Are we finally ready to listen to Maurice Line

This post is really a test to see if a link to subscription databases will work. It should work for anyone clicking on the link *from a WWU ip address*.

Andrew Pace has just written a post about an article by Maurice Line, who worked for the British Library and was a consultant before he retired in 2005. "Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and initiative” [pdf] was reprinted in Interlending & Document Supply (33/2, 2005, pp. 109-113).

Mr. Pace states, 'He paints a somewhat sorry state for libraries in terms that we can probably all relate to.

"Trying to hold on to unused publications that libraries no longer have room to house, having theological arguments about the contents of catalogue records, and indulging in the numerous other irrelevant, inappropriate or trivial activities of which librarians are so fond, with their unerring eye for the inessential."

Ok. So nothing real surprising there, but I was saving the punchline. This reprinted article is from an address that Line gave in 1983.'

"It is criminal to stand by rigid cataloguing codes (even if they were soundly based) if this means the existence and even growth of a backlog of books awaiting processing. If such a stand is made for long enough, it may well prove to be 'Cutter’s last stand'." - Maurice Line

On the other hand, Line's poignant criticism gives me hope because I think we are the midst of a library era of imagination and initiative led by a cadre of intelligent librarians and technologists. To end with Line's own words, "We have nothing to lose but our mental laziness, our spiritual dullness, our introspection and our inhibitions.'