Information Development

This paper was delivered at the Library Association Conference in Brighton in September 1984. It is reproduced here with the permission of Library Association Publishing, who will publish the complete conference proceedings in 1985. A number of tables of background data which were included in the original have been omitted here with the permission of the author.

The Anglo-Brazilian Information Service is operated jointly by the British Council and the Sociedade de Cultura Inglesa de São Paulo. It comprises a general reference library, educational and scientific enquiries services, an English language teaching collection and administrative offices and workroom. Methods of promoting the service and the subject breakdown of educational enquiries and online searches are described.

The Global Cataloguing Service of the British Council was initiated in 1980 with the aim of reducing duplication of effort in cataloguing the same titles in different Council libraries around the world. Cataloguing of all books acquired by Council libraries abroad is done centrally at British Council headquarters in London. Records for titles not already in the Global Cataloguing Service database are downloaded from the UKMARC database or catalogued as Extra-MARC material. Each of the fifty-six Council libraries participating in the system receives lists of new accessions and an updated microfiche catalogue of its holdings at regular intervals. In a country like Portugal, the system provides a model to be studied by local librarians.

The British Library, in addition to its role as the national library of the United Kingdom, participates in a wide range of international activities, including those of IFLA, the Conference of Directors of National Libraries, the International Serials Data System and FID, among others. This participation costs money, but produces both financial and professional benefits.

Theses, dissertations and project papers prepared by foreign students at the Department of Library and Information Studies at Loughborough University constitute an important and largely untapped source of information about library development in other countries. The second edition of a catalogue of these documents is now being prepared in an effort to make them more widely known. The problems faced by foreign students in adapting to the demands of professional education in Britain are outlined.

The computerized storage and processing of text in non-roman scripts creates problems. Characters which are not available in standard fonts may be created by using a plotter instead of a printer. A pilot project to devise a program for the computerization of classical Tibetan script, initiated at the Polytechnic of North London in 1983, is described. Problems of transliteration and international actions to promote the computerization of non-roman scripts are summarized.

Electronic office systems involving the creation, transmission and storage of documents are now being installed with fifty or more user stations. Little provision is yet being made for the filing and retrieval of documents held within the systems, and problems common in conventional filing and registry practice will be at least as difficult in the electronic office. Proposals are made for practical approaches to the design of electronic office systems to provide for the effective storage and retrieval of the documents which they generate.

The following descriptions of current research projects in library and information science are edited versions of entries from Current Research in Library and Information Science, reproduced with the permission of the Editor, Mrs. P.T. Biggs. The aim of this listing is to draw the attention of Information Development readers to research projects which are international in scope, particularly those dealing with the problems of the developing countries.

The following abstracts of current documents in library and information science are edited versions of entries from Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) reproduced with the permission of the Editor, Nicholas L. Moore. The aim of this listing is to draw the attention of Information Development readers to documents which are international in scope, particularly those dealing with the problems of the developing countries.