INFORMATION SERVICES: ASSESSING THEIR VALUE Available to Purchase

There are several reasons for thinking that special librarianship today is at a most interesting but also most serious and even critical stage. The life of Aslib, which one may reasonably say covers the life of special librarianship in this country, can be divided into two parts: from its commencement in 1924 until the beginning of the second world war, and from then until the present day. It may be somewhat arbitrary to make a particular date the dividing line, for the two periods merged into each other, but looking back it is possible to argue that the date 1939 was important. Equally so, it appears that we are now entering a new era in special librarianship, and that in, say, 1980 it will be possible to say that some time around now was a definite turning point. Whether the comments in 1980 are that there was a moving forward or a moving backward will depend on our actions in the immediate future.