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In addition to providing a review of the literature recently published in the librarianship of non‐book materials this survey aims to draw attention to the characteristics, problems and achievements particular to the documentation and handling of non‐book materials (NBM) in many types of libraries. The materials are briefly described and considerations of selection, acquisition, organization, storage and in particular bibliographic control are dealt with in some detail. Other areas of concern to the librarian dealing with media resources, including the organization and training of staff, planning, equipment, exploitation and copyright, are also discussed. The past decade has seen the widespread introduction of NBM into libraries as additional or alternative sources of information. Librarians have been given an opportunity to rethink many basic principles and adapt existing practice to encompass the new materials. The survey reflects the achievements and some of the failures or problems remaining to be solved in this rapidly expanding area of library work.

The fifteen years before Atkinson represented for many British university librarians a golden age, as the number and size of universities expanded, young men received promotion long before they might reasonably have expected, and funds for collections and buildings to house them became available on a scale never before seen in most British universities. The thesis of this contribution is that the “golden age” provided an opportunity for the testing of attitudes and approaches to academic librarianship which before had always been constrained by financial circumstances, and that in that test the traditional philosophies were found wanting. The Atkinson Report was a turning point when the reluctant academic library community was reminded of reality.

The use of an ICT 1905 computer for the mechanization of library procedures at The City University was considered as part of the library reorganization prior to the acquisition of University status. In view of the smallness of the library staff and the pressure of work it seemed essential to select an area which would quickly lead to relieving staff of tedious routine work, and at the same time provide useful training in computer applications. There seemed no point in attempting to duplicate exercises which were being currently tackled by larger libraries e.g. cataloguing, and the volume of loans hardly justified mechanization of circulation records at the present time.

Dr. Herbert Coblans recently remarked in a paper on the mechanisation of documentation that ‘today we can see that the achievements are not so much in the automation of information retrieval as at the level of housekeeping operations …. in libraries’. A description of an operational method of handling The City University library accounts using the computer appeared in Program and since publication it has been developed to remove major limitations, notably the upper financial limit.

The City University Library has now extended its automation programme to include the subject index to the classified catalogue, the authority files and the press‐cuttings subject index.

FOLLOWING ON from Roy Tomlinson's article (NLW July), while agreeing with much that he says I would like to enlarge on some points. I had hoped that the educational technology argument had been laid to rest after the publication in the Times higher educational supplement of correspondence occasioned by the Library Association's statements on resource centres.

An introduction to a book of papers by Maurice Line published in 1988.

Based on personal recollections and knowledge of the author.

A personal view of Maurice Line and his distinguished career.

Provides an personal insight into Maurice Line.

VINE is a Very Informal Newsletter produced three times a year by the Information Officer for Library Automation and financed by the British Library Research & Development Department. It is issued free of charge on request to interested librarians, systems staff and library college lecturers. VINE'S objective is to provice an up‐to‐date picture of work being done in U.K. library automation which has not been reported elsewhere.

When I received your Honorary Secretary's invitation to speak at this conference I was naturally very flattered—because nobody had ever asked me to speak at a library conference before—and the choice of subject suited me, since it has been my concern over the last seven years of my professional career and since I was already about to prepare a contribution to another work on much the same topic. So I accepted the invitation with eagerness. But that was several months ago, and in the interim I have been getting progressively more uneasy. The other assignment I mentioned—a survey of the last five years' production in library science literature for our new reference work BLIS—had been completed, not without a struggle, and far from thinking afterwards that I could incorporate the same material into this talk, I was led further into doubt about what I should say, doubt about why I was being asked here at all, and what my qualifications were for saying anything at all to anyone. I thought back over the conferences I had attended as an all‐too‐silent observer these last seven years and asked myself what common characteristic the speakers had that I could now lay a claim to. They seemed, many of them, to be full‐time research workers, or recipients of grants, people with a lot of ideas about the future of the profession, library school lecturers, educationists with a discerning or a patronizing interest in libraries, political figures dragooned into giving their set speeches to, for a change, library audiences, and quite simply, people talking about their day‐to‐day work. Only the last category was open to me, and you will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to talk about my work at the Library Association, except incidentally.