INNOVATION RESULTING FROM RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN The INFORMATION FIELD: 2. The User's View Available to Purchase

I am not sure whether I was asked to give this paper as an innovator, a researcher and developer, or a user. If I claim to have some elements of all three, this presumably exonerates me from having to be expert at any one of them. I should perhaps say that I see all three as closely interlinked: for me, at any rate, all worthwhile library and information research has arisen out of strictly practical problems, which present knowledge is inadequate to solve; and these problems occur to one as a librarian trying to give an adequate service within various economic, social and political constraints—the definition of an adequate service being arrived at by seeing the library through the consumer's eyes, and by using it oneself as a consumer.