The author, who served the Corporation of London?s City Business Library for 34 years, successively as assistant librarian, sub-librarian and City Business Librarian, retiring from that post on 31 December 2003, describes his long career as a librarian, from his early days at Nottingham City Libraries in the 1960s, to the experience he gained that led him to the City Business Library,London, UK, after working at its precursor, the Guildhall Library Commercial Reference Room. Notes how the strength of the Commercial Reference Room and the City Business Library in its early days lay with its collection of directories (still true today) but recent years have seen demands for more diverse materials and media, particularly online databases and trouble was experienced in gaining access to certain materials, notably Mintel surveys (Market Intelligence, Leisure Intelligence and Retail Intelligence).
Considerable effort went into preparing the Library for the introduction of successive waves of information technology (IT) and the introduction of IT based schemes, such as the computerization of the selective indexing of periodicals, which had been offered from the beginning of the Business Library in 1970 via cards filed in an album with transparent plastic pockets. Most recently, users have gained access to the Internet in the Library but the author's view is that librarians are still as essential an intermediary as ever in guiding enquirers to the information they require. |