Search results

The dreary months of midwinter are enlivened for university librarians by the arrival on their desks of the annual reports of their colleagues. These reports, from whichever part of the world they come, are now almost without exception variations on two main themes. First the achievements of the session under review accompanied by statistics which show increases on the considerable achievements of the preceding session. Second a plea for greater sums of money to buy more books, to pay more staff to process and exploit them, and often to build new libraries or extensions to house growing collections and larger student numbers.

The benefits that photographic and allied printing methods, particularly photolithography and microphotography, have brought to libraries during the past half‐century are examined. The history of the application of these techniques is outlined. Their rapid growth coincided with the unprecedented increase in university foundations and student numbers and with the great expansion of research. Librarians have been the main customers for reprints and virtually the only customers for micropublications yet they have had very little influence over the suppliers. Because they are completely different in format from books, micro‐forms have presented special problems in acquisition, cataloguing, and use. Despite early predictions microphotography has not radically altered the nature of libraries and has not generally been used to save space. It is passing through a transitional phase because of the development of computers and other new equipment. Computer output microfilm (COM) catalogues are now commonly to be found in libraries.

Discusses the foundation of Leeds Library in 1768 (which was a time of expansion in the wider world) and its founders. Describes the subsequent history and growth of the library, and of its librarians. Briefly indicates the present healthy state of the library which it attributes to the position of the library in the centre of Leeds and the will of the proprietors for it to survive.

The origins of CURL in the 1980s lay in its members’ need to share machine‐readable catalogue records ‐ an aim materially assisted by the establishment of JANET. Funding from the Wolfson Foundation and the University Grants Committee enabled the development of a consortial database of catalogue records, based in the University of Manchester from 1986. CURL became a limited company in 1992, with charitable status, and established itself as a reseller of records, through OCLC, addressing wider issues for research support through input to the Follett Review of academic libraries in 1993. The transformation of the CURL Database into a national OPAC followed from the award of national funding in 1994/5 and, with the Consortium’s membership growing to more than 20 by 1996/7, CURL has embarked on a systematic strategic plan designed to exploit its members’ extensive holdings of research materials for the benefit of the wider scholarly community.

THE reader should not be misled by James Thompson's title into expecting a history of university libraries chronologically from Alexandria to Atkinson or geographically from Bolivia to Taiwan. The aim of this volume of fifteen essays is more modest and more uncertain. The editor's original idea, one suspects, was for a survey mainly of the last 30 years' developments in British university libraries, with overseas contributions to give the international or comparative dimension. The contributors however—nine from the United Kingdom, three from the United States, one each from Canada and Australasia, and one expatriate Briton from Italy—have interpreted their brief variously. The period covered by each consequently varies considerably. With the somewhat anomalous exception of Italy the countries represented in the “comparative” essays belong exclusively to the Anglo‐Saxon tradition in the universities and their libraries. Despite the limited connotation of “international”, this book may be read as a complement to the recent SCONUL‐German symposium on the current situation in British and German university libraries to gain a somewhat more truly international overview.

AWAY FROM THE MURKINESS of industrialization and yet near enough to the Metropolis to get there in sixty minutes or less! Such is the position of the person who is fortunate enough to dwell in the south of England's green and pleasant land. No fogs; few belching chimneys —although the nationalized industries have disfigured the landscape not a little; hardly any snow; no heavy industry; sleek, crisp‐moving electric trains; rolling downs and crystal sea.

To describe the part played by Maurice Line in the use of survey evidence and performance information in the management of academic libraries, commencing with the publication of the “Parry Report” in 1967.

The Parry Committee found little practical evidence in 1963, and had to commission some work. Two studies carried out by Line at Southampton University were available, and this and other work by Line featured significantly in the committee's work. The emergence of Line as a major figure in the development of academic and research libraries, the further development of the use of an evidence‐based approach to the management of academic libraries, and the links between these two factors are outlined.

The advance of Line's professional career was accompanied by a substantial output of highly‐regarded professional writing, which incorporated original thought and an evidence‐based approach to a degree which was unusual for that time, especially from somebody in a relatively junior post. The paucity of similar work prior to 1970 is outlined and the development of the empirical approach, especially through the work of the newly‐founded Library Management Research Unit (LMRU) is described. The 1976 report of the Atkinson Committee is portrayed as confirming the importance of evidence for the future management of academic libraries.

Sketches the early stages of a career which has had a profound impact on the development of academic and research libraries since 1960.

Miss Elizabeth Petree has been appointed Administrative Assistant to the Director of Aslib, and joined the staff in November. Miss Petree was Deputy Secretary of the College of General Practitioners from 1954 to 1964. She was earlier employed at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

As our Flashbacks for this issue clearly show, public relations is no new subject as far as librarianship is concerned. The only thing that seems to change is the name under which it operates. In 1911 it was called, without any subterfuge, advertising. By 1936 it had become publicity. And now it is public relations, and a subject which British librarianship is at last taking seriously.

THE Report of the Committee on Libraries, which was issued by the University Grants Committee in the summer of 1967, had for long been called the Parry Report after its Chairman, Dr. Thomas Parry, formerly Librarian of the National Library of Wales and at the time the Principal of University College of Wales in Aberystwyth. When it was first set up in June 1963 the terms of reference were as follows: