The IFLA Round Table on Newspapers (RTN) 1989 - 2009
E-Book, Englisch, 296 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7460-5116-1
Verlag: Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
The volume comprises reminiscences of some members of he Round Table, the minutes of the business meetings, and analytic index to the ten volumes of proceedings of the Conferences and a facsimile of the Newsletter of the Round Table. With many photographs in colour.
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When I was asked to contribute some personal recollections relating to my time as Secretary/Treasurer of the IFLA Roundtable on Newspapers I thought it might be as well to explain how I came to that position. My library career began in 1955, as a Junior Assistant in the Ipswich Public Libraries. My involvement with newspapers was largely to place them in their allocated wall-mounted reading slopes in the Reading Room. Only a few years earlier there would have been other preliminary processing of the national dailies to black out the betting odds on horse and greyhound races. That was in the past. However, dabbling in stocks and shares was regarded by the Library Committee as an even less reputable activity so the Financial Times was not provided. Only short back files of newspapers were held, other than for the local press. From time to time I had short spells in the Reference Library and it was there that I discovered what a treasure trove of records of times past existed in the bound volumes of local newspapers held in the Central Library’s basement. Then followed two years at the Leeds Library School from which I cannot recall any specific mention of newspapers as library material. Nor did my first professional appointment in the Surrey County Library Headquarters bring me into contact with newspapers. My next move took me into government libraries at the Board of Trade Library. Following a period in the Cataloguing Section a promotion brought me into the reader services. The timely provision of newspapers for official purposes was very important. For the national press published in London this was not often a problem but some officials needed prompt access to titles published elsewhere. For the official with responsibility for the textile industries, the northern edition of the Manchester Guardian with relevant information not included in the southern, London edition, was a key source. On days when the newspaper train from Manchester was delayed the Library soon knew it had a dissatisfied customer. The Library was responsible for providing officials and ministers with any publication needed for official purposes. Newly appointed ministers would get their private office to notify the Library of their needs which would normally be supplied without question. However, when a new minister requested a regular supply of a local newspaper circulating in his constituency alarm bells sounded. Could the Minister confirm that this request related to his ministerial responsibilities rather than to his constituency duties? Answer came there none. After 18 years, including nearly three years spent undertaking a research project on indexing and retrieval of statistical information, I was head of the Department of Energy Library Services and ready for a change. The opportunity came when the British Library sought a Librarian for the Library Association Library, for which the BL had assumed responsibility soon after its formation in 1973. In that role I still had little involvement with newspapers, although the collection included a few compilations of library-related press cuttings. This is perhaps a type of resource of which the value has not been sufficiently recognised, not least because of the difficulties of making their content easily retrievable. After three years at LAL I moved into the BL’s Bloomsbury heartland as Head of the Official Publications Library and from there, following some adroit manoeuvring by management, I found myself with an impressive job title – Assistant Director of Administration, Humanities and Social Sciences Division. One of the many tasks I now undertook was to edit vacancy notices for posts on the Division’s establishment. When a draft notice arrived on my desk in 1989 for a vacancy in the position of Head of the Newspaper Library I made some amendments which seemed to be appropriate. As I read the revised text it struck me that the experience and qualities called for seemed a pretty good fit for me. The Selection Board before which I was invited to appear took the same view, although there was an unusually long delay in declaring the result. It was the arrival on my desk of the list of BL staff whose attendance at the forthcoming IFLA Paris Conference had been authorised which revealed my inclusion, as the Library’s representative on the Round Table on Newspapers. I took up my new position on 1 August 1989 and a few days later I was on the way to Paris to meet my new international colleagues. They were no doubt anxious to take the measure of the Round Table’s new Secretary/Treasurer. When the IFLA Working Group on Newspapers had been set up several years previously the Head of the British Library Newspaper Library had become its Secretary and Treasurer. Following the very successful Symposium on Newspaper Preservation and Access organised by the Working Group in 1987, IFLA agreed to the formation of a Round Table on Newspapers, subordinate to the Section on Serials. It seemed to have been accepted that the Secretary/Treasurer position would be filled ex officio by the British Library representative. For the Paris Conference, the Round Table had planned a seminar on La Presse de la liberté. This was a real eyeopener for me. My experience had mainly been with publications reflecting official views and positions. Newspapers are at the other end of the spectrum. The Paris seminar emphasised their role in serving oppressed communities, and in providing and interpreting information which officialdom did not wish to have in circulation. The seminar showed how journalists, newspaper publishers and distributors were motivated to supply uncensored news at great personal risk. This brought home to me the important role for librarians in collecting, preserving and facilitating access to newspapers. Their currency is transient but they are uniquely able to capture moments in time. The Round Table on Newspapers inherited the priorities identified by the Working Group – preservation microfilming, guidelines for cataloguing newspapers, preparation of a world directory of major newspaper collections. Much of the work could be dealt with by correspondence, but experience showed that the very limited time available for Round Table business meetings at IFLA annual conferences was inadequate. It therefore became the practice to schedule a Round Table Business Meeting in Spring each year, usually extending over two days. These provided opportunities for extensive discussion and careful planning of future programmes. In my time such meetings took place at the British Library, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, and the Library of Congress. These meetings were usually timed to coincide with events connected with the host country’s newspaper preservation activities – such as the US Newspaper Program and the British Newsplan. Later, when Hartmut Walravens became the Round Table’s leader and Edmund King its Secretary, these meetings were held in many different locations worldwide in conjunction with events which did much much to raise the profile of newspaper collections and to draw attention to solutions for their problems. At Colindale one of my responsibilities was to coordinate and encourage activities taking place across the British Isles (including the Irish Republic) to implement the objectives of Newsplan. This was a cooperative arrangement between the British Library and regional library cooperation organisations. Each regional organisation set up a Newsplan project with a full time Project Officer. The first stage recorded the extent of archival files of local newspapers held in public and other libraries throughout each region, and also files held in publishers’ offices. For each title a recommendation was made as to the priority which should be given to its microfilming during the second stage of Newsplan. The information collected was published by the British Library. These volumes are not bibliographies of a region’s newspapers but are useful checklists which reveal the extent of newspaper publication in the British Isles. Many sets of local newspapers are incomplete, even in the British Library’s collection, so the detailed holdings statements enabled gaps to be filled in the subsequent microfilming programme. At the time of my retirement a few regional projects had yet to complete this first stage, but I regard my participation in Newsplan as a highpoint in my career, not least because through the close collaboration in particular with the public library sector I had an opportunity to show the British Library was as much concerned with public library interests as with academia and the business community. It was a particular pleasure to be closely involved with the Irish Newsplan project, covering Northern Ireland and the Republic, a shining example of cross-border cooperation during troubled times. The second stage of Newsplan occurred after my retirement, when funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund enabled Newsplan’s priority microfilming recommendations to be implemented. In the 1990s microfilming to archival standards was the preferred solution to the challenge of newspaper preservation. One of the Round Table’s projects led to the publication of Newspaper Preservation Microfilming Guidelines. Digitisation emerged as an alternative solution in the early years of the 21st century. This can provide a facility which microfilming cannot - the ability to search text. However, looking back over the various technology-based methods of storing textual and visual material which emerged during the past half-century, it is clear that continuing technological developments have made many of them obsolete because of dependence on equipment which is no longer manufactured. Will...
