Search results

Although libraries provide quiet and well‐equipped places for students to seek and use information, the trend librarians are seeing is a decline in the number of people coming to the library. In contrast, they are seeing a dramatic increase in the use of remotely accessed research databases. From these two trends emerges the concept of disintermediation, where library users seek and retrieve information without the assistance of the librarian, and the realization that librarians are no longer present when users need help in developing successful search strategies and evaluating the information they find. Librarians are not present at that teachable moment. To overcome the effects of disintermediation, librarians need to evaluate their services and recreate their instructional strategies in innovative ways so that they are available to the users of information wherever those users are.

WITH the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).

With the Pompey doldrum in mind, many misgivings were expressed about the Rothesay conference as the delegated gravy trains raced north to Glasgow. (Incidentally Sir Brian Robertson will find comfort in our belief that rail travel is the most satisfying way to attend conference with corridor exchanges and dining car badinage shortening the long haul).

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.