Comment

MUMMY AND DADDY won a gold house point the other day for junior Reid, aged seven. Helping with homework must be as old as organised education, but aiding and abetting projects is quite a new phenomenon. Being a parent, and a librarian, inevitably brings a double burden; not only do you get the dratted things thrust upon you at work, but after a weary day servicing genealogists et al one is met with ‘Dad, dad (shades of Al Read for those old enough to remember), Miss … has set us a PROJECT!!!’ Most librarians, and all local history librarians, have seen the following type of demand, which on a local scale is on a par with the totality of source material required for a full set of the Oxford history of England, the Victoria history of the counties of England, the New Cambridge modern and Toynbee's Study of history: