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This study examines the activities of a specialized service desk and provides guidance on conducting an analysis of the activities. The authors wanted to know what is essential in terms of expertise, staffing, technology, collections and space at a Maps and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Service desk. The purpose of the study was to explore whether the provision of these services require a staffed service desk.

The authors collected data using mixed methods, including observing space use, administering a survey and analyzing desk interactions.

Findings suggest that while this service desk may have relatively little traffic, the interactions are time consuming and require a high degree of subject expertise. The data indicated that this service does not need to be delivered in this specific location; however, retaining the expertise and access to collections is vital. The authors recommend that formal assessment of services and space should be conducted prior to making significant changes in a service model.

This study investigates a specialized service desk which are not well-represented in the literature. Additionally, the variety of approaches used in this study could serve as a model for others for service desk assessment in general.

It has been widely projected in the library literature that a substantial number of librarians will retire in the near future leaving significant gaps in the workforce, especially in library leadership. Many of those concerned with organizational development in libraries have promoted succession planning as an essential tool for addressing this much-anticipated wave of retirements. The purpose of this chapter is to argue that succession planning is the wrong approach for academic libraries. This chapter provides a review of the library literature on succession planning, as well as studies analyzing position announcements in librarianship which provide evidence as to the extent to which academic librarianship has changed in recent years. In a review of the library literature, the author found no sound explanation of why succession planning is an appropriate method for filling anticipated vacancies and no substantive evidence that succession planning programs in libraries are successful. Rather than filling anticipated vacancies with librarians prepared to fill specific positions by means of a succession planning program, the author recommends that academic library leaders should focus on the continual evaluation of current library needs and future library goals, and treat each vacancy as an opportunity to create a new position that will best satisfy the strategic goals of the library. In contrast to the nearly universal support for succession planning found in the library literature, this chapter offers a different point of view.

THE conclusion of another volume affords us an opportunity of surveying the past year as regards library progress and prospects. Briefly, it may be summed up as a year of building and Carnegie gifts. A considerable amount of activity has been displayed all over the country in the erection and opening of new buildings provided by the munificence of Mr. Carnegie, and the time seems to have arrived for gathering up all this planning and organization work and recording it in a special handbook of English and American Carnegie libraries. Such a record would prove of immense value to library committees and architects, and would form no unworthy memento of one of the most extraordinary developments of educational work the world has ever witnessed.

MUCH has already been said and written upon the subject of the indicator: but in view of the general trend of advanced Public Library administration a little space may with advantage be devoted again to the consideration of its value as a modern library appliance. Passing over (a) the decision of that curiously constituted committee formed in 1879 to consider and report on indicators, and (b) the support which it received in 1880 from the Library Association, it may be said that for the next fourteen or fifteen years the indicator system was the popular, almost the universal, system in vogue throughout the country. Of late years professional opinion as to its value has undergone a remarkable change. The reaction which has set in was brought about chiefly by the introduction of Open Access in 1894, with the many reforms that accompanied it, though much, doubtless, was due to the prevalence of a more exact and systematic knowledge of librarianship, and to the natural evolution of ideas. It is not, however, intended in this paper to compare the indicator with the open access system, but with others suitable to the requirements of a closed library.

THE earliest catalogue of Cambridge University documents was compiled by Mr. William Rysley, in 1420. Most of the documents enumerated in this list are still extant. An interesting List of the Documents in the University Registry, from the year 1266 to the year 1544, was communicated to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society by the Rev. H. R. Luard, B.D., then University Registrar, on March 6th, 1876. From this, it appears that “The earliest document which the University possesses is so late as the year 1266. The earliest in the Record office is dated 16th July, 13 Hen. III., i.e. 1229. This is a permission to scholars of the University of Paris to come to England, and remain for purposes of study.”

LIBRARY Association elections occur shortly and this impels us to repeat the somewhat musty axiom that men, and women now, get the government they deserve. Such axioms, however, apply perhaps more to political and other public elections in a democracy than to those of professional bodies, or semi‐professional ones like our own. Libraries should have their policies framed and pursued by the best minds available to them. It may be that these come to us through the Branches and Sections for, clearly, the candidates who leap to the mind as having national status, and compel our votes, must be a limited number. Our voting is not much assisted in many cases by the bare list of candidates' names and those of their nominators—even when the latter are known names—which are issued officially but it is not clear how this can be bettered. The A.A.L. usually issues a sort of Who's Who of its candidates and other sections might well do the same. There is still a danger that one type of librarianship may dominate the L.A. merely because it attracts a large number of the votes of junior members. It is not so great as it was; the University and Research Section, for example, commands about one thousand votes we are told, enough, if cast for their chosen candidates, to make their election probable. The Section, we note, invites its members to consider individually whether he or she could be a candidate and adds, “It is not compulsory to cast all the votes available … members who do not know enough candidates may still make effective use of their votes by supporting the candidates they do know.” In any case what is rather depressing in past experience is that not more than 12% of voters use their votes for any candidate; no elected candidate for some years past has represented the L.A. at large. We hope librarians will alter this state of affairs.

THE June conference at Margate is so near that we must needs be pre‐occupied with it at the moment although two months ago we were able to give an anticipatory description of the programme. The protracted and cold winter, culminating in the most “perishing” April of the century, possibly of any century since the Great Ice Age, seems on the threshold of May to have dissolved at last in warmer weather. Margate is a lady in the sun, but perhaps something else under cloud, and wise people take warm clothes when they visit her. We hope, however, that they will not be necessary and that for some hundreds of our readers Margate air will be an invigorating experience.