ACCESS TO INFORMATION

On another page we print an observer's view of the conference with this title recently called by the Library Association. Why, one may ask, this present preoccupation of our profession with Access to Information? It is true, of course, that the informational aspects of the library service and the various questions involved in bibliographical organization and control have been a concern of librarians and others in the United Kingdom since, at least, the establishment of the Central Library for Students and the Regional Bureaux and the formation of Aslib. Yet it is also true that the librarian's traditional role is to be a keeper, in the terminology of the learned libraries, rather than a disseminator of information, to adopt a phrase from the Library Association's current syllabus.