisations, institutes or types of community which required library services. Generalisations are like cocoanuts but they provide for the quickest precipitation of variant definitions, after the stones have been thrown at them. A generalisation might claim that, in 1946, public librarians had in mind an image of a librarian as organiser plus technical specialist or literary critic or book selector; that university and institute librarians projected themselves as scholars of any subject with a special environmental responsibility; that librarians in industry regarded themselves as something less than but as supplementing the capacity of a subject specialist (normally a scientist). Other minor separable categories existed with as many shades of meaning between the three generalised definitions, while librarians of national libraries were too few to be subject to easy generalisation.

Citation

(1965), "The Library World Volume 67 Issue 4", New Library World, Vol. 67 No. 4, pp. 91-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009500