Special Libraries and Information Bureaux

Abstract

THE Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux held a luncheon on April 27 at which a company of more than eighty was present. After saying that he hoped the luncheon would become an annual event, the president, Sir Harry Lindsay, director of the Imperial Institute, spoke of the three stages of science: first scholasticism, dominated by the great men of science, then the period of the authoritative text-books, now the era of the individual specialist. The results of modern scholarship are scattered in innumerable technical journals and, in order to keep abreast, search must be made over a very wide field. The same is no less true of other spheres of knowledge. ASLIB was therefore formed to act as a guide to specialist sources of information. The next speaker, Sir Clement Hindley, chairman of the Racecourse Betting Control Board, mentioned his connexion, as vice-president, with the Institution of Civil Engineers. The Institution's abstracting service, started so long ago as 1877, he said, has recently been considerably expanded in collaboration with other institutions representing different branches of engineering. This expansion should interest all who, as members of ASLIB, are eager to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge. Sir Ian MacAlister, secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, stated that in the nineteenth century people created every sort of institution and machine, political, social and mechanical. In the post-War years of disillusionment, we realized that machines are of no use unless they work, museums are a costly extravagance unless their treasures can be made intelligible, and libraries are mere hoards of books if inaccessible to those who need them. A new desire to make the instruments of civilization work is now awake, and ASLIB is a valuable and essential part of this great movement.