Comment

A GREAT deal is being, and has been, said about the role of public libraries in the provision of information of all kinds to the community. Sometimes there are full blown experiments such as that in Sunderland, but more likely is the gradual, evolutionary approach that most libraries have taken in recent years. Examples of libraries taking initiatives abound, ranging from stocking leaflets, to actually getting into an advice giving role, or to seeing information as simply an adjunct to more radical experiments in community librarianship. The gradualism may however be replaced, in such places as Corby, Shotton and Consett, to name three steel towns, with a more sudden push into the consideration of the underlying purpose of information services to a community.