The LITERATURE OF FILM LIBRARIANSHIP

Let me begin by reassuring you that this paper is not a survey of the literature of the film. The library of the British Film Institute contains just over 10,000 books and pamphlets relating to the film, and even a hasty survey of a body of literature of that size and complexity would occupy us all night. Most of this literature, moreover, falls outside the scope of the bibliography I am compiling on which this paper is based: a bibliography of film librarianship. My subject this evening, therefore, is limited to the literature that deals in some measure with the art, the science, or, if you prefer, the discipline of film librarianship; the collection, organization, and treatment of films in libraries. That there is such a discipline is, I think, warranted by the existence of this group, and if there are still some unbelievers in that great grey sea of librarianship beyond Aslib, I trust the Cataloguing Code that has been so methodically (I almost said painfully) formulated at the fortnightly sessions of your Cataloguing Committee will be fully recognized as the birth certificate of a new and vital branch of the ‘penurious science’.