INFORMATION SERVICES AT WORK

In presenting this paper on ‘Information Services at Work’, I would like to stress that we are appealing very largely in this type of meeting to the younger members. While hoping that they will benefit by hearing of other people's experiences and methods, we still look to them for fresh ideas and even more for criticism of old ones. In due course these budding library assistants will have become blossomed and blown information officers and it will be too late; like us, they will then have become convinced that there is no better way of doing things than their own. You will notice that I have presumed a development from library assistant to information officer. The library must be the foundation on which the information service is built, and to my belief, a library training is essential to anyone in information work. In any case, it is obviously not possible to draw a rigid distinction between the library service and the information service, nor to say where the one begins and the other ends. There is only one thing to be stressed; that the guiding force, whatever the type of organization which is found, must be the requirements of the company, association or other concern served by the information unit. No theoretical ideals or rigid adherence in the application of library science should be allowed to jeopardize this prime consideration. One further introductory point. I have noticed that matters technical tend to dominate almost exclusively any discussion of the work of an information officer. This is perhaps natural enough, but I hope to suggest to you that there exists a much wider field of activity. Information services must be considered as covering the whole of the parent body's interests and not only those on the technological side.