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We have met to celebrate — and rightly so — the completion of twenty‐one years of the publication of a great journal: twenty‐one years of hard work for more than one of us here tonight — the first Program author will speak to us shortly. Program represents a significant and abiding contribution to the literature of librarianship and occupies, according to my measurement, two feet of library shelf space.

To provide a broad overview of the history of the journal Program: electronic library and information systems and its contents over its first 40 years.

Analysis of content from the original published material, as well as from abstracting and indexing publications and from minutes of Editorial Board meetings.

The publication has grown from modest beginnings as a newsletter for UK university librarians to a respected refereed journal with a wide international readership.

An analysis of the content of articles published on computer systems in libraries and information units over the last 40 years.

In this issue are published two Briefs — using a new fast‐track route to publication. The first, reporting briefly on recent research by Fowell and Levy, we have categorised as a Research Brief. The second describes work applying new methodology to a management problem at the University of Sussex Library and it has been categorised as an Application Brief.

The first quarterly issue of The Journal of Documentation was published in June 1945. In an introductory note the first editor, Theodore Besterman, defined a document as ‘anything in which knowledge is recorded’ and documentation as ‘any process which serves to make a document available to the seeker after knowledge’. His experience indicated that librarianship and bibliography, … classification and filing [and] photographic and mechanical methods of reproduction would be some of the channels of documentation which would guide knowledge to the enquirer. His foresight warned him that there would be many other channels. His ambition was that the new journal's attention would not be limited by national boundaries. His wisdom, acknowledging the unpropitious nature of the post‐war times, advised a quiet beginning for such a universal undertaking.

Herbert Coblans died on 18 March 1977. Those of us who knew him personally have lost a highly esteemed colleague and friend: the world of librarianship has lost one of its most able proponents. But his memory and his influence will be more lasting and, for many of us, will serve to direct and inspire the practice of our profession for many years to come.

Real‐time, or on‐line computer control of circulation records, is being studied at The Queen's University of Belfast. This paper describes in simple terms the real‐time method of operating a computer and suggests a library model based on this. Two experimental real‐time computer library situa‐tions are described: at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M. M. Kessler is operating an indexing system which is capable of possible expansion to library catalogue size, while at the IBM Los Gatos Library an experimental ordering and cataloguing system is operating. Plans for the circulation control experiments at Queen's University, Belfast, are presented and discussed. They provide for interrogation of the loan file to provide information about any book on loan, and for automatic recall and reserve routines. The experiments will also include cost analyses.

Edith Margaret Robertson Ditmas — ‘E.D.’ to her staff and many colleagues, ‘Edith’ to her family and friends — was appointed General Secretary of Aslib in May 1933 in succession to Mr S. S. Bullock, and was redesignated Director in 1946. She retired from that post on 28 February 1950, being succeeded by Leslie Wilson. In June 1947 she took over the editorship of the Journal of Documentation with effect from the beginning of volume three, following the appointment of the founder editor, Theodore Besterman, as Counsellor, Bibliographical and Library Centre, Unesco. She continued this work until 1962. A note by Geoffrey Woledge in the June 1962 issue of the Journal informed readers that Miss Ditmas was being succeeded as Managing Editor by Miss Barbara Kyle ‘who has contributed to the Journal in the past and is now taking up a full‐time post on the Aslib staff’. It reminded readers that Aslib's establishment of the Editorial Board in 1947 had only been intended as a temporary measure (its membership in 1947 comprised F. C. Francis, D.J. Urquhart and G. Woledge) and with reference to Miss Ditmas continued:

The purpose of this paper is to provide some of the institutional and operational context of the University College Dublin (UCD) School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) prior to 2000.

The history of the School, its predecessor, and the context in which it operated after 1977 is briefly outlined, using contemporary published and in‐house archival evidence, from the 1960s to the late 1990s.

Areas of convergence with UK library information science (LIS) education are identified, but also some key differences regarding LIS workforce recruitment, and third level educational provision in Ireland. Factors which influenced the curricular development of the school are cited, in particular the role of the UK Institute of Information Scientists, founded in 1958.

The study is based on contemporary published sources, and a preliminary examination of SILS archival evidence which has survived from the decades in question. Valuable records concerning the education and training role of the Library Association of Ireland, founded in 1928, have been recently analysed by Ellis‐King. A proposal for research funding to enable further exploration has been submitted.

Owing to its focus on Ireland (ROI) the paper expands recent coverage of UK professional education for librarianship prior to 2000.

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this piece is to provide a snapshot of the first issue of Program. Design/methodology/approach ‐ This is a reproduction of a historical document, the first issue of the news sheet. Findings ‐ Program was published to assist librarians in learning what was possible in the field of computing use in libraries and to provide a forum for discussion of the problems involved. Originality/value ‐ The piece provides a useful historical document.

Mr Maidment has been telling us about the use of a computer to control circulation routines in one public library system. Now I want to talk on a slightly more general level and discuss the progress that is being made in three British university libraries in using computers for routine housekeeping operations. I also want to tell you about an ICT users' group which is preparing a set of ‘package’ systems for libraries. But first I want to make a few comments on the place of a computer in a university today.