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THE ORGANISATION OF a survey at Manchester Polytechnic, following closely upon prolonged correspondence in a semi‐professional journal, testifies to the fear of some colleagues that the public takes a poor view of its librarians. ‘The catalogue does not mention it and the librarians here are useless,’ said Livy in the Apollo Library in Rome. But need we imagine that many modern readers would echo his verdict?

DURING THE twelve days of Christmas, between the King's speech and Twelfth Night, after the chocolate smoking set had been consumed, though not in flames and smoke, and before the Christmas decorations had sagged to waist level, I used to read my annuals.

Ex Libris, the report of the Adam Smith Institute advocating membership fees and borrowing charges in public libraries, attracted no great attention apart from a few knockabout setpieces in the press and on the radio. NLW's prize for headline of the month goes to the Daily Telegraph of 23 June: two half columns on the report were headed by Fees Demanded to Deter Library Louts. Worth reporting here if only to express editorial belief that there can't be more than two people who read both NLW and the Daily Telegraph. There was also a little to‐do on Radio 4's ‘Stop the Week’ on 28 June with Robert Robinson almost alone defending public libraries, provoking a reference from one of the chatting coterie that something was alright for the ‘Raynes Park literati’. Robinson went to Raynes Park Country Grammar School which in its day was quite a school with W H Auden writing the words of the school song. (Readers in Uttoxeter and Gosport may like to know that the school is hard by the London and South Western Railway and is probably in the new‐fangled London Borough of Merton.) The Times on the same day had a respectable second leader which concluded that the report “should make us think more about how libraries should be managed, what they should stock and who should manage them”.

‘THERE is a need, which is hardly appreciated in the mainstream of the profession for the training of a new type of librarian…’ p 46.

WHAT I WILL SUGGEST in the following paragraphs is a new look at library values. I suppose, however, we must first define values and what we mean by values.

ONE OF THE questions I get thrown at me at fairly frequent intervals by undiscerning friends is ‘Why don't you go on Mastermind/Brain of Britain/ etc? You're a librarian. You could do it easily.’

THE PROPHETESSES of Ancient Greece, who were said to provide the Delphic oracles, claimed to have gained their inspiration by breathing a mysterious vapour that rose from a cleft in the floor. This then gave them convulsions and put them in a fit state for Apollo to make use of them to deliver his messages to mankind. The whole operation was highly suspect, since the output was in the form of mutterings, and a sort of ancient information officer in the guise of a priest was needed to interpret them to the enquirer. The end product was often sound advice, although the answer to an awkward question was given in such a way that whatever happened it could be claimed to have come true.

BOOKS and resources are the staple of learning, whether in the general form of an aspect of a subject discipline—the textbook or its non‐book resource equivalent—or in the more specialised form of the learning resource ‘ … designed … with the learning needs of particular students on particular courses’. But the very development of specific learning resources, together with the development of new technologies in the more conventional areas of library work, has brought about the need for a close association between librarians and educational technologists.

IT WAS THE then Duke of Gloucester who, observing the said Mr Gibbon (of Roman Empire fame) writing, said, to quote as accurately as my reference source will allow, ‘Another damned thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr Gibbon!’

SOME twenty five years ago, in my late teens, poking about in a very dirty second hand bookshop of the sort which seem virtually to have disappeared nowadays, I came across a volume which had been very lovingly, and very clumsily rebound by hand in orange and brown morocco. It stood out from the nineteenth century sermons and the early twentieth century adventures in the Raj like some exotic tropical fruit. I took the book from the shelves and found that the front cover had on it a rather roughly executed plant design in blind. The raised bands of the spine were finished off with a small leaf design, and at the top of the spine on a dark brown and heavy label which I discovered later covered a messy attempt at tooling was the title of the book, The roadmender, in gilt. The title was also in blind on the front cover at the top and slightly askew. It was a dull day outside, and in the gloom of the shop, lit by one measly unshaded bulb, the book actually did seem to take on a luminous quality, but it was the fact that someone had clearly spent so much loving time on rebinding that made me buy it. I reasoned that if someone cared so much for what the contents had to say, either to rebind the book specially, or have to rebind it because of wear and tear, it might be worth reading. It was priced at one shilling—more than I was used to forking out in that type of shop where twopence (d) was the sort of money I anticipated paying in the days before inflated book prices. The title of the book meant nothing to me, and the name of the author—Michael Fairless—rang no literary bell in my head. But I bought it, and took it home.