The future pattern of information services for industry and commerce

Abstract

The origins of information and library services in British industry and commerce are not well documented, and are a difficult field of study for the historian: much early activity was spontaneous and informal, and therefore unrecorded, and the consequent difficulties of research in this field are well defined in Margaret Marshall's ‘British industrial libraries before 1939’. A major problem in gaining an overall view of the development of these services is the fact that only success stories are published in the professional press; it would be invidious to single out particular examples for comment, but a number of highly successful services have been summarily dissolved by management decision in the past decade. I have been unable to trace any published study on the causation underlying these decisions, and a vital element is therefore lacking in our appreciation of the past development of information services, but an awareness of previous successes and failures is a necessary condition of any attempt to predict their future.

Citation

Scarfe, D. (1975), "The future pattern of information services for industry and commerce", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 80-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb050495