PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOKSTOCK MANAGEMENT

As I listened recently to Alex Wilson delivering a paper on conservation I was reminded of his excellence as a lucid communicator of ideas, enthusiasm and timely sense of direction. His 1977 paper “The threshold of choice” must be one of the most frequently cited papers of recent times, and in a brief state‐of‐the‐art article on systematic bookstock management, Nick Moore has called the paper “seminal”. The concept of managing stock is a central element in Wilson's thinking, though he establishes its critical interaction with the management of all resources. This interaction may appear obvious but critics of a systematic stock management approach persist in attacking it for lacking properties and objectives which it cannot, by definition, have nor aspire to: as McClellan pointed out, and Moore re‐iterates, it is a sub‐system operating within the context of a greater whole, not an isolated system. The approach may nonetheless be regarded as subversive partly because it potentially challenges what may have become comfortable assumptions, partly because its adoption presupposes changes in methods and attitudes, the influence of which is likely to extend in all directions. Wilson is able to indicate this practical and conceptual influence in a way which speaks directly to the needs of UK public libraries without appearing to threaten the fabric of their existence.