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Let me begin by reassuring you that this paper is not a survey of the literature of the film. The library of the British Film Institute contains just over 10,000 books and pamphlets relating to the film, and even a hasty survey of a body of literature of that size and complexity would occupy us all night. Most of this literature, moreover, falls outside the scope of the bibliography I am compiling on which this paper is based: a bibliography of film librarianship. My subject this evening, therefore, is limited to the literature that deals in some measure with the art, the science, or, if you prefer, the discipline of film librarianship; the collection, organization, and treatment of films in libraries. That there is such a discipline is, I think, warranted by the existence of this group, and if there are still some unbelievers in that great grey sea of librarianship beyond Aslib, I trust the Cataloguing Code that has been so methodically (I almost said painfully) formulated at the fortnightly sessions of your Cataloguing Committee will be fully recognized as the birth certificate of a new and vital branch of the ‘penurious science’.

When a film is being made a much greater footage of material is exposed than is required for the final production. The ratio varies from four to one to fifteen or twenty to one. The former would apply to a rigidly scripted film where each shot can be exactly specified and prearranged, the latter to a film where the action is unpredictable and cannot be planned, as, for example, in filming racing of any kind.

The National Film Library was established in 1935. Since that time, under the guidance of Ernest Lindgren, the Curator, it has grown into a collection of 6,000 films dating from 1895.

In accordance with the custom of previous years, Aslib organized a series of meetings in London during the autumn and winter of 1951–2. The first of these was held on 7th November, 1951, at Chaucer House, when Mr. J. P. Torrie, Work Study Officer of the Work Study Section, Technical Department, Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., spoke on Method Study. The Chair was taken by Mr. Bernard Ungerson, Staff Manager of the Distillers Co., Ltd.

The present state of film information is nothing short of chaotic. Individual organizations do sometimes keep records of films in their own fields of interest and occasionally publish these lists. The Educational Foundation for Visual Aids has catalogues of films of use in direct teaching; the Royal Institute of Chemistry has published a list of films on chemistry; the Scientific Film Association has published many catalogues on different subjects but these are restricted—because the Association lacks funds—to subjects on which another body is prepared to spend money. The British Film Institute has extensive records but these exist only in the form of its own card indexes and are available only at the Institute's premises. If information is to be wholly useful, it must be freely available and known to be available. The haphazard nature of current sources of film information makes it extremely difficult for the outsider to use them.

The film approach to history in this paper I want to consider the film as source material for history in the sense that palimpsest and parchment, hieroglyph and rune, clay tablet and manorial roll are source materials—fragments, sometimes fragments of fragments, often defaced by time, and applied to purposes of historical reconstruction rarely contemplated by the original authors. For the most part I shall not be particularly concerned with the various philosophies of history—whether it is the job of the historian to lay material dispassionately before the student so that he can make up his own mind about what happened in the past, or to digest source material in order to arrive at the truth—that is, what the historian may hope is the whole incontrovertible real truth, or to digest source material, as Macaulay and Carlyle digested it, in order to justify something in contemporary life or thought. All that need be said here for the moment is that films can be used, as other historical source material can be used, for various and different historical purposes.

This series of articles, now in its fourth year, has been designed to fill a gap in the bibliographical coverage of library literature which is covered by no other publication. Its aim is to spotlight those items in the year's production which are likely to be of direct practical value to the librarian or information officer working in a small organization. Such persons are frequently without previous training and experience of the work and need assistance in selecting from the ever‐growing volume of writings on librarianship those items which are likely to be of assistance to them in their work. This review aims at doing this; eliminating all purely theoretical discussions and descriptions of practice in large libraries, except where it is felt they can be of practical application in the small department, and including not only descriptions of library practice but also works of reference of which, even if they are not held in his library, any librarian should know something. No attempt is made to include only those items published in a particular year, but it is hoped that the list is in general representative of items received in British libraries in the year in question, and that between the articles in the series all important items have been covered. The volume of literature from which the choice must be made continues to grow, and the choice of individual items is necessarily a personal one, with which others may be expected to disagree, particularly over the omissions, but it is hoped that it will serve as a useful guide to those for whom it is intended.

The serious shortage of teaching films suitable for use in university‐level work was an important theme in the opening address by Mr John Maddison at the recent conference on ‘The Use of Film in Higher Education and Research’ held at the Birmingham College of Advanced Technology.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

APPARENTLY, informed gossip has it that the transfer of the Library Association's own library to the British Library is all agreed (at the time of writing) bar the actual signatures to a document of sale.