PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Abstract

It is to me a very great honour and a very great privilege that I should be allowed to address you from this particular place this evening. My first connection with Aslib, so far as I remember, was as what used to be called, in the good old days of DSIR, a Visitor. There were two people appointed by DSIR to be watchdogs. One was supposed to know something about the particular organization that DSIR was supporting and the other was not. The first of those was Dr Allibone, and I was the other. Over the years I came to know something of what Aslib was up to—I came to know rather less about what Leslie Wilson was up to—and I developed during those years a very considerable affection and even partisanship for Aslib as distinct from certain other people who were trying to spend DSIR money. That particular connection came to an end because that watchdog job has to pass round from one person to another lest the watchdog should be seduced by those on the spot and become less of a watchdog than a barker the other way. So, after a bit I had to stop doing that and now I am here in this extremely anomalous position. I do not suppose for one moment that it is any personal merit on my part that has landed me in this particular chair. What was obviously in the minds of the inner caucus who run Aslib was that you should get at the Chairman of the UGC; but the Chairman of the UGC neatly side‐stepped from Park Crescent into Bloomsbury and now you have got landed with somebody who is entirely unexpected in his official capacity as your President.

Citation

WOLFENDEN, J. (1969), "PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 21 No. 11, pp. 423-427. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb050212