Nick Moore

The emerging employment market for librarians and information workers in the UK

As the rate of growth in the established market for information specialists declines, increasing attention is focused on the emerging employment market. A survey based on job advertisements suggests that in the UK this emerging market offers between 3000 and 3500 jobs at any one time which potentially are open to librarians and information workers The characteristics of these jobs are described and discussed and the results are reported of a survey which set out to discover: what were the expectations of employers, what sort of people were getting the jobs, and what impact were librarians and information workers making on the emerging employment market The results suggest that, while the market as a whole may expand, librarians and information workers will face severe competition. The research was funded by the British Library.

The nature of the library and information workforce in the United Kingdom 1

A number of significant pieces of research have examined the charac teristics and nature of the library and information workforce. This article reviews the results of these surveys which relate to job satisfaction, the nature of duties, the value of educational qualifications, mobility and wastage, choice of career and the position of women.

The size and structure of the library and information workforce in the United Kingdom

The library and information workforce has grown rapidly in recent years. The increase in the number of people in employment has slowed down whilst the proportion unemployed has risen to over 15 per cent. Changes in the career patterns of women have reduced the rate of wastage. This in turn has affected both the age and sex structure of the workforce. The increase in the size of the workforce has been accompanied by a substantial increase in the proportion who hold a professional qualification. There has been a similar movement towards an all-graduate workforce.

Library manpower planning a decade of progress

Between 1968 and 1978 a considerable amount of library manpower planning work took place in the UK. The article reviews the progress of this work and discusses the increasing sophistication of methodologies and techniques. Despite the progress that has been made a great deal more needs to be done; in particular the factors influencing the wastage from and re-entry to librarianship and information work need to be sttidied and quantified if progress is to be continued towards the goal of effective manpower planning in librarianship.

Public library research

The British Library Research and Development Departments public library research programme has developed rapidly since 1978. Projects have included state-of-the-art reviews, preliminary or enabling studies, the evaluation of experimental services, user studies, descriptive and analytical studies and operational research projects. In addition, public library projects have been carried out by the research centres supported by the Department. Future work will probably concentrate more on the dissemination and promotion of research results.

Meeting the costs of development: the role of the British Library (Research and Development Department)

All organizations need to develop if they are to remain relevant to their purposes. Public sector organizations have diffi culty in funding this development process. Libraries and information units in Britain have turned to the British Library as a source of development funding. British Library funding has been made available to support develop ment which establishes practical feasibility, encourages new services or produces new techniques. The extent to which the British Library can increase this activity is limited by the overall availability of funds. The study on which this article is based was com missioned by the Library Association.

Systematic bookstock management in public libraries

Systematic bookstock management techniques were first developed in Tottenham by A W McClellan during the period 1950-65. There has been a re-emergence of interest in the topic and this report surveys some of the recent developments. Techniques have been devised to analyse bookstock, to guide the allocation of bookfunds, to calculate optimum bookstock levels and to handle the overall monitoring and control of the bookstock. The systems need to be looked at as part of a wider movement towards a user-centred public library service. This article is the report of a study commissioned by the British Library Research & Development Department. The views expressed are Nick Moores and not necessarily those of the British Library.

On-line information services in public libraries

On-line information services in public libraries are increasingly common. Two research projects funded by the British Library are described. The BIROS project in Lancashire County Library involved the development of the service and an evaluation of its impact. The other project, involving four public libraries, resulted in the production of guidelines. Information on use and impact is given. Issues raised by the projects, such as charging policies, are briefly discussed.

Reviews : Wills, Gordon and Oldman, Christine, eds. Developing the librarian as manager. Bradford MCB Books I975. 304p. £I2.95. ISBN o 903763 370

normally originates along disciplinary lines and that all widely adopted shelving systems tend to recognize these disciplines. But that does not impose any imperative or subject specific methods on libraries by which they are obliged to handle the actual storage, retrieval and communication of information. The facetting of modern universal schemes, the emergence of more and more generalized thesauri, and the development of subject independence in indexing procedures are strong cases against this continued splitting up of the problems of library classification and indexing into textbooks each within their own disciplinary spheres. The methods of classification and indexing on the whole do not vary from onc subject field to another. I take it that this is the reason why Langridge’s book contains so much general and cross-disciplinary theory suitable for any textbook on classification and