MESSAGES FROM THE PRESIDENTS OF ASLIB
| Pages | 2-5 |
| Date | 01 January 1945 |
| Published date | 01 January 1945 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026057 |
| Author | FREDERIC GEORGE KENYON,HENRY TIZARD,CHARLES SCOTT SHERRINGTON,RICHARDBT. ARMAN GREGORY,HARRY ALEXANDER FANSHAWE LINDSAY,WILLIAM HENRY BEVERIDGE,ROBERT SALMON HUTTON |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
MESSAGES FROM THE PRESIDENTS OF ASLIB
from SIR FREDERIC GEORGE KENYON
President
of Aslib
THE
pride of bibliography is its service to research. It is itself laborious,
often pedestrian, a mechanical recording of details or a summarizing of the
works of others; but it is an essential tool in the advancement of knowledge,
becoming even more necessary as knowledge is multiplied and increasingly
specialized.
Multi
pertransibunt
et
augebitur
scientia
was Bacon's motto for his
Instauratio
magna,
his introduction to the new world of knowledge: 'many shall run
to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased'. It is the function of
Aslib
to
increase knowledge and reduce the running to and fro of those who visit
libraries in search of
it.
There are those who pin their faith to open access
to a scientifically classified library, where it is hoped that the searcher will
find all the books on his particular subject ranged together for his examina-
tion. But this is a vain hope. A small library will not contain all the books
he needs; and the larger the library, the greater is the number of books that
are not worth troubling about for general purposes, and the greater the
waste of time in picking out those that are. It is vain also to hope that all
the books on a given subject can be assembled in a single place; for many
books have to do with more than one subject, yet one book can stand in
only one place. And even if the
liber desideratus
should have been duly
assigned to the place where the reader looks for it, it may be that another
reader will already have got hold of
it.
There is many a slip between the
cup and the lip in this method of research.
The remedy is bibliography—not, if possible, a mere list of titles, but a
bibliographie
raisonnée,
in which brief indications of contents and estimates
of importance are attached to the several entries. With such a bibliography
at his disposal the reader can run his eye over the list of books and articles
in periodicals which concern him, and can decide which of them it is impor-
tant for him to read in full. Then he has only to call for the book from
the library shelves, or (if it is not there) set in motion the machinery for
inter-library borrowing.
There is no sounder means than this for ascertaining the relevant literature
of
a
subject; but what is needed to make it effective is a sufficient supply of
trustworthy bibliographies. Their preparation is not mere hack-work; for
it implies a competent knowledge of a subject in order to evaluate a book
or an article and to summarize its contents clearly and concisely, together
with a command of the language in which it is written. An international
bureau of bibliography, with a corps of skilled scholars and scientists, would
presumably be the ideal, but will not be realized yet awhile. Meanwhile
there is room for a Journal of
documentation,
which will keep searchers
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