‘Loose Leaves’

It is a frequent lament among the new technocracy that British culture seems irretrievably locked into a system of values deriving from the pre‐industrial age. Business activity is thus still scorned as in some way grubby; arcadian and gentry values are extolled; and the old professions still enjoy a monopoly of prestige and esteem. The new director of the Institute of Directors hammered out this theme at his inaugural address, singling out for especial criticism the influence of the church and the Oxbridge colleges. It is not my purpose to go through the old arguments all over again. They have, after all, been a commonplace since the 1950s and acquired wide circulation with the publication a few years ago of Martin Wiener's British Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. What I would like to suggest, however, is that the arguments presented by Dahrendorf, Wiener, et al. do have a certain relevance to the world of the library and of information management which has not yet been entirely appreciated.