Three yards a penny!

Abstract

IN THE LATE 1950's and early 1960's when the search for identity was a national pastime, some librarians found it difficult to concentrate on their work because they were totally involved in the question of a professional identity. Their confused concern ranged from the omission of librarianship from the indexes of books discussing the professional and middle classes, to the lack of occupational slang among public librarians. The only example, unearthed from a hundred years of public library practice, was ‘shelf‐bashing’, for the shelving of books. This was promptly dismissed as a post second world war adaptation of the army slang for foot‐drill—‘square‐bashing’.

Citation

SHALLOW, R. (1972), "Three yards a penny!", New Library World, Vol. 73 No. 11, pp. 305-306. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb038079