The Library World Volume 60 Issue 2

Abstract

FIRST THINGS FIRST AUTUMN may be a time for a new review of our work which is additional to our supreme task of providing and exploiting books. There is no single thing that we have done for the past fifty years that may not be made the better for examination, so long as that examination is cautious. Our publicity for example; is it direct, dignified, appealing; or, is it flabby, sometimes actually silly and sometimes a vain competing with that of great stores or newspapers with their relatively enormous resources? If the truth is accepted that the best expenditure we can make is on books and that the light that radiates from our shelves is from them we shall do well. Open shelves, well‐filled with modern editions of the new and old, are our best exhibition and the only permanently valuable one; our best publicity agents are our satisfied readers. The public will always pass on to others news of things it has proved to be good. If we came without previous knowledge to examine library literature today we might easily infer that books are now a negligible part of the thought of librarians. So much indeed that even librarians themselves have been heard to plead for some knowledge of the greater books of the world amongst themselves. Other writers in these pages and writers elsewhere have done this occasionally. The explanation lies in the fact that the “frills” we add to the real fabric of libraries are just attracting additions made to draw further attention to the existing excellent book‐services we now give. It is probable that the concern for information services, gramophone records and so many other now familiar extras is shown most by librarians whose bookstock is already excellent and is being kept so. Such an explanation we should like to believe.

Citation

(1958), "The Library World Volume 60 Issue 2", New Library World, Vol. 60 No. 2, pp. 17-40. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009425