The Early Information Society

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THE EARLY INFORMATION SOCIETY

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The Early Information Society Information Management in Britain before the Computer

ALISTAIR BLACK DAVE MUDDIMAN HELEN PLANT

© Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Black, Alistair The early information society : information management in Britain before the computer 1. Library science - Great Britain - History 2. Libraries and society - Great Britain - History 3. Information society - Great Britain - History I. Title II. Muddiman, Dave III. Plant, Helen 025'.00941 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Black, Alistair. The early information society : information management in Britain before the omputer / by Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 987-0-7546-4279-4 1. Information services--Great Britain--History--20th century. 2.Information science--Great Britain--History--20th century. 3. Knowledge management--Great Britain. 4. Information society--Great Britain. I. Muddiman, Dave. II. Plant, Helen. III. Title. ZA3159.G7B55 2007 025.09410904--dc22 2006033557 ISBN: 978-0-7546-4279-4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Contents List of Tables Preface and Acknowledgements

vii ix

PART I: OVERVIEW 1 The Information Society before the Computer Alistair Black and Dave Muddiman

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PART II: INFRASTRUCTURE, NETWORKS AND THE STATE 2 Science, Industry and the State: Scientific and Technical Information in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain Dave Muddiman

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3 The History and Development of ASLIB, 1924–1960 Dave Muddiman

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PART III: THE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION IN THE EARLY INFORMATION ECONOMY 4 A Pre-History of the Learning Organisation: Information and Knowledge Management before the Digital Age Alistair Black

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5 Enterprise and Intelligence: the Early Company Library in Context Alistair Black

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PART IV: THE INFORMATION WORKFORCE 6 Education for the Early Information Professions in Britain, c. 1918–1961 Helen Plant 7 Women’s Employment in Industrial Libraries and Information Bureaux in Britain c. 1918–1960

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Contents

Helen Plant

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PART V: CONCLUSION 8 Reconsidering the Chronology of the Information Age Alistair Black and Dave Muddiman

237

Appendix 1: Glossary of Common Abbreviations Appendix 2: Alphabetical List of Archival Sources and Locations Bibliography Index

245 247 249 281

List of Tables 5.1 7.1

Industrial and commercial enterprise membership of ASLIB up to October 28th, 1927 Average salaries of science graduates working in industrial libraries and information bureaux, by sex and age group

156 227

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Preface and Acknowledgements Whether termed the ‘network society’, the ‘knowledge society’ or the ‘information society’, it is widely accepted that a new age has dawned, unveiled by powerful computer and communication technologies. Yet for millennia humans have been recording knowledge and culture, engaging in informational activity. Following the invention of writing around 10,000 years ago, the first libraries (repositories of clay tablets) appeared in the third millennium BC. Thereafter, the emergence of the codex (the format of the book) around 2,000 years ago, the arrival of printing in the fifteenth century, the invention of the electric telegraph in the nineteenth century and the proliferation of audio-visual technologies – radio, film and television – in the twentieth century each represented a quantum leap forward in the history of the communication of information. The information society can hardly be said to be new: in a way, it is possible to argue that most ‘civilised’ societies have been informational ones. In assessing the social importance of information historically, it is our contention that continuities outweigh discontinuities. In short, the epochal nature of the information society is a myth – certainly when compared to other immensely important and fundamental shifts in human culture and relations, such as the emergence of capitalism or of modernity. We bring to this study knowledge and insights drawn from our respective backgrounds and current interests in history, sociology and library and information science; in the pages that follow, each of us exploits these disciplines in various combinations and degrees. However, the specific springboard for this book has been our perception that the field of library and information science in the UK has taken too little account of its roots and heritage. This is, of course, much less true of libraries and print culture (a vibrant history of which has developed over the past half a century) than it is of information science, information policy and what we refer to today as the information professions. A dearth of research on the history of information management (IM) is also apparent. A limited definition of information management focuses upon the arrangements made by organisations (market and non-market) for the internal ordering and communication of information, and in this book we certainly address the history of this particular aspect of IM. However, as reflected in the sub-title of the book, we also conceptualise information management more broadly, to encompass the envisioning, construction and management – by the state, capital, organisations and the professions – of networks, institutions and infrastructures for the storage and dissemination of documents and information. Our temporal focus is essentially the first half of the twentieth century, although reference is inevitably made to events and personalities either side of this period. We stress especially the existence of information management before the era of the computer, and certainly before its widespread application and visibility from the 1970s onwards. In specific terms, our work develops the perspectives of historians such as James Beniger and Joanne Yates, who have argued that a revolution in the control and management of information took place broadly

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between 1870 and 1930. Like them, we hypothesise the development of an ‘early’ information society, specifically, in our case, in Britain. Between 1900 and 1960, we contend, British society developed both a recognisable infrastructure for managing information and became highly aware of its utilty, value and significance. One aspect of such an early information society deliberately outside the scope of this book concerns the rise of mass communications and mass media. In part, this is because many others better qualified than ourselves have charted the rise of the press and telecommunications, and the publication of another media history was never our intention. More specifically, however, as our sub-title suggests, our goal is to focus upon those social systems which were developed with the aim of managing information, rather than every aspect the history of communication. Of course, the age of high industrial modernity which we cover witnessed the development of postal services; global telegraph; a mass circulation press; telephone; radio; and, at the end of our period, television – and these technologies were fundamental in increasing both the speed and volume of the production and transmission of information. Our concern, however, is with the ways in which their products – new books; magazines; papers; records; cards; tapes and photographs – began to be organised and exploited, and with the extent to which a sphere of activity developed which reconceptualised them as ‘information’. The intended audience for this book is primarily the world of library and information science, not only students, researchers and educators, but practitioners too. We believe the adoption of historical perspectives to be an important component of professional preparation and development in the field. Historical awareness contributes to an understanding of contemporary professional issues. History holds lessons for the future, and this is as true for expert practices as it is for society generally. Historical knowledge also contributes to professional standing in other, less overtly tangible, ways. It helps mould professional identity and adds to the self-reflection that any professional practice requires. It roots out past principles, thereby illuminating debates on philosophical purpose and ethical issues. It promotes the highly transferable skill of critical thinking and encourages societal awareness and a heightened knowledge of context. A sense of the past is always important, but at a time of flux, such as that currently being experienced in the library and information field, it is indispensable. We also anticipate that our work will find an audience among sociologists and historians. The former, in a British context, notwithstanding some notable exceptions such as the work of Frank Webster, Kevin Robins and David Lyon, have been more concerned with critiquing and analysing the information society concept from a contemporary – and at most a contemporary history – perspective. Equally, historians, certainly in respect of Britain, though much less in an American context, have attended relatively infrequently to the question of the information society’s roots; although once again certain exceptions are noteworthy: witness contributions by Jon Agar, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Edward Higgs, Thomas Richards and Paul Slack, for example. In fact, in the absence of historians, the historiography of the information society has often fallen to those who have a background in either history, historical sociology or political philosophy – scholars such as John Feather, Alistair Duff, Ian Cornelius and ourselves – but whose

Preface and Acknowledgements

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academic responsibility is, and has been for some time, essentially in education and research in library, information and communication studies. The book is organised into four sections. In Part I we register our scepticism of the information society proposition and set out a methodology in support of our position. The approach we take – the mobilisation of history to undermine the claims of information society enthusiasts – draws on an emergent field of scholarship which we term ‘information history’, a brief definition of which is required and offered. We identify the history of information management as a specific strand of this embryonic discipline; and as a pointer to the rationale underpinning the remaining organisation of the book, mount an initial exploration of information management history in the context of state intervention, professionalisation in information work and the internal information activities of organisations. These issues are discussed mostly in the context of Britain. However, we are aware that initiatives and advocacy in Britain were not hermetically sealed from developments elsewhere. Part I therefore ends with a brief account of efforts in other countries to further information management and, more importantly, of schemes visualising the construction of truly international mechanisms for information control. The focus of Part II is the role of the state, in reality and envisioned, in the emergence of an early information society in Britain. It almost goes without saying that we regard information – as a resource that can be produced, consumed and rationed – to be laden with political implications. In the first half of the twentieth century the importance of scientific and technical information to national wellbeing was raised a number of times by politicians, policy-makers and professionals, and also attracted the attention of a number of left-wing activists, especially the scientist J.D. Bernal. Given the conservatism of the British state during much of the period we are considering, it is not surprising that radical and large-scale schemes for information control did not win the support envisaged by their authors. Instead, the construction of Britain’s information infrastructure followed a piecemeal path, illustrated by the establishment and early history of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) in 1924, an organisation whose main objective appears at first glance to have been the representation, alongside a variety of special librarians, of the emergent information occupations, but which upon closer inspection was the provision of a ‘national intelligence service’ for science, commerce and industry – in effect, a surrogate for more aggressive action in this regard by the state. In Part III the discussion switches to the commercial sphere and its efforts to manage information in increasingly complex and large enterprises (although reference is also made to state agencies). Today’s interpretation of the term ‘information economy’ is of an economy driven by digital technologies and directed by a new class of knowledge worker. This interpretation is distinct from the narrower interpretation of the ‘information economy’ as the ‘information sector’, made up of a relatively small set of information industries such as software development, the media, Internet providers and facilitators and libraries. If the wider interpretation noted above is to be accepted, then it is clear that its essential elements were already in place in the early twentieth century, as large-scale enterprises and organisations began to ‘learn’ and to grapple, systematically, with the problem of ordering and disseminating information internally, through such

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mechanisms as in-house information bureaux and libraries, company magazines, and a range of information management techniques and technologies. In the final section of the book the existence of ‘information occupations’, decades before the term gained currency in the late twentieth century, is recognised and highlighted. Given that our current information professions – especially in areas like IT – are essentially male dominated, it is interesting to note that a number of women found work, at a fairly professional level, in the information bureaux and libraries of early twentieth-century enterprises, research associations and scientific societies. For such women, as well as men, however, entry into, and advancement in, information work (as distinct from traditional librarianship) was not fundamentally the result of dedicated education and training programmes. This said, opportunities for education and training in the information field did exist, and culminated towards the end of our period, in 1958, in the establishment of the Institute of Information Scientists, and from the early 1960s, degree courses in ‘information science’. These events, perhaps, might be said to mark a coming of age of the early information society, and hence, de facto, they mark an end point for this volume. * * * The origins of this book lie in a United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council) funded project which commenced in 2001 entitled The Early Information Society in Britain: the Emergence of Information Management and Information Science. We would like to thank the AHRB for financial support throughout the duration of this project. In addition our own employer, Leeds Metropolitan University, has supported us with facilities and intermittent periods of sabbatical leave and we would like to especially thank Gaynor Taylor, former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University, for her interest in and support of the project. Many other individuals have, of course, provided help and advice and shown interest in our project: in particular we wish to thank Frank Webster, Alistair Duff, Brian Vickery, Eugene Garfield, Toni Bunch and the late Douglas Foskett. Dymphna Evans, at Ashgate, has been a sympathetic, and patient, desk editor, and Joe Muddiman has provided expert computing and desktop publishing support. Special thanks go to Boyd Rayward for his unstinting encouragement and for reading the manuscript in detail and making valuable comments on it. We are also very pleased also to acknowledge the assistance given to us by the archivists, record keepers and librarians of the many organisations where we consulted historical sources – these are numerous and listed separately in Appendix 2. Most importantly of all, as is common with any project of this length and complexity, we are all immensely grateful for the help and support of our respective partners, families and friends, without whose encouragement and forbearance the book would never have been completed. Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant Leeds Metropolitan University February 2007

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PART I OVERVIEW

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Chapter 1

The Information Society before the Computer Alistair Black and Dave Muddiman

The Information Society Debate The information society is not so new, or so significant, as we may think. In this book, we explore the idea of an information society before the information society that is today defined by the supposedly revolutionary impact of digital technology on our culture. Whereas it is undeniable that this new wave of technological development is in itself exceptional and exciting, its social effects should be viewed more soberly, the word ‘revolution’ in this regard having been devalued by its over-use in the vocabulary of socio-technical utopianism. Our view is that such grand, transformative assessments of social change need to be treated with considerable care. For some, the contemporary information society and its positive consequences are taken for granted; for others it is a contested concept which requires detailed investigation (Mackay, 2001). The information society debate is comprised of two basic questions. The first is ethical: to what extent, individually or collectively, are the information and communication technologies that have inspired the information society idea beneficial or damaging?1 The second theme is concerned with the existence of an information society: is it a reality or an illusion?2 In a number of recent studies we have adopted an historical approach designed to question, either directly or implicitly, the novelty of the contemporary information society (for example, see A. Black, 1998; A. Black, 2002; Muddiman, 1998; Muddiman, 2002b; Plant, 2004). In this book we are able to mount a more concerted assault on the information society ‘citadel’ – the high-tech, socially progressive New Jerusalem envisioned at governmental, expert and popular levels. The walls of this citadel have been built from inexhaustable supplies of digital technology which, unlike natural resources, are proclaimed to be renewable and expanding. The most important parts of any edifice, however, are perhaps those that are hidden from sight, below ground. This is not only true of the foundations integral to the structure, but also the deeper levels of material containing evidence of any past construction stretching back through time. It is our intention, in this 1 2

In respect of human rights, for example, see Hick, Halpin and Hoskins (2000). Scholars who have addressed this question include Duff (2000), Lyon (1988), May (2002) and Webster (2003). The specific notion of the information society as ‘myth’ has been pursued by Hamerlink (1986) and Traber (1986).

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book, to excavate one of these earlier strata – dating from the first half of the twentieth century – that lies beneath the information society citadel. Yet, in pursuing this ‘archaeological’ project we are not blind to the possibility that the edifices under which we dig are likely to be more virtual than real. Our discourse is hence tempered by the critical observation that the information society proposition is almost certainly a mirage: in essence a welcoming vision of a ‘haven society’ forced onto our consciousness by a powerfully persuasive technological determinism and the abrupt, dislocating and disquieting consequences of the shift to post-modern modes of social, economic and cultural life. In short we adhere, like Christopher May (2002) to a ‘sceptical view’ of the whole information society proposition. That said, however, we have not discarded the term. Instead, we use the notion of an ‘early information society’ throughout this book in an impressionistic, rather than systematic, and a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, sense. Our aim is not to establish the legitimacy or otherwise of the term ‘information society’ as a representation of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Rather we seek, less ambitiously, to demonstrate that during this period information as a discrete concept became recognised, as it had not been before, as economically, socially and intellectually important. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the information society became a commonplace explanation of change in human relations and culture. By the end of the century, as Duff (1995) argues, the concept had gained paradigmatic status. An over-excited acceptance of the historical discontinuity that is the information society is widespread, promoted and re-cycled by a variety of politicians, journalists, popular commentators, interested entrepreneurs and those who Roszak (1988, pp. 34–61) once referred to as ‘the data merchants’. The information society paradigm is infused with futuristic predictions – mostly positive – of social change. As Bill Gates (1995, p. 250) has written: This is an exciting time in the Information Age … I’m optimistic about the impact of the new technology. It will enhance leisure time and enrich culture. It will help relieve pressures on urban areas by enabling individuals to work from home or remote-site offices. It will relieve pressure on natural resources because increasing numbers of products will be able to take the form of bits rather than of manufactured goods. It will give us more control over our lives and allow experiences and products to be custom tailored to our interests. Citizens of the information society will enjoy new opportunities for productivity, learning, and entertainments. Countries that move boldly and in concert with each other will enjoy economic rewards.

The information society concept is noticeably entrenched in the discourses of the information professions. Librarians, for example, have been keen to see themselves at the core of the information society, their institutions functioning as the ‘heart and brain’ of a new age (Batt, 1997).3 As long ago as 1986, Bose (p. 92) declared emphatically that: ‘From an industrial society we have transformed into an information society … the information society has arrived.’ Equally, many 3

Librarian delegates to the World Information Society Summit in 2003 promoted libraries as being at the heart of the information society (Libraries @ the Heart of the Information Society, 2003).

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information scientists have adopted an uncritical enthusiasm for the information society.4 In accordance with the theory that every action provokes a reaction, however, there has emerged a healthy scholarly scepticism concerning the existence or imminent arrival of an information society posited as fundamentally distinct from industrial society. Frequent sorties against information society utopianism have been launched, employing tactics of social determinism and contemporary social analysis to puncture the validity and hyped implications of concepts like the ‘information economy’, the ‘information occupations’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘cultural informatisation’, as well associated ideas and predictions of individual empowerment and social harmony. If one examines current society and recent social change then most of the earlier predictions of the info-enthusiasts have a hollow ring to them. The warm and homely vision of millions of people switching to flexible working from idyllic ‘tele-cottages’ has failed to materialise; ‘tele-work’ continues to account for a tiny segment of the workforce. Environmental damage has not been reduced as a result of the ‘perceived’ shift away from industrialism. Social exclusion persists, despite the information revolution and the promise of falling ‘access’ costs. Notwithstanding the growth of tertiary education in terms of raw numbers, it is difficult to argue that labour has been significantly intellectualised or released from monotonous patterns of work; on the contrary, it might be posited that professional occupations, the so-called liberated knowledge workers of the information society, has been subjected to ongoing ‘proletarianisation’. The silicon chip has not brought increased leisure time and an easier working life; if anything working hours have increased, stress and hurry at work have intensified, and the notion of the paperless office remains purely a dream.5 Even as the info-enthusiasts were talking up the social effects of the silicon chip in the early 1980s, some sections of popular opinion were ready to take a detached, sceptical view of information technology. Writers to the Britain’s MassObservation Archive, University of Sussex, in response to an investigation on the topic of ‘work’ in 1983 offered the following critical commentaries: Video and computerised games in the home. Computers in the office. I suppose there will be more and more of this sort of thing. I don’t like it much. As the machine becomes more advanced and important, so does the human being become diminished.

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See, for example Cronin (1988); W. Martin (1988). Evans (1980) provided a large number of positive projections of social change arising from information technologies. One of his themes was the growth of ‘enforced leisure’ as productivity increased (p. 225). This prospect was also highlighted in the influential documentary ‘Now the Chips are Down’, concerning the social impact of the silicon chip, televised by the BBC in January 1979. It is noteworthy that at the time of finalising this book, in May 2006, the British government announced a stepped increase in the age at which the state pension will become available, from 65, as it currently stands, to 68 by the middle of the twenty-first century. On the paperless office, see Coffey (1981) and Sellen and Harper (2002).

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The Early Information Society New technology will increase the gap between generations and will tend to ‘hermitise’ individuals and small groups, increasing the differences between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.

Without being ‘luddite’, our arguments in this book are located in this critical tradition, although unlike most critiques of the information society their perspective is essentially historical. The Information Society and History Comparing contemporary evidence with prophecy from the past has been an effective way of challenging the information society idea. The contemporary approach to the questioning of the information society has been forceful and convincing. Such criticism has by no means been ‘history poor’. However, adopting the ‘long view’, others, in some instances alongside contemporary analysis, have resorted more systematically and directly to history as a tool for questioning the information society construct (for example, Castells, 1996, pp. 34–52; Feather, 2004, pp. 3–40; May 2002, pp. 19–47; Rayward, forthcoming; Robins and Webster, 1999, 89–110).6 Recent social and technological change might be seen ‘as no more than the latest part in a continuum that has stretched over many centuries’ (Dearnley and Feather 2001, p. 131). History has been a natural tool for information society enthusiasts and critics alike to take up – for a number of reasons. The first reason has been alluded to already. The information society concept has been circulating in academic and professional circles for over thirty years. In addressing the way that the information society concept has evolved, and the way it has been shaped by its exponents, and denied by its sceptics, one is by definition making it the subject of historical study. Secondly, but linked to the first reason, the information society debate is overflowing with terms that carry historical connotations. Its vocabulary is saturated with references to ‘evolution’, ‘progress’, ‘developments’, ‘trends’, ‘transformation’, ‘growth’ and ‘decline’ – as theorists attempt to map out the journey from industrial, through a post-industrial, to an information society. Writers and researchers have interested themselves in the rise of the information industries and the shift towards information occupations, in the emergence of an informatised culture and in the convergence and ever increasing power of digital technologies. In claiming and tracking such changes, information society enthusiasts have been intrinsically historical in their analysis. They have displayed a sense of history, even if their conclusions are contested and have addressed too short a timeframe. Another word laden with history is ‘origin’. Searching out the key changes and forces which ‘prefaced’ the information-abundant society of the 6

Scholars working in the history of information have mostly come from the field of library and information science (although this is not to say that such scholars cannot regard themselves as historians). The history field has also provided some scholarly interest: see Higgs (2004) and Slack (2004), for example. Webster (forthcoming) points out that in recent decades sociology has mistakenly avoided historical studies, including the history of the information society.

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late–twentieth century and which encouraged commentators to attach an epochal label to this perceived new society – for example, the influence of the Japanese economic revolution of the 1960s or the marked decline in corporate profits in the late-1960s and early-1970s which forced a solution in the form of new technologies of information7 – is an important aspect of studying the information society question. The third reason why history is a very visible component of information society studies is the understandable compulsion < whether one is adopting an evolutionary or revolutionary perspective – to situate late-twentieth-century socioinformational change in a timeframe that goes beyond merely recent, or contemporary, history. A major factor which legitimises the use of history to question the arguments of the information society’s proponents is the mobilisation of the past by the proponents themselves to support their position. An example in this regard is Alvin Toffler’s (1980) widely accepted thesis that western society is on the brink of a fundamental change, a ‘third wave’ of human social development, to which he sees attached a variety of labels: information age, electronic era, global village, techno-electronic age, post-industrial society. Such dramatic claims are in the tradition of Drucker’s (1969) assessment that we have entered an ‘age of discontinuity’. The information society is presented by its history-minded publicists as a grand periodisation of history. It is not surprising, therefore, that responses to the concept have similarly entailed references to, and analysis of, earlier ‘ages’. Kumar (1991) offers the theory that the information society is merely a further wave in the history of utopianism, previous waves of optimism coinciding with the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the nineteenth-century holy grail of free trade and free market economics, and, most recently, the immediate post-1945 decades of technological capitalism and rapid economic growth. However, given that the utopianism of these grand stages of history was misplaced, Kumar believes that naturally we should be suspicious of claims concerning the existence of an information society. When confronted with the proposition that we are experiencing a fundamental ‘historical turn’, therefore, counter-attacks from revisionists are inevitable. Bold claims that a new age is in the making have incited a response from those who request a more careful recognition of the continuities of history. In particular, attention is drawn to the monumental shifts in human relations and thought wrought by modernity and the growth of capitalism, and the fact that these are still very much ‘in play’. ‘Grand’ history has become a potent weapon in the fight against the millenarianism of the information society. Whenever visions of the future are summoned up, automatically, as if in accordance with the laws of physics, the energy of history is released in reaction. The futurology accompanying the information society concept is intense. The reasons for this intensity are complex. The tendency of some social theorists and commentators to gaze with optimism into their crystal balls might be explained by the insecurities of our modern life. But the age in which we live does not hold a monopoly on peering hopefully into the future in order to avoid the social anxieties 7

The Japanese origins of the information society are investigated by Duff, Craig and McNeill (1996).

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of the present. It is difficult to believe that we today are so ready to grasp the future because we are faced with greater social uncertainty than in the past – for those who in relatively recent history lived through world wars or the unemployment of the 1930s might robustly disagree that theirs was a more secure age. A more feasible explanation of information society futurology is the technological determinism that has infected the ‘new age’ proposition. Seduced by the ‘glittering’ machines of the digital revolution, it has become all too easy to exaggerate the potential of technology to mould society: the digital ‘technical fix’ is populist and digestible. History guards against futurology. Preoccupation with gazing into a utopian information future tends to create blind spots to the reality of an information-rich past and of a bigger picture that has been long in the making. Information History Given that the information society concept contains an historical dimension and readily invites historical commentary, one is prompted to consider if such historical analyses can be placed under the umbrella term ‘information history’. Infoenthusiasts assert that information is fast becoming the defining feature of our culture. If this is so, then the prospects for a distinctive subject named ‘information history’ are good (Stevens, 1986; Weller, 2005). We know that the subject of history has a healthy capacity to generate sub-sets within itself, as the appearance of a multiplicity of sub-fields in recent decades shows – for example, social, cultural and gender history. We also know that as new areas of knowledge and expert practice appear then their historical ‘adjuncts’ soon follow. Prompted by the digital ‘revolution’, information has become a fashionable topic for historical investigation. Unsurprisingly, there has been curiosity as to how information was ‘created, diffused and manipulated in the past, and with what effects’ (Slack, 2004, p. 33). Because of the social pervasiveness of information, and the enduring debate as to its meaning, it follows that agreement on a tight, uncontroversial definition of ‘information history’ is difficult to achieve. The variety of themes and topics that could potentially be included in an information history discipline is at once exciting and daunting. For example, evidence of the width and vibrancy that is possible is clearly visible in Chandler and Cortada’s (2000) collection of edited essays on how information has shaped the United States since colonial times.8 Despite the sprawling content of the information history field, it is possible to identify its broad subject components.9 We suggest that the field can be divided into four cognate areas. First, the history of information as social history, highlighting the importance of informal information networks. Second, the history of print and written culture, including relatively long-established areas such as the 8

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A variety of information topics are examined: early information infrastructure (including postal and highway systems), information technology in the industrial age, newspapers, broadsides, radio, television, film and computers. Similar territory is covered by R.D. Brown (1989) who, in addition, examines the topic of public oratory. Seeking out a definition of ‘information history’ should not be attempted without reference to Buckland (1999), Buckland and Liu (1995) and Rayward (1998: 2004b).

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history of libraries and librarianship, book history, publishing history and the history of reading. Third, the history of contiguous areas, such as the history of the information society and information infrastructure, necessarily enveloping communication history (including telecommunications history) and the history of information policy. Fourth, the history of more recent information disciplines and practice, that is to say, the history of information management, information systems and information science. Each of these can be addressed in turn, with the greater part of our attention focused on the history of the information society and of the information professions and disciplines. When thinking about information, the tendency is to conceptualise it as something that is conveyed formally, through institutions, documents (print and non-print) and technological networks. Since the Enlightenment, these formal communication networks and formats have served, as Mattelart (1996, p. 85) has put it, ‘as creators of a new universal bond’. However, concentrating on formal information conduits and infrastructure tends to obscure the naturally occurring informal communication networks and means of information exchange that have always existed, but which were accelerated and expanded by modernity, industrialisation and urbanisation. Informal modes of information transmission and reception are intimate and local, situated historically in ‘democratic’ spaces like the street, the pub, the political meeting or the church; they also occur in the workplace and among kin, neighbours and friends. Melton (2001, pp. 245–50) has highlighted the importance of the eighteenth-century coffee house as a centre for information exchange. In the nineteenth century, improvements in the means by which people could move about the city – better transport, paved sidewalks, detailed maps – opened up the city and created what Joyce (2003) has called a ‘republic of the streets’. The informal informational activity that accompanied and strengthened the ‘republic of the streets’ was complemented by an explosion in ephemeral advertising reflecting the growth, from the second half of the nineteenth century, of a commodity culture (T. Richards, 1991). The knowledge obtained from informal information networks might be termed ‘social knowledge’, and can include rumour or gossip, which may or may not be accurate (A. Clarke, 1989; Tebbutt, 1995). It also includes word-of-mouth, anecdotal knowledge on critical and life-chance issues like health and finance (Burt, 2003; de Blécourt and Usborne, 2004; Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal, 1999; Pearson and Richardson, 2001; Spicksley, 2004). The institution of the library has enduringly facilitated both informal and formal information flow. However, despite their important function as a site for the exchange of informal social knowledge – and arguably the more ‘democratic’ and ‘popular’ the institution, the more intense this function becomes – libraries have largely been associated with the communication of information in a formal sense. Although a niche area, in recent decades, library history has nonetheless been characterised by sound scholarship and by variety in terms of themes pursued.10 Studies have ranged from general accounts of libraries, crossing time periods and geographical boundaries (e.g. Battles 2003; Lerner 2001; M. Harris 1999) to accounts of national libraries (e.g. P. Harris, 1998); and from studies of scholarly 10

As illustrated by the Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland: see Hoare (2006).

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The Early Information Society

and academic libraries (e.g. McKitterick 1986) to past developments in the provision of local public libraries (e.g. A. Black, 1996; 2000; Hewitt, 2000; Kelly, 1977; Snape 1995). One of the problems facing library history is the institutional focus that the term implies. In the past much work has centred on the history of libraries as institutions (e.g. Stam 2001). More recently, however, increasing attention has been paid to the history of librarianship. For example, work incorporating a gender analysis has been produced by Kerslake (2001) and Garrison (2003). Obviously linked to the history of libraries and librarianship are the history of reading and literacy and the history of publishing and the book, which together with the history of libraries and librarianship might form what one can describe as the history of print culture (Feather 1988; Finkelstein and McCleery, 2005; Manguel 1996; Rose 2002; Vincent 1993). Although throughout history libraries (and librarianship) have contributed significantly to past information societies, no more so than in the early-twentieth century, they do not represent a prime focus of this book. However, by no means are they excluded from our analysis; in fact, in connection with technical, commercial and scientific information they will be discussed extensively. Because of their importance to the overall theme of the book, greater space needs to be set aside in this introductory chapter to the final two components of information history: the history of the information society, revealing historic information societies; and the history of information professions and occupations. Consequently, they receive separate treatment, the first immediately; the second in a later section of this chapter. Historic Information Societies Our intention is to highlight the past importance of information in social and economic development, in keeping with Duff’s (2000, p. 171) observation that it is difficult to prove that modern societies are relatively more information-based than other societies. Accordingly, it is possible to conceptualise the existence of ‘historic information societies’, or past ‘information ages’ (Hobart and Schiffman, 1998) in which, to a greater or lesser degree, information infrastructure was built, communication technologies were operated, information policy was planned or developed and surveillance techniques were deployed.11 Sophisticated information infrastructure – the institutions, networks, technologies and techniques that facilitate the collection, storage, organisation and transmission of information – has been evolving for centuries, from the age of incunabula to the age of the Internet (Lebow, 1995; Borgman, 2000). At its simplest, information infrastructure can include the techniques of basic literacy: for example, Clanchy (1993) has disclosed a significant development in standards of literacy in medieval England, constituting a very early information society. At its most complex, on the other hand, information infrastructure is constituted by today’s ‘wired world’. The history of the information infrastructure incorporates the history of communication, a subject which comprises numerous dimensions, 11

The landscapes and landmarks of historic information societies have been expertly mapped out by Mattelart (2003).

Before the Computer

11

both technological and theoretical (Gardner and Shortelle 1997; Meadow 2002; Solymar, 1999). The ancient past witnessed a number of fundamental shifts in the evolution of human communication, from the development of speech and the invention of writing, to the innovation of formats to convey recorded knowledge over distance and through time: the clay tablet, papyrus, paper and the codex. The invention of printing in the fifteenth century represented, in the words of Eisenstein (1983, p. 275), the next great ‘cultural change of phase’, paving the way for the cultural explosion of the Enlightenment.12 Communication technologies have been at the heart of the shaping and networking of the modern world (Mattelart, 2000); and it was the new print culture in particular that drove forward the age of modernity. It was during the age of reason and revolution, between roughly 1700 and 1850, that information, as Headrick (2000) argues, ‘came of age’. During the Enlightenment new institutions, techniques and formats began to emerge, furthering knowledge and enhancing the storage and communication of information: the encyclopedia, the scientific academy, the salon, mathematically accurate maps and a new culture of measurement, statistical analysis and quantification. Existing elements of the information infrastructure – publishing activity and libraries, for example – intensified and proliferated (P. Burke, 2000; Clark, 2001; Frängsmyr, Heilbron and Rider, 1990; Hoare, 1998). Scholarly societies operating in a ‘public sphere’ of mutual learning created a miniinformation society in the form of an exchange network of learned publications, whereby society journals, books and pamphlets were freely bartered (Gibbon, 1982; McKie, 1979). The nineteenth century witnessed the growth of a ‘Victorian information society’, characterised by the invention and innovation of the critical new technologies of the telegraph and the telephone, as well as the rapid development of the postal service, mechanised printing, the publishing industry and ‘public sphere’, publicly funded ‘memory institutions’ like libraries, museums and art galleries (A. Black, 2001; Eliot, 1994; Morus, 2000; Perry, 1992; Standage, 1998; Young 1991). One prominent aspect of this Victorian information society was the British Museum which served as a repository for vast amounts of cultural artefacts and recorded culture from the Empire (T. Richards, 1993). While not directly challenging the information society, Weller and Bawden (2005) have located its major roots in the period 1830–1900. In the twentieth century, communication technologies moved onto higher technological and popular planes, with the development of film, radio and television. These technologies have arguably made a greater impact on people’s lives than developments in computer technologies, which are more recent in the mind. Unquestionably, however, the computer itself impacted significantly on late twentieth-century society. The history of the computer is a subject that can range from the development of hardware to past applications of the computer in society, 12

An interesting manifestation of this in pre-Enlightenment England, as Rayward (1994, pp. 164–6) reveals, were the plans towards the end of the Civil War and under Cromwell, in the 1640s and 1650s, to establish an ‘Office of Publicke Addresse’ which would act as a bureau for information of a perishable or ephemeral kind, as well as constructing a great encyclopedia based on an indexing and excerpting of the current stock of recorded knowledge.

12

The Early Information Society

including business (Campbell-Kelly, 1989; Campbell-Kelly, 1995; Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 1996). Although a very recent mode of communication, the penetrating effects of the Internet and the World Wide Web have begun to be studied historically (Castells, 2001, pp. 9–35; Abbate, 1999; Moschovitis et al, 1999). In fact, the advent of the ‘Web’ has re-generated interest in the history of communication generally. This includes the way communication technologies have interfaced with society, as in the case of the response of labour to past information revolutions (Blok and Downey, 2003).13 Tracing the history the information infrastructure entails not only the study of communication history but also the history of information policy. Throughout most of human history the information infrastructure has evolved haphazardly. However, in the era of modernity it has been increasingly planned and regulated. The term ‘information policy’, which encapsulates the shift to regulation and planning, is relatively recent in origin. Yet, as well as addressing the recent history of information policy (P. Day, 2001), scholars have attempted to map its development before it became formally recognised as a legitimate function of government and the professions (Willmore, 2002; Duff, 2004). Finally, it is important to stress that historic information societies were not merely defined by technological progress. Rather, information infrastructure and communication technology should always be viewed as socially situated, generated and moulded by the needs and shape of society or by the agendas of the powerful. The history of surveillance complies with this proposition. In the era of modernity the major agency of surveillance has been the nation-state (Giddens, 1985). On the one hand, the nation-state has served as a vehicle for social and individual advance, and can be seen to have delivered progress and prosperity. On the other hand, it has extended and developed considerably the technologies of surveillance, which, in part, define modern societies. As it has evolved, the nation-state has increasingly involved itself in the collection and manipulation of information on the private citizen and her/his activities, social, political and economic. The nation-state is, according to Higgs (2004), essentially an ‘information state’, and has been nurturing and performing this role for centuries. For example, Slack (2004) has examined the information role of government in seventeenth-century Britain, with particular emphasis on the rise of ‘political arithmetic’ – the monitoring and accounting of the wealth, strength and trade of the nation – as the necessary complement to the rapid growth of the military-fiscal state. An uninterrupted line of development from the mechanical surveillance of the nineteenth-century state to the ‘electronic eye’ of the digital state has been identified by Lyon (1994; 2001). In fact, a strong case can be made for locating the authentic information revolution – certainly the surveillance revolution – in the nineteenth century, driven by state monitoring mechanisms such as the census (which became nominal in 1841); the tracking of citizens via the growth of the passport (Lloyd, 2003); government investigations (such as parliamentary select committees and royal commissions); and the state registration of births, deaths and marriages, which commenced in 1837 (Stieg, 1980). Beyond the nation-state, an imperial dimension to surveillance can also be detected. In late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century India, 13

Technologies of information before the computer are discussed in a later section of this chapter (pp. 14–23).

Before the Computer

13

intelligence gathering by administrative elites involved a network of local Indian spies, ‘news [report] writers’ and ‘knowledge secretaries’, deployed by British officials to secure military, political and social intelligence (Bayly, 1996). This very specific example prompts a general observation: that the surveillance power of the state is, and has been, sustained by the experts and professionals who run it. Driver (1993), for example, has referred to the ‘administrative landscapes’ of the Victorian Poor Law. Information extracted by the state’s experts from the monitoring of ‘deviant’ groups, for the purpose of an efficient use of public funds in keeping with the tenets of political economy, amounted to a ‘science of moral statistics’ – a science enshrined in the work of pioneering nineteenth-century British social investigators like Charles Booth and Seebhom Rowntree (Englander and O’Day, 1995); and later deeply embedded in the planning and operation of the welfare state (Higgs, 2001; Lyon, 2003, pp. 24–6). The rise of the nation-state and the emergence, since the industrial revolution, of what Perkin (1989) termed ‘professional society’ are closely related. The state has been a major employer of professionals, from lawyers, intelligence analysts and accountants, to teachers, social workers and librarians. However, it is important to highlight the surveillance power of professionals per se as the ‘authors’ and ‘directors’ of ‘carceral organisations’ in which the behaviour of individuals are governed by strict protocols enforced by observation (Giddens, 1993, pp. 301–3). Much of the ouevre of the French cultural theorist and historian Michel Foucault (1980) was devoted to the notion of professional knowledge as a source of social power. Foucault inverted the slogan ‘knowledge is power’. For him power, notably professional power, could be used to ‘create’ knowledge, or expert discourses; and these have been based to a large extent on expert groups’ categorisation and recording of their clients’ lives and activities and of society at large. In short, the gathering and organisation of information is inextricably linked to the existence and development of professional society, so much so that out of that society there have emerged a number of meta-professions – information professions – dedicated not primarily to the discovery of knowledge but to the ‘ordering’ of knowledge produced by others. The history of these professions is discussed more fully later in this chapter; before that, we identify and examine the technologies of information before the computer which they embraced and developed.

New Technologies of Information Like the term ‘industrial society’ – and unlike, say, ‘modern society’, ‘capitalist society’ or the ‘society of signs’ – the term ‘information society’ is laden with technological meaning. The argument that the information society is essentially a society driven by information technology is a discourse anchored in technological determinism, the proposition that social change is shaped by technological change. Social determinists, on the other hand, who are concerned with the question of how technological change is shaped by social change, tend to be critical of the

14

The Early Information Society

technology-rich information society proposition.14 Whilst in this book we lean towards a social determinist perspective, foregrounding as we do the broader contexts in which a recognition of the importance of information appeared and grew, we do not wish to ignore pre-digital information technology. The past is not just about social processes and structures. In history, machines, like people, are important agents of change. Belying its image as a period of ‘technical and technological stability’ (Buckland, 1996, p. 63), the first half of the twentieth century saw a number of ‘technologies of information’ developed and deployed, or merely conceptualised (we prefer the term ‘technologies of information’ to ‘information technology’ because of the easy confusion of the latter with computer technology). They reflected a growing interest in information as a discrete concept. In discussing earlier in this chapter the emergence of historic information infrastructure, we have already alluded to the revolution in communication technologies in the nineteenth century. Technologically, industrialisation was not simply a question of factories and furnaces, mills and mines. It was a phase of history marked by an intensification of human ‘interconnectivity’. This was evident in the expansion of ‘soft’ communication, such as the growth of advertising, improving literacy and a deepening print culture,15 and even in terms simply of improved transportation and heightened social intercourse. It was also the case in respect of the development of ‘hard’ communication, such as the telephone (1876) and the wireless (1896). Earlier in the century another ‘hard’ communication technology, the telegraph, had brought a fundamental leap forward in the history of human communication.16 Its development was intertwined with the development of the British empire, the late-Victorian era of which Mattelart (1996, pp. 165–70) has dubbed the ‘Empire of Cable’.17 Following the laying of under-water cables to France in 1851 and the United States in 1866, Britain gradually established links with her colonial possessions and spheres of interest: India and Singapore (1871); Australia and China (1871); West Africa (1880s); and Australia and New Zealand via a westward route, through Canada and Fiji, in 1902. The network carried not only commercial and state and diplomatic information but also news: the ‘wires’ were ruthlessly exploited by the British news agency Reuters, established in 1851 (Read, 1992). 14

15

16

17

On social and technological determinism, see MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985) and Mackay (2001, pp. 29–31). Between 1825 and 1900, book production in Britain increased tenfold, from 600 to 6000 new titles per annum. Efficiency and speed in production improved rapidly during this period due to a number of inventions, such as the steam-powered press, stereotyping and mechanical typesetting (for example, the introduction in the 1880s of Linotype, a machine operated by keyboard which was able to cast an entire line of print on one solid slug of metal). See Finkelstein and McCleery (2005, pp. 61–2). Beniger (1986, p. 286) estimates that printing speed increased three-hundred-fold between 1820 and the end of the century. The telegraph was patented in 1837. Its first use over a substantial distance was two years later. By the early 1850s all major towns in Britain had been linked, the progress of the telegraphic infrastructure being closely linked to that of the railway. By 1879 over 26 million messages a year were being sent by telegraph. See Orbell (1991, p. 72). Other ‘technologies’ that helped facilitate the growth of Empire, especially in Africa in the late-nineteenth century were the breach-loading rifle and quinine.

Before the Computer

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Reflecting colonial domination, and hence centralised in its nature, the wired worldwide network of the telegraphic age should not be seen as simply an earlier, less sophisticated version of the much publicised digital global network society, which is essentially decentralised in its functioning, mirroring the characteristics of the Internet and the World Wide Web (Castells, 1996). However, the telegraph did preface these later developments in the way that it led to an unprecedented level of communication between the administrative nodes of the world’s ‘great powers’ and internationally hegemonic commercial domains. Inside the administrative nodes themselves, in the burgeoning offices of state departments and private concerns, the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed a revolution in manual information technology (the office management revolution of these years is more fully discussed in Chapter 4). With the introduction of a wide range of new technologies – from humble artefacts like the typewriter, the fountain pen, the paper clip and the filing cabinet, to more complex innovations like teleprinter, adding, calculating, addressing and duplicating machines – administrative spaces were transformed within a few decades from places that resembled medieval scriptoria into the machine-rich environments we associate with the modern office. This transformation was neatly captured in 1934 by Myra Curtis, the superintendent of women staff at the Post Office Savings Bank. Following a factfinding visit to the United States, she offered the following observation of the modern office environment across the Atlantic, while adding that ‘no technique of office management has been invented which is not known in England’: Many clerical desks are equipped with [a] side-table on which stands a typewriter which the clerk turns to when she wants to write. Americans will soon lose the use of the pen. They never write notes; they telephone; and to write anything with their own hands which they might dictate would seem [an] unforgivable waste of time. Shorthand writing, by the way, is going out in favour of the Dictaphone or the Ediphone. I seldom saw a stenographer taking dictation direct, but everywhere I saw baskets of wax cylinders, each bearing the record of a human voice.18

New technologies led to an improvement in the ease of transmission of information. This increased the production of information, leading to an unwieldy mass of books, papers, records, cards and ephemera (and later, of course, non-print and non-manuscript formats like photographs and microphotographs, film and microfilm, and audio recordings). Documentary chaos ensued. Contemporaries testified to the information overload of the time. In 1896 L.T. Hobhouse wrote of the ‘deluge of specialism’ and the ‘mass of accumulated fact’, and the consequential danger of science being ‘in real danger of being ruined by her own success’ (p. vii). Addressing the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) in 1926, the Master of Balliol, A.D. Lindsay, spoke of ‘a terrific 18

‘American office management’, The Municipal Journal and Public Works Engineer (26 January 1934), p. 122. The dictaphone, it should be stressed, was not just for letter writing; it was seen as ‘an invaluable instrument of business control’, for the production of memoranda, staff instructions and records of conferences, meetings and interviews: ‘Growth of municipal office work: the dictaphone as a time–saver’, The Municipal Journal and Public Works Engineer (26 January 1934), p. 129.

16

The Early Information Society

accumulation of the materials and instruments of knowledge’ and the ‘mental indigestion’ this caused.19 In an age of scientific and technical advance, contemporaries naturally searched for a ‘technical fix’ to organising the new abundance of information.20 New technology per se was not in short supply. This, after all, was the age of what Lewis Mumford called the ‘neo-technics’, when steam and mechanics was giving way to developments like electricity, synthetic chemistry and, above all, technologies that ‘connected’ individuals. In his Technics and Civilization, Mumford (1934, pp. 6–7) observed that ‘some of our most mechanical instruments – the telephone, the phonograph, the motion picture – have grown out of our interest in the human voice and the human eye and our knowledge of their physiology and anatomy’. This, he proposed, was ‘a technics directed towards the service of life … that distinguish it morally, socially, politically, esthetically from the cruder forms that preceded it’. If one side of the ‘new technics’ coin was a communications revolution that complemented the human spirit, then the other side was the search for a rational ‘ordering’ of the information explosion that resulted from innovation in communication. What was lacking was a truly integrated technology for the processing, organisation and retrieval of information. For half a century before the arrival of the computer, the technology that appeared to be most the promising in this regard was the punched-card. The inventor and patentee of the punched-card machine was Herman Hollerith, an employee of the United States Patent Office (Nasri, 1973). He developed his machine in the 1880s in preparation for its use in tabulating data generated by the 1890 United States census, a process which was completed, extraordinarily, in just a year. In the first half of the twentieth century Hollerith machines, as they were generically termed, went through various stages of modification for application in state bureaucracies and in commerce and industry (they were mostly suitable and cost-effective for large-scale operations). Based on an earlier application in automatic silk weaving looms in eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century France, the punched card was essentially a dataprocessing card through which holes were punched in columns that related to specific data or facts. The resulting pattern of holes represented a code – punched cards were in essence perforated index cards – which could be read mechanically by metal feelers or, as was developed later, by photoelectric cells or electric wire brushes. Punched-paper tape and edge-notched cards were developed as variations on this theme, but were less common than the punched card. In Britain the first punched-card machines appeared in 1904. Before the First World War the technology was adopted (usually through rental agreements) by a number of large enterprises and state agencies (Orbell, 1991, p. 78). The punched card was used for accounts work, wage and sales analysis, stock control and 19

20

Speaking at the opening session of that year’s annual conference: Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, Report of the Proceedings of the Third Conference (London: ASLIB, 1926), p. 1. Of course, this was in keeping (albeit that this observation is made retrospectively) with Beck’s (1992) notion of the ‘risk society’, where technological solutions to human problems inevitably precipitate problems which require further technological intervention.

Before the Computer

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valuations. The technology came into its own after 1918. Between the wars, for example, the Prudential Assurance Company invested heavily in punched-card technology: punching machines to code the cards, sorting machines to sort cards according to the required categories, and printing tabulators to reproduce in printed form the details of the sorting results. The life assurance industry was faced with the problem of keeping millions of records ‘in such a form that they shall be lasting, readily available for reference, amenable to small alterations, and, above all, accurate’; and so the punched-card was the perfect substitute for the labourintensive methods that had previously been used. (Symmons, 1929, p. 2). Around the same time the punched-card system began to be used in the preparation of bills for the public utilities: gas, electricity and telephone.21 Not surprisingly, therefore, in 1945 the American engineer Vannevar Bush (1945a, p. 104) was able to comment that: ‘Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines’ (V. Bush, 1945a, p. 104). This was certainly the case in regard to the ‘business’ of war, for during the Second World War hundreds of punched-card machines travelled with American combat units, maintaining personnel records and preparing casualty lists and strength summaries (Pugh, 1995, pp. 92–3). Punchedcard machines remained popular well into the middle of the century. In 1955, for example, the entire accounting system at Shell Petroleum was changed over to punched-card equipment, which was used for the first time to produce the company’s public accounts.22 The punched-card also found its way into the world of libraries – for work on acquisitions, the preparation of catalogues and the maintenance of serial records.23 One of the first applications of the technology was in the library of the University of Texas in 1936 for circulation control, and later (in the 1940s) for serial record control (Dugan and Minker, 1969, p. 185; Salmon, 1975, p. 338). Also in the 1930s, the technology was exploited by the Boston Public Library to record the purchasing and circulation of books and membership transactions (Quigley, 1945). In 1942 the Montclair Public Library, New Jersey installed two specially designed machines to record charging transactions; and in 1950 the Library of Congress produced an extensive book catalogue using punched cards (Salmon, 1975, pp. 338–9). In Britain, immediately after the Second World War, punched-card methods for library work were pioneered by the public librarian T.E. Callander (1946), and by 1954 were being used, ‘to a varying degree’, in around a dozen libraries, for maintaining stock registers especially, but also, as at Walthamstow Public Library, for the charging and discharging books (Pike, 1954).24 In 1947 an entire session of ASLIB’s annual conference was devoted to punched-card systems, including a demonstration of Hollerith apparatus by various companies in the field (Batten, 1947; ‘Demonstration of punched-card apparatus’, 1947; Dyson, 1947; Perry, Ferris and Stanford, 1947). In 1954 the Patent Office announced its intention to use 21

22

23 24

‘American office management’, The Municipal Journal and Public Works Engineer (26 January 1934), p. 129. ‘Men, women and machines: impressive new accounts team at Shell Court’, London Shell (10 October 1955), p. 3. On punched-card methods in documentation and research, see Scheele (1961). See also, Butcher (1952); Callander (1958); Sharp (1957).

18

The Early Information Society

a punched-card system to record and tabulate records relating to the classification of patent specifications.25 Just as in the late-twentieth century two technological areas – computing and telecommunications – were married to form information technology, and thereby raise the prospect of an information utopia, so also in the 1930s and 1940s punched-card technology was matched with microphotography to give birth to the idea of a machine called the Rapid Selector, as an ‘information retrieval’ panacea to the problem of information chaos. But before discussing the history and relevance of the of the Rapid Selector, it is first necessary to examine the history of microfilm technology and the enthusiasm that surrounded it in the 1930s and 1940s. Microphotography was first developed in 1839, and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was used to communicate messages during the siege of Paris. However, it was not until the twentieth century that microfilm came to be recognized and promoted as a radical means of dealing with the problem of the burgeoning printed record. In 1907 Robert Goldsmidt and Paul Otlet described the microphotographic processes employed by the International Institute for Bibliography, in a paper entitled ‘Une Forme Nouvelle du Livre – Le Livre Micro-Photographique’, published in the Belgian periodical Journal des Brevets (cited in Bradford, 1939, p. 393). It was envisaged that through the widespread production of standardised microfiche, the book, far from being replaced, would enjoy a new lease of life (Buckland, 1996, p. 64). It was realised that the value of microfilm lay in its application to the reproduction not only of large bulky items, or indeed items that were in need of preservation, but also material that was too costly to publish in the normal way because of the limited demand for it. There was also a need for it in the reproduction of documents – letters, invoices, cheques etc. – that needed to be retained for routine information management purposes in organisations. Whereas the mere facsimile photographic reproduction of published and nonpublished documents was well established by 1914,26 the meaningful development of microphotography came only after the war. Ideas about microfilm discussed in European documentation circles were taken up in the inter-war years in the United States. In 1921, in Washington D.C., the organisation Science Service was founded, A non-profit corporation, Science Service was the forerunner of the American Documentation Institute, established in 1937, which in turn became the American Society for Information Science in 1968.27 The leading figure in Science Service was to be the engineer and science reporter, G. Watson Davis, who joined the organisation in 1922 to edit its Science News Letter. Davis was one of the first Americans to take an interest in the European documentation scene. In 1935 he addressed the International Institute for Documentation, at its annual meeting in Copenhagen (Davis, 1935). He established links with the UK. He was in contact with S.C. Bradford at the Science Library, as well as the leading documentalist 25 26

27

Library Association Record (1954), p. 97. Facsimile, same-size reproduction was further developed in the inter-war years via the Photostat machine. The photocopier was invented in the late 1930s but not marketed until 1949. For the history of these organisations, see: Farkas-Conn (1990); Rice (1991); Schultz and Garwig (1969).

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Edith Ditmas; and he spoke on microphotography at ASLIB’s 14th annual conference in 1937 (Davis, 1937).28 Davis became Director of Science Service in 1933, and two years later created a Documentation Institute within it. Through Science Service, Davis aimed to help popularise science and to improve the dissemination of ‘scientific information by voice, print and film’.29 In particular, Science Service began to consider the idea of miniaturising information photographically: ‘The most promising plan seems to be the development of some method for putting books and manuscripts into compact and portable form by some miniature-photographic process similar to motion picture films’.30 Microfilm was styled by Science Service as the ‘new tool for intelligence’.31 Between the wars, microfilm began to attract the attention of experts from a large number of scholarly, professional and managerial groups. In the 1930s the excitement surrounding microfilm reached new heights.32 It was championed as a historic revolution in business and information, on a par with the invention of printing: ‘A revolution is impending, hatched in the clam alcoves of the world’s libraries. A means of recording, storing and distributing the written word, said to be the most important discovered since the time of Gutenburg.’33 In Britain the medical profession complained of information overload and the over-production of poor papers: microfilm was discussed in the pages of the Lancet as a solution to this problem.34 Kodak’s ‘Recordak’ machines, equipment that could photograph thousands of documents each hour, were marketed in the late 1930s, and were widely used in British libraries to reproduce index cards.35 In the Second World War ASLIB began a microfilm service, concentrating on the reproduction of scientific periodicals published in enemy countries, to assist the war effort (P. Richards, 1994, pp. 81–5).36 ASLIB’s R.S. Hutton (1937, p. 99) had 28

29

30 31

32

33

34 35

36

Files in the Science Service Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091, Washington D.C., Box 127, show how Davis kept track of developments in the U.K., including the work of ASLIB which commenced its own microphotography service in 1942. ‘Plan for film record prepared by Science Service’, Washington (15 June 1926), p. 1, typescript, Science Service Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091, Washington D.C. Ibid. W. Davis, ‘Microfilm – new tool for intelligence: address by Watson Davis … before the Special Libraries Association, Pittsburgh, June 8, 1938’, typescript, Science Service Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091, Washington D.C. For example, to demonstrate the technology an American microphotographic production laboratory was in continuous operation during the 1937 International Exposition of Arts and Technology in Modern Life, which took place in Paris: see Rayward (1983). ‘For scholarly readers’, Industrial Bulletin of Arthur D.Little Inc., No. 120 (January 1937). ‘Journal or microfilms?’, The Lancet (1 April 1939). ‘Recordak: the modern application of photography in business. For all forms of record making and record keeping’ (1937), marketing pamphlet produced by Kodak Ltd., deposited in Science Museum Library, British Society for International Bibliography, ARCH/BSIB/5. The commencement of the service was announced in ASLIB Information, No. 52 (July 1942).

20

The Early Information Society

previously praised photographic and microphotographic technologies, believing that they ‘will play a big role in solving the nightmare of libraries, the congestion of space’ and pointing out that they were already proving their worth in information management, for example, in the filming of cheques, pension records and census returns. Librarians and documentalists of the day did not see microphotography as a threat to traditional printed formats, rather as a helpmate: S.C. Bradford, for example, predicted that ‘photography will not take the place of libraries, or kill the journals’ (Bradford, 1939, p. 394). To return to developments in the United States, aware of the growing interest in the possibilities of microphotography for universal information storage and retrieval, Davis instigated two specific services. The first he called the ‘Auxiliary Publication Service’. This service offered: ‘Relief for crowded journals’.37 Material that journals could not publish, either because it was rejected or was too voluminous, would be microfilmed and made available, at a price, either on film or on paper photographic prints (Davis, 1935). Davis also established a Bibliofilm Service,38 operated in the Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aimed at making a reality of what he conceptualized as ‘one big library’, or ‘net’. This involved libraries co-operating with each other to satisfy a user’s request – if this could not be satisfied from a library’s own collection – through the supply of photoprints or, preferably in the long term, microfilms of items. By the end of the 1940s a number of large libraries in the Washington D.C. area were co-operating in this way. Davis’s thinking was in the tradition of Otlet’s universal bibliographic index and mirrored H.G. Wells’ scheme in the late 1930s for a ‘World Brain’. In 1935 Davis wrote a paper describing a microfilm selector device that bore a strong resemblance to the prototype Rapid Selector apparatus developed by the American engineer Vannevar Bush.39 Davis acknowledged that: ‘Scientific bibliography is in an unfortunately chaotic state’ (Davis, 1935). Despite this chaos, he firmly believed in the prospect of the universal scientific repository, sustained by sophisticated ‘punched hole’ technology: ‘There can be assembled in one or two places, serving the whole world [our emphasis], a complete scientific bibliography instantly available to provide “to order service”’ (Davis, 1935). ‘For every published article, past and present,’ Davis explained: there would be as many abstract bibliography cards in a master bibliographical file as there are subject classifications under which the article should be indexed ... upon each card … there would appear the abstract bibliographical entry and also a subject classification punched or otherwise marked so as to actuate the proper mechanism in a sorting machine of the punch card, photoelectric cell or some other type. Once these bibliographic cards are placed in the files, this sorting machine would file them and select from them the classification desired … The bibliography thus produced 37

38

39

Headline on flyer advertising the Auxiliary Publication Service, Science Service Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091, Washington D.C. The Bibliofilm Service began in 1936, with the help of a grant of $15,000 from the Chemical Foundation. W. Davis, ‘Methods of selecting for use in bibliography’ (1935), Science Service Document 57, Science Service Collection, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7091, Washington D.C.

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would be sent to the scientist in the form of [a] microphotographic record, or, at higher cost, the microphotographs could be used to produce photographic projection prints capable of being read by the unaided eye (Davis, 1935).

The idea of the Rapid Selector was made concrete, though not a fully-working reality, by Bush, who finished building a prototype at MIT in 1940.40 It is unclear if Bush got his idea for the machine from Davis (who he first met in 1932) or vice versa (Varlejs, 1999, p. 150). To confuse the story even more, when Bush attempted to patent his machine his application was turned down by the United States Patent Office on the grounds that the German scientist and industrialist Emanuel Goldberg, head of Zeiss Ikon in Dresden until 1933, had already patented the Rapid Selector in 1931 (Buckland, 2004; Buckland, 2006).41 In 1946 Bush’s Rapid Selector blueprints, as well as his prototype which had been mothballed in 1940, were made available to Ralph Shaw, librarian at the United States Department of Agriculture, who oversaw the construction of a new machine (Varlejs, 1999). However, like the first machine, the second model, delivered to the Department of Agriculture in 1949, also turned out to be a serious disappointment mechanically. Moreover, by this time people were beginning to realise that the solution to the problem of providing access to the burgeoning accumulation of recorded knowledge lay with the computer. Four years earlier, however, Bush had conceptualised a machine (the Memex), in the tradition of the Rapid Selector, that predicted the desktop, on-line, hypertext information retrieval that came about later in the century.42 In the 1930s Vannevar Bush had been Professor and Dean of engineering at MIT, and between 1941 and 1946 served as Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, part of whose responsibility was the project to build the atomic bomb (the Manhattan Project). He was the inventor in the 1930s of the ‘differential analyser’, the most complex data-processing machine before the advent of the modern computer. Bush professed an unshakable faith in the benefits of scientific progress, but explained that this progress was being bogged down by necessary and inevitable specialisation and by mountains of inaccessible (because of poor information retrieval) published research: ‘publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record’, he asserted (V. Bush, 1945a, p. 102). Bush was enthusiastic about the potential of microfilm. Advances in microphotography, he explained, promised the reduction of the Encyclopedia Britannica into the volume of a matchbox, while all printed artefacts produced since the invention of printing in the fifteenth century could be ‘lugged off in a moving van’ (V. Bush, 1945a, p. 103). In 1945, in his famous essay ‘As we may think’, Bush (1945) publicised his dream of building a machine that provided universal information access, at the push of a button or, more accurately, several buttons, at the researcher’s desk. What he called the Memex (he never built one) was a sort of mechanised file and 40

41

42

By all accounts it was a large and clumsy piece of apparatus, the complete opposite of Bush’s later proposal, the desktop Memex machine: C. Burke (1991, p. 149). Not only has Goldberg been lost from the pages of history in regard to the Rapid Selector, he is also the forgotten pioneer of microdot technology. On the evolution of the Rapid Selector into the Memex, see Nyce and Kahn (1991).

22

The Early Information Society

library. This was, he explained, ‘a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory’ (V. Bush, 1945a, pp. 106–7). The Memex consisted of a desk, with screens, a keyboard, sets of buttons and levers, and storage for microfilm carrying millions of items. By means of electronics, as well as photoelectric cells which recognised coded patterns adjacent to the micro-images of documents, items could be retrieved almost instantly (the term ‘rapid selector’, as we have seen, was used to describe this and similar machines). A further important feature of the Memex idea was its capability of recording search pathways – trails of items in a literature search that could be retrieved at a later date or made available to others (thereby predicting hypertext developments later in the century). As Colin Burke (1994, p. 120) has explained: A scientist would specify which ideas were to be joined then pointers linking records would be instantly recorded on the microfilms in the machine. Memex might even be able to automatically create the links. Once established the trail could be followed by a researcher or one of his colleagues. The ability to share the creative trails … was a key element of Bush’s view of the future of scientific information. Scholars in every field were to communicate with each other, free from the interference of artificial cataloguing systems.

Apart from envisioning the future, Bush’s proposed machine challenged the prevailing dominance of librarians and their indexes: his machine was based upon ‘the human dynamics of creativity and association, not the static categorical systems of the old librarians’ (C. Burke, 1994, p. 119). In short, control of information retrieval would be taken away from librarians and placed in the hands of subject experts. The library would be not just reformed, but essentially bypassed. The punched-card and microfilm technologies which, in tandem, had generated the idea of the Rapid Selector and, with the addition of electronics, what Buckland (2004, p. 40) referred to as the ‘Memex fantasy’ continued to be exploited in the United States, Britain and elsewhere until well into the second half of the twentieth century. However, by the 1950s the writing was on the wall for both punched-card and microfilm systems. In 1951 computers became available commercially. In Britain, one of the earliest investors in the new technology was the catering and confectionery firm of Lyons and Co., famous for its high-street teashops. By April 1954 its electronic computer, known as LEO (Lyons’ Electronic Office), was calculating the weekly payroll for 1700 employees, producing one payslip every 1.5 seconds. LEO was also to be used for providing the company’s managers with ‘even more information for running the business than ever before’, including information relating to just-in-time stocktaking.43 In addition, the type of computer installed at Lyons, it was boasted, could calculate the trajectories of shells fired from artillery, calculate the ‘behaviour’ of missiles, assist weather forecasting, calculate insurance premiums and determine the position of atoms in crystals. Clearly, it was believed that a new age, the computer or information age, had 43

‘Let’s look at LEO’, Office Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4 (April 1954), pp. 123–5.

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arrived. However, as we argue in this book, the arrival of this new age followed a fifty-year period which had already seen the concept of information become a discrete, recognised, valued and professionalised aspect of both the state and industry and commerce. It is to a discussion of the rise of information in each of these spheres in early twentieth century Britain that this chapter now turns. Information and the Re-Structuring of Capitalism Capitalism has survived and thrived because of its inherent ability to re-invent itself. Its existence depends on the continual renewal of supply and demand, of products and markets, of systems and social aspirations, of profits and prosperity. The history of capitalism has been punctuated by phases of re-structuring. It is suggested, for example, that we are currently experiencing one such phase: the rise of the post-Fordist economy, facilitated by new information and communication technologies productive of a ‘cybernetic capitalism’ (J. Allen, 1992; Amin, 1994; Robins and Webster, 1988). Prior to this, the incredible economic advances of the first seven decades of the twentieth century, achieved despite the interruptions and waste of two world wars, were based to a large degree on the adoption of Fordist methods of production and organisation.44 As an ‘ideal type’, Fordism has a number of clearly identifiable components (R. Murray, 1988): • Standardisation of products manufactured with interchangeable parts. • The use of special purpose machinery for the mass production of each model/product. • The application of Taylorism, the scientific management of tasks broken down and subjected to minute scrutiny (for example, time and motion study) and to intensive supervision. • The implementation of flow-line assembly (as opposed to nodal assembly) where products come to or flow past the worker. • Mass advertising and the ‘management of selling’ (credit facilities, flexible purchase and sophisticated market research) and mass servicing via, ideally, vertically integrated after sales points. • Generous worker benefits (cash and social wage) to stimulate demand and to offset the monotony induced by extensive task differentiation and de-skilling.

44

By the last third of the twentieth century the Fordist approach to production and to the provision of services, which had underpinned economic growth for decades, had run out of steam. As tastes and consumption patterns became less predictable and more sophisticated and individual, and as labour costs rose and the Keynesian ‘demand management’ fell from grace, mid-twentieth-century Fordist enterprises found it increasingly difficult to respond effectively to demand that had previously been culturally stable and economically robust. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a marked decline in productivity and corporate profits. Frank (1980, p. 33) informs us that in Britain the net ‘rate of profit’ fell from 3.4% in 1964, to 1.4% in 1970, to 0.9% in 1975. A similar decline was experienced in the United States. This prompted a search for strategies and technologies that would improve productivity. Niche marketing and just-in-time production, made possible by digital developments, were the result.

24

The Early Information Society

• The control of both conceptual and practical information (production know-how) passes from workers to managers and owners of capital. Information was critical to Fordism and to the Taylorism and scientific management that underpinned it.45 On the shop floor, a corps of supervisors acted as an information conduit between management and problems arising in the production process. Scientific management required a constant flow of data from the production and marketing processes upon which management could base its decisions. Information was starkly centralised in a bureaucratised hierarchy, workers’ informational input into the production process having been brutally reduced by de-skilling and a minute division of labour. The second industrial revolution was also marked by a realisation of the importance of scientific and technical knowledge to production, thereby enhancing the value of research and development and of information sources and services. In short, capitalist enterprises developed ‘information acumen’ (Bud-Frierman, 1994). Information was central to the emergence and success of the first giant corporations at the end of the nineteenth century. This was the case in regard to both external and internal information. ‘External’ flows of information were enlarged by the development of publicly funded agencies. In the second half of the nineteenth century many public libraries developed reference collections rich in commercial and technical information relevant to local industries and services; and from the First World War onwards such information was increasingly disseminated through dedicated departments in public libraries (Abbot, 1917; A. Black, 2000, pp. 27–31; Hulme 1917; Jast 1917; Lamb 1955). In 1898 the Board of Trade reported on the importance to the economy of publicly available commercial intelligence; and a Commercial Intelligence Department free to businesses and the public was opened in Whitehall (Board of Trade Departmental Committee on the Dissemination of Commercial Information, 1898). A new ideology of the administrative system hastened the flow of ‘internal’ information in corporations. Information management may have entered the management literature only in recent decades, but its formal practice and the laying down of its founding principles can be traced back to the late-nineteenth century.46 Until the middle of the twentieth century, information management in business was entirely mechanical; it was not until the early 1950s that the first business computing system was developed and deployed – in the perhaps surprising environment of the confectionery and catering giant J. Lyons and Company (P. Bird, 1994; Camier et al, 1997). New technologies of information management – ‘device innovations’ like the typewriter, filing cabinet and duplicator – emerged in response to the complex tasks and operational requirements that confronted the large-scale business enterprises and burgeoning state bureaucracies of the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. In addition, a variety of innovative information methods, or 45

46

Robins and Webster (1989, pp. 95–102) view this phase of new capitalist management as the original information society. However, one historian has even highlighted the complexity of documented internal organisation and procedures – this being one aspect of information management – operating in the eighteenth-century merchant’s counting house: see Price (1987). More about this in Chapter 4.

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techniques, appeared: statistical analysis, graphic representation, the internal memo, the staff magazine, the management meeting, schemes for classifying documents, the procedural manual and written protocols. These developments occurred in the context of the growth and increased centralisation of office departments, where (increasingly semi-skilled) workers were grouped according to function and subjected to Taylorist supervision; and where, for greater speed, methods of work and forms of documentation were standardized to pave the way for investment in office machinery (Beniger, 1986; Campbell-Kelly, 1992; 1994; 1998; Orbell 1991; Rhodes and Streeter 1999; Yates 1989). Internal communication in firms was transformed from ‘word of mouth’ exchanges to communication via the ‘papered office’. As Yates (1989, p. xv) explains, during the original and mechanical information revolution of around a hundred years ago, the ‘oral mode of interaction gave way to a complex and extensive formal communication system depending heavily on written documentation’. The late-Victorian and Edwardian revolution in information management followed the twenty-year economic slump that had set in around 1873 and signalled the end of the mid-Victorian boom. The revolution was a prime example of capitalism’s ability to re-adjust through the introduction of new technologies, techniques and structures.47 However, it was a revolution that spread beyond the commercial sphere and into the administrative operations of government. An interesting example of this is the story of information management in British military intelligence in the first half of the twentieth century (see the following section). The Second World War saw the emergence of sophisticated information management, including detailed indexing procedures, deployed at Bletchley Park, where enemy signals were de-coded and their meanings interpreted (Brunt, 2004). Meanwhile in Nazi Germany, information management, specifically punch-card technology, was used to populate, monitor and manage the systems of death camps established for the elimination of the Jews and political opponents (Bauman, 1989; E. Black, 2001) The application of cutting-edge information management in the environment of the extermination camp is deeply symbolic of the negative view of the bureaucratic method, what Max Weber called the ‘iron cage of bureaucracy’ (Albrow, 1970, especially Chapter 3; Lyon 1994, p. 31). As an ideal-type, as theorised by Weber (1978, pp. 956–1002), modern bureaucracy is multi-faceted, characterised by hierarchy, taut discipline, promotion by merit, specialised training and objective, value-free expertise. Other traits identified by Weber were intrinsically informational: official, formal ‘jurisdictional areas’ are laid down and are ordered by written ‘calculable’ rules and regulations; management is based on written documentation stored in bureau files; and knowledge of the bureau’s documented 47

Another example of capitalism’s ability to re-adjust is offered by Chandler (1984, pp. 11–15). He notes how in the inter-war period, in response to a drastic drop in profits, and very rapidly after the Second World War, large companies began to replace the centralized, functionally departmentalised structure, first seen in the late-nineteenth century, with multi-divisional structures, each dedicated to a particular product–line. This was designed to overcome the difficulties faced by managers, despite improved information management, in co-ordinating the production of an increasing number of product-lines.

26

The Early Information Society

rules and written files constitutes the essence of expertise. Bureaucracy as an idealtype can therefore be distilled into dispassionate, rational, authoritative rule by officials on the one hand, and the implementation of information and regulatory systems, with written documentation at their heart, on the other. As the second industrial revolution progressed, the large-scale business enterprise became a major site of bureaucratisation (Dandeker, 1990, p. 15) – a powerful arm of what Lewis Mumford (1961, pp. 415–21) termed the ‘tentacular bureaucracy’ of modernity. Outside the setting of the organisation, however, progress and efficiency in business were seen to be not just a function of bureaucracy and information management but also, increasingly, of knowledge accumulation and transfer. Scientific and technical knowledge, and its communication via information sources and services, were becoming more widely acknowledged as crucial to economic performance, especially in new, high-yield, technologically rich industries. This throws into sharp relief the idea that only recently have we entered an information, or knowledge, economy. Accepting the proposition that we are experiencing a fundamental, ‘information-driven’ break in history, it has become commonplace to argue that information is to our age what coal and iron were to the industrial revolution two centuries ago and what the plough was to the birth of agriculture ten thousand years ago (Information for a new age, 1995, p. xi). Such statements overestimate the relative importance of information to our current economic life. It is interesting to note, for example, how little the digital revolution has affected the growth rates of the British economy.48 On an aesthetic level, despite the proliferation of the ‘sign’ and the growing consumption of ‘information products’ in society, it is difficult not to escape the feeling that our culture remains dominated by artefacts and the need to acquire them - that industrial goods remain ‘the centrepiece of everyday life, the focal point of all representation, the dead centre of the modern world’ (T. Richards, 1991, p. 1). Further, although it is true that services now represent the largest component of the national incomes of advanced economies, the service revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was significant and should be invoked when speaking of the service revolution and economy of the second half of the twentieth century (Hartwell, 1973). More importantly, however, certainly as far as our discourse is concerned, the current adulation of information as a factor of production underestimates its past contribution to economic life and advance. The ‘knowledge economy’ is the phrase currently in vogue to describe a perceived shift in the way we produce things and earn our livings. Like other major labels describing the digital ‘new age’ proposition, the concept of the knowledge economy emphasises novelty over continuity. Those who ponder the economic dimensions of the supposed arrival of a knowledge society argue that: ‘we are living through a great transformation … which concerns the very social processes of knowledge production, diffusion and utilisation’ (Rodrigues, 2002, p. 1). Peter Drucker has gone so far as to announce the arrival of post-capitalist society. We are living, he explains, through one of 48

In the ten years 1996–2005 (inclusive) the British economy grew at an average of 2.8% per annum, which can be considered to be in a band that can be described as ‘historically normal’ for the period since the Second World War. See http://www.statistics.gov.uk (viewed 11 April 2006).

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those rare periods of history where society ‘re-arranges itself’. We are experiencing a ‘sharp transformation’ in the development of civilisation. The main driver of this ‘divide’ in history, Drucker (1993, pp. 1, 7) argues, is the economic function of knowledge: the basic economic resource is no longer capital, nor land, nor labour – ‘it is and will be knowledge’. Such assessments have encouraged voices in the information world to argue that ‘we have gone beyond information services and now live and work in a golden age of knowledge services [our emphasis]’ (St. Claire, 2003, p. xvi). Those convinced of the knowledge economy thesis are not entirely blind to the fact that the search for, and the exploitation of, knowledge has been at the heart of social and economic development in the modern world since the Enlightenment (Lindley, 2002, p. 95). Nor would all knowledge economy enthusiasts reject the idea that the key development in recent decades has been less the sudden arrival of knowledge as an economic resource than a long-overdue formal and widespread recognition of its economic value. However, discourses that celebrate the knowledge economy generally accentuate its epochal nature and the historical proximity of its origins at the expense of assessments of the role knowledge has played in economic development over the centuries. Relative to the large number of words that have been written about an emergent new society, appreciation of historic trends, roots and influences is relatively scarce. Yet, as sceptics have argued, it is crucially important to locate ‘new ages’ in the broad sweep of history. Knowledge has long been a key dynamic in the evolution of modern business, and more generally a ‘key component of economic growth’ (Castells, 1996, p. 66). As the industrial chemist James Keir pointed out in 1789, at the start of the industrial revolution: ‘the diffusion of a general knowledge, and a taste for science, over all classes of men, in every nation of Europe, or of European origin, seems to be the characteristic feature of the present age’ (quoted in Perkin, 1969, p. 13). At the start of the twentieth century, for example, the political economist Sydney Chapman (1901, p. 235) advised that: Knowledge alone can now unlock the gates of prosperity. Knowledge in the past was not infrequently regarded as a polish possible only to the leisured classes, as a something by which they rose to other spheres: today we know it still as a polish and a passport to a larger life; but we know it also as the essential condition of well–being and well-doing in the work-a-day world ... life is very hard now; social relations are infinitely intricate; our well–being is as much dependent on what cultivators are doing in America or South Russia as on our own home efforts; we are functioning like a huge complicated machine, and one trembles to think of what its getting out of gear means.

The librarians – ‘knowledge workers’ in today’s parlance – who Chapman was addressing were well aware of the economic dimensions of knowledge. The relationship between knowledge and the economy was recognised by Frederic Kenyon (former Principal Librarian of the British Museum) in 1944 (p. 16) when, in speaking at ASLIB’s annual conference, he urged that: ‘industry must be intellectualized, as the first stage in raising the cultural level of our national life, as well as in increasing its efficiency in its own sphere of action’. Earlier still, at its inaugural conference in 1924, ASLIB was told by one delegate that:

28

The Early Information Society Efficiency in research and in the application of its results is significantly conditioned by command of information. To the individual nation or race which most skilfully, thoroughly and wisely masters and uses the accumulated knowledge of mankind, comes supremacy in industry (Reese, 1925, p. 32).

ASLIB’s counterpart in the United States, the Special Libraries Association, established in 1909, saw its role as ‘putting knowledge to work’. In 1907, in the context of poor business performance and increasing economic competition from abroad, the British librarian James Duff Brown (1907, p. 32) urged each household in the land to form its own library, because in ‘a critical time like the present … intelligence and knowledge are at a premium’. Statements and expressions of purpose similar to all of the above can just as easily be found in twenty-first century discourses announcing the arrival of a knowledge economy. Information, Rationalisation and the State Economics and technology aside, undoubtedly the primary motive force behind the informatization of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was, in advanced industrial societies at least, the emerging modern nation-state. Giddens, famously, theorizes this process, arguing that the ‘initial leap forward in administrative power generated by the nation-state was accomplished prior to the development of electronic communication’ and that ‘modern societies have been ... information societies since their inception’ (Giddens, 1985, pp. 177–8). In essence, Giddens’ argument is that the collection, processing and use of information became, from the early-nineteenth century onwards, an integral part of the means by which modern states shaped their identity and ‘internally pacified’ their territories and subjects, replacing (pre-modern) absolutist rule by fear and violence with a (modern) regime of surveillance and ‘reflexive monitoring’ (p. 4). The key dimensions of this process are familiar enough in European history – the codification of legal systems and the establishment of the ‘rule of law’; the collection and use of official statistics to inform both social control and social welfare; the creation of a professionalised civil service whose business it became to collect and utilise information; the regulation and standardisation of both time and space by the state to create a unified national polity;49 and the formation of specialised institutions of information – libraries; documentation centres; indexes and archives – designed to collect, store and utilise the new informational resources of the state (Lyon, 1994, pp. 22–39). In Britain, most of these features of modern bureaucracy were in place by 1914. The first British census was undertaken in 1801 and developed in detail and complexity as the century progressed; social surveys of many kinds also became 49

It is perhaps worth noting here that there are significant distinctions of emphasis in identifying the forces underpinning the standardisation of space and time. Whilst Giddens (1985, pp. 172–81) emphasises the role of the state, Marxists traditionally have stressed the role of the factory system and capitalism more generally. See, for example, E.P. Thompson’s classic paper ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’ (Thompson, 1967).

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common in the late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. A General Register Office, which centralised the administration of births, marriages and deaths, was established in 1837 (Higgs, 2001, pp. 179–83). Weights and measures were standardised in acts of 1824 and 1878. Modern bureaucrats were appointed in ever increasing numbers following the establishment of a Civil Service Commission in 1855: numbers are estimated to have risen fivefold from 21,300 in 1832 to 280,000 in 1914 (D. Thompson, 1950, p. 178). By 1914 state administration in Britain was assuming its familiar, twentieth century shape through the establishment of government ‘boards’ – initially sub-sections of the Privy Council, Exchequer or Home Office but in reality the beginnings of separate ministries – in the fields of Trade; Agriculture; Education and Local Government. Organised systems of local government themselves were underpinned by Municipal Corporations Act (1882) and the County Councils Act (1888) (D. Thompson, 1950, pp. 175–80). All of these bureaux, and more, naturally began to spawn their own information systems, records, archives, libraries and files. Specialised government libraries, such as those of the Patent Office in London (established in 1852) and the Imperial Institute (1887) began to appear, as the need for organised access to records and data became apparent (Wyatt, 1991). However, the extent and power of this ‘dossier’ state remains unclear, in part because of the dearth of detailed empirical studies of the gathering and use of information in the government of the time. Such studies as do exist indicate perhaps that state information management in this period was more contingent and incremental than ‘surveillance’ theorists such as Giddens suppose. For example, the studies by Black and Brunt of intelligence gathering and organisation in early British state security (MI5) suggest that crisis management, rather than systematic development, was the key driver of advances in the management of information. Founded in 1909, the British Security Service, which became known as MI5, was given the task of countering sabotage, espionage and subversion at home and across the British Empire. The torrent of information which flowed into the organisation before and during the First World War led it to construct a relatively efficient manual information management system. The hub of MI5’s information activity was its registry, where documents were arranged by hundreds of clerks in subject and personal files, backed up by detailed indexing and cross-referencing in a card catalogue. In the inter-war period, however, this system was allowed to fall into disrepair; so much so that at the start of the Second World War MI5’s information management system virtually collapsed due to a tidal wave of data flooding the system. This crisis forced a reform of information systems in the organisation, including the introduction of punched-card machines, microfilming, improved indexing, and the replacement of unwieldy subject files by individual files (Black and Brunt, 2001). One undeniable barrier to the expansion of state sponsored informationalism in early-twentieth-century Britain was the legacy of Victorian economic liberalism – in particular the persistence of the doctrines of free trade and of government intervention only as a last resort. As Corelli Barnett observes: liberal doctrine seemed to blind British eyes and paralyse British will power. The most the nation could manage in the late nineteenth century was a series of immense reports by Royal Commissions or other bodies on various aspects of the ever more

30

The Early Information Society urgent need for rational reorganisation. The sombre evidence of such reports and their recommendations were either ignored or acted upon after years of delay; and then only timorously, shadows of original proposals (Barnett, 1972, p. 98).

Such informational disasters as the failed International Catalogue of Scientific Literature – originally planned at a ‘World Congress’ in 1896 and finally abandoned through lack of direction, finance and state support in 1922, seem to bear witness to Barnett’s contentions.50 In late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, the development of an informational bureaucracy was undeniably a messy affair, hampered by the resistance of industrialists suspicious of government, economic liberal politicians, scientists jealous of their academic ‘freedom’ and many civil servants and information professionals themselves. Suspicion of state ‘control’ in fact persisted throughout the period of the early information society in Britain and was evident even among otherwise ardent supporters of informational development. As late as 1944, S.C. Bradford, the founding father of British documentation and the London Science Reference Library denounced what he saw as a creeping ‘canker of government control’ in post World War II informational development, and his sentiments were reflected in the overwhelming opposition to Bernal’s proposals for a nationalised system of scientific information at the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference of 1948.51 Despite this persistence of liberal values, it nevertheless became increasingly evident that national co-ordination of Britain’s informational resources was essential to its survival as a modern nation state. Even before 1914, a ‘national efficiency’ movement, linked to social imperialism and calls for the modernisation of empire, began to campaign for more state intervention, scientific planning, and national co-ordination in all walks of life (Searle, 1971). The movement attracted support from a broad spectrum of political and public life, its leading figures including A.J. Balfour, R.S.Haldane, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, statistician and eugenicist Karl Pearson and, more tenuously, H.G. Wells; it also spawned a number of pressure groups, most notably the British Science Guild (BSG) (MacLeod, 1994). Its protagonists typically contrasted British ‘muddle’ unfavourably with imperial Germany and, especially, Meiji Japan: ‘modern’ states seen as organised and supportive of science, industry and education.52 Some of these arguments began to highlight the significance of information as a resource in the modern state: Norman Lockyer, founder of the British Science Guild arguing for example in a famous address of 1903 that ‘brain power’, rather than sea power, would henceforth become the decisive strategic resource in history (Lockyer, 1903). More specifically, Sidney Webb (1902) and H.G. Wells (1904) both gave addresses arguing for the streamlining, coordination and modernisation of libraries – a process which they deemed essential to the development of British science, industry and commerce.

50 51

52

See Chapter 2 and Murra (1951) for a detailed account. See Pollard (1944, p. 70) for Bradford’s speech; Chapter 3, pp. 66–73 covers the Scientific Information Conference. A popular title in British social imperialist circles was Alfred Stead’s Great Japan: A Study of National Efficiency (1905). See MacLeod (1994, p. 159).

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Gradually, after the impact of crises such as near defeat in the Boer War (1899–1902), an economic slump and consequential industrial unrest (1910–12) and finally the shock of World War I, the logic of such arguments for national modernisation and rationalisation became indisputable. This resulted, according to Edward Higgs (2001, p.183), in the ‘real foundation of the modern Information State in England’ impelled by a mix of both welfare and warfare. Advocates of ‘social liberalism’, led by Lloyd George, presided initially in peacetime over the expansion of the state welfare system (1906–14), a process which eventually ‘spawned a vast system of centralized state record keeping’ in new bureaucracies such as the Ministry of Labour’s Claims and Record Office and the Ministry of Pensions Records Office, each of which by the 1930s employed over 3000 staff. The First World War also saw the expansion of the General Register Office and the foundation of a system of national registration – whereby citizens had to register and report changes of address – as a basis for military and civil conscription. This system subsequently remained in place until the end of World War II ( Higgs, 2001, p. 185). The war also brought with it the realisation that some kind of government information strategy would be needed if Britain were to compete with Germany (and later the United States) as a modern scientific, industrial and military state. In 1915 a Ministry of Munitions was established to organise the war economy, and in the same year a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) was founded to plan and promote the development of civil science, technology and industry. As Chapter 2 of this book discusses in detail, the advent of the DSIR was to be especially important for the development of state support for information provision in Britain. In 1917, just two years after its foundation, the department decided to fund a network of information centres organised by industrial sectors, linked to its own planned network of industrial research stations and associations. These information centres (37 by 1942) in practice became the cornerstone of technical and industrial information provision in Britain until the 1960s (Urquhart, 1956; Davy and MacLaclan, 1977). After 1918, there was much discussion about the need for a national information strategy to service the informational demands of science, industry and commerce. In an age of ‘planning’, the phonomenon of national plans for the rationalisation of scientific and technical information especially became commonplace. Such schemes ranged from institutional proposals, such as those of J.G. Pearce (1926), for a network of organisations which would form a ‘national intelligence service’, to proposals aimed at creating national systems of publication and bibliography such as those proposed by Lewkowitsch (Jason Farradane) at the FID conference at Oxford in 1938 (Lewkowitsch, 1938). These discussions took on an additional head of steam in the late 1930s with the publication of J.D. Bernal’s manifesto for ‘planned science’ – The Social Function of Science – in 1939. The book specifically included a plan for the nationalisation of British scientific publication, an idea which was expanded by the Association of Scientific Workers (AScW) in 1945 into a scheme for the complete overhaul (and centralisation) of the systems of British scientific and technical information (Muddiman, 2003, pp. 391–3). In reality, however, the inter-war period saw the development of state sponsored information services on a much more incremental and contingent basis.

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The Early Information Society

The above mentioned DSIR information centres were complemented by an expanded Central Science Library in London, which, according to its keeper S.C. Bradford was ‘attempting the organisation of a complete library in science and technology’ and which by the mid-1930s held 250,000 volumes, subscribed to 9000 periodicals and made 21,000 postal loans and copies per annum (Bradford, 1934, p. 2). Some public libraries began also to develop significant scientific, technical and commercial section, especially in larger industrial centres (Lamb, 1955). However, in many ways, the growing number of information bureaux and special libraries outside the state sector were more significant. These included strategically and economically important large industrial concerns such as ICI, Metro-Vickers, Shell, and Tate and Lyle, where information centres were organized on very similar lines to the bureaux in research stations and organisations. Of course, many smaller British companies were still slow to see the benefits of information: nevertheless, by 1948 202 (or 20 per cent) of ASLIB’s members came from private industrial concerns.53 Further evidence suggesting a ‘mixed economy’ of information in the inter-war years is provided by the fact that its most important mechanism of coordination – ASLIB, the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux – was developed at a relative distance from the state.54 Its impetus in fact came from the British scientific and industrial community itself, which during World War I had become acutely aware of the need for a ‘clearing house’ for scientific and technical information. Though the activities of two of its leaders who had become heads of DSIR Research Associations – R.S. Hutton and J.G. Pearce – ASLIB was established in 1924-6 as a voluntary association of corporate members, supported initially by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Pearce and Hutton encouraged ASLIB to set up a permanent office and embark on a series of co-ordination and networking projects under its energetic general secretary Edith Ditmas (1933-49). ASLIB was patronised and supported by many important figures of British government, science, and industry – Gregory, Tizard, Josiah Stamp, Beveridge, Bernal – and by 1944 its networking activities, especially in wartime, had begun to be recognised as indispensable. It was rewarded by the DSIR with a grant which effectively gave it research association status and financial security. Like other DSIR research associations ASLIB formally maintained its independence as a self governing body, even though it was effectively incorporated within the British state network of support for science and industry – a position which lasted until the 1970s. As this sketch suggests, although these emerging institutions of ‘information’ in Britain became nationalised to a degree, such nationalisation had its boundaries in what, after all, always remained a liberal capitalist state. Unsurprisingly, it was during Attlee’s Labour administration of 1945-1951 that the boundaries of the 53 54

See Chapter 2, pp. 61–66 and Chapter 5 for details of these developments. See Chapter 3 for a full study of the history and development of ASLIB. Note that the capitalized form of abbreviation – ‘ASLIB’ – is generally used throughout this book, as this form was normally used during the period under discussion. As will be explained in Note 30 of Chapter 3, the lower case title – ‘Aslib’ – was adopted in 1948 and this is used here mainly to refer to published material after that date.

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‘public’ were pushed the furthest – especially in the scientific and technical field. The period was marked by a streamlining and strengthening of government participation in science generally, a policy sponsored and welcomed by the socialist left which, taking Bernal’s Social Function of Science as its inspiration, campaigned vigorously for a planned scientific state.55 As part of this campaign, the left, led by the Association of Scientific Workers, initiated a linked campaign for the nationalisation, and centralisation, of scientific and technical information. A working group within the union produced a document entitled Reform of the System of Scientific Publications (1945) which advocated the establishment of a ‘British Publishing Authority’ to oversee scientific and technical publication, together with a centralised indexing, abstracting and documentation authority on a model similar to organisations later to be established in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc (Muddiman, 2003, pp. 393–8). Bernal and the AScW also hoped to link these proposals to plans for a new ‘Science Centre’ on London’s South Bank which would relocate and expand the existing Patents Office and the National Science Library (Lamb, 1955, pp. 287–8). The goal, ultimately, was to streamline and bring together all British scientific and technical information services under a single administrative umbrella. As is now well documented, a variety of events and forces coalesced to thwart these plans. Bernal’s proposals for a British Publishing Authority were withdrawn at the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference mainly because of concerns about their potential for censorship and control, especially amongst a liberal academic scientific establishment keen to maintain its independence from the state (East, 1999). More generally, Bernal and his comrades on the scientific left were marginalised because of unfolding political events – the Lysenko crisis, the Soviet atom bomb and the advent of the Cold War inevitably created unease about the drift to central planning and state control in science.56 In the information professions, the balance of opinion also began to turn against centralisation and the state: ASLIB, in negotiations with the AScW in 1946 had found itself unable to fully support the union’s plans for a national information system mainly because its suspected it would become part of it! (Nature, 1946). Henceforth, the association mainly argued for an information infrastructure that was substantially funded, coordinated and supported by the state, but not ultimately controlled by it: Edith Ditmas, its general secretary called at the Empire Scientific Conference of 1946 for a ‘combination of government encouragement and private initiative’ in the development of specialized information services (Ditmas, 1948b, p. 714). By mid-century it was clear that this approach had prevailed. Pragmatically, state controlled central institutions were developed, but crucially they were agencies of distribution, rather than publication or processing – for example the expanded Science Reference Library in London and Donald Urquhart’s National Lending Library for Science and Technology, inaugurated in 1956. A 55 56

See Hennessey (1992, pp. 324–6) for a review of the general context of this campaign. For example, in a speech to the Royal Society in December 1948 Herbert Morrison lamented Soviet state control of science as demonstrated by the Lysenko crisis, concluding that ‘any British or other scientist who supports this sort of thing will soon cease to be a scientist, or at any rate a scientist on whom reliance can be placed’. See G. Jones (1988, p. 27) who also discusses these events more generally.

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The Early Information Society

‘comprehensive central information service’, as the 1951 DSIR Report on Technical Information Services labelled it, was firmly rejected in favour of a plurality of institutions largely focused around national industrial and scientific sectors (Panel on Technical Information Services, 1951). In some cases these institutions included information centres based in large, private sector research and development facilities (notably in the oil, food and chemical industries), but more typically they were located in nationalised industries (such as power and steel) where they were indirectly supported by government, or in research associations and stations backed by the DSIR. The expansion of ASLIB was also underpinned by the state: by 1962 the association received 30% of its funding directly from the DSIR, as well as a probable further 20% from the state sponsored concerns who made up a good proportion of its members. It had 2647 corporate members, employed 40 headquarters staff and increasingly served as a centre for training and information science research (Aslib, 1962). For the twenty years or so after 1950, ASLIB effectively became the key co-ordinating agency for this loose, but nevertheless national network of scientific, technical and commercial information. What had therefore been created in Britain by the 1950s was a new information infrastructure based on state-sponsored pluralism. In effect, this amounted to a quasi-nationalisation of information in the sense that the infrastructure was substantially shaped and funded by the state; however a central, unified control of its elements was never seriously considered, except very briefly in 1944-48. In contrast to authoritarian and centralised systems such as those being developed in the USSR,57 state control of information provision in Britain became, in relative terms, devolved and dispersed, its reach limited by traditions of economic and social liberalism and administrative incrementalism. Giddens’ ideal type informational modern state was thus only imperfectly realised in Britain, and although contemporaries complained perennially about its dysfunctions,58 the British system in retrospect delivered many benefits. Among these were the development of new institutions which demonstrated high levels of innovation – information bureaux, special libraries, intelligence centres and a highly original coordinating association – which we detail in subsequent chapters of this book. Moreover, the relative autonomy and independence enjoyed by many who worked in these new institutions – linked paradoxically in some cases to the security of a state-funded salary – enabled Britain, we argue, to become a centre of professional innovation in the early information society. It is hence to a consideration of those who dedicated their working lives to the foundation of an ‘information age’ that we now, briefly, turn.

57

58

For a sketch of developments in the USSR, see the section ‘An International Early Information Society’ at the end of this chapter. In fact, ‘national efficiency’ continued to have its adherents as late as the 1960s. Both J.P. Lamb, City Librarian of Sheffield and leading advocate of public technical and commercial information provision, and R.S. Hutton, eminent chemist and founding father of ASLIB, complained in their memoirs about the inadequacy of specialised information provision in Britain, comparing it unfavourably with the USSR. See Lamb (1955, p. 284) and Hutton (1964, pp. 156–61); also Chapter 2, pp. 73–8 of this book for a discussion.

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Information Occupations and Professions Conventional accounts of the rise of late-twentieth-century information society typically highlight the rise of information ‘work’ as a key facet of societal transition. Two books in particular – Fritz Machlup’s The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the USA (1962) and Marc Porat’s The Information Economy (1977) – provide the cornerstone of this analysis. Both books utilise United States labour force statistics to track occupational change – Porat, for example, using a ‘four sector’ analysis to analyse the rise of information work compared with agriculture, industry and service occupations. Porat’s findings – that the information sector grew steadily as a proportion of the US labour force from 13% in 1900 to 31% in 1950 and then experienced a sharp rise to 46% in 1970 – are in essence similar to Machlup’s and usually held to support theories of the rapid ‘informatisation’ of the US economy, concurrent with the advent of the computer, between 1950 and 1970 (Porat, 1977, p. 121). From around 1960 onwards, both Maclup and Porat argue, information workers began to outnumber all other occupational sectors, culminating in a situation post-1980 where they constituted over 50% of the US workforce. The advent of ‘post-industrial’ society, according to commentators such as Alvin Toffler, can confidently be traced to this time (Toffler, 1980, p. 186). There are, of course, numerous critiques of both the methodology and substance of this analysis.59 Some of these point to statistical and definitional matters, highlighting especially the difficulties of defining ‘information’ work and of differentiating it from service and industrial functions.60 Others point to the difficulty of applying such analyses beyond the United States, although in our view this merely highlights empirical research – in Britain at least – that is yet to be done. However, from the perspective of this book, the critique of Schement (1990) is of particular importance, since it argues that an expansion of the ‘information’ workforce took place much earlier than Machlup and Porat suggest. After a reexamination of Porat’s data, and a re-classification of some occupational categories, Schement contends that the real boom in information work in the United States occurred in the 1920s and 1940s.61 His analysis reveals that by 1930 the information sector accounted for some 28.6% of the US workforce, a figure which had risen to 36.7% by 1950. ‘In this period’, Schement claims, ‘the United States passed the threshold into a workforce where information workers formed the largest single group’ (p. 460). The information society, he goes on to conclude, 59 60

61

See Duff, (2000), pp.19–70 for a detailed account of these. Schement’s (1990) attempt at a composite definition of the information worker is perhaps among the clearest: ‘Information work occurs when the worker’s main task involves information processing or manipulation in any form, such as information production, recycling, or maintenance. Moreover, the consequence of information work is more information, whether in the form of new knowledge or repackaged existing forms. Unlike the assembly line worker, an information worker, such as a telephone operator, processes and manipulates information as an end in itself. Information defines the task, the product, and the worker’ (p. 453). Along with Machlup and Porat, Schement (1990, p. 460) finds that the increases stalled in the 1930s, a hiatus which all of these writers attribute to the economic depression.

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The Early Information Society

was not essentially ‘post industrial’, in the sense that information work replaced industrial jobs. Instead, the information sector became significant a good halfcentury earlier, and should be seen rather as a ‘manifestation of the forces that created industrial society…. the rational management systems necessary for bringing order from the chaos of sprawling industrial empires reliant on information as a foundation resource’ (pp. 461–2). The information occupations and professions were hence not initially the children of the computer; rather, they were the necessary concomitants of a wholesale scientific rationalisation of government, industry and commerce which gathered pace between about 1870 and 1950. In subsequent chapters of this book, we explore the many manifestations of this process in early-twentieth-century Britain.62 One consequence of such a repositioning of the genesis of ‘information work’ is that it can be linked chronologically to the emergence of a number of specialist professions of information which date their origins in the 1850–1950 period. These professions emerged in occupational groups whose primary purpose came to be the provision of information for others – such workers, of course, comprising a far smaller segment of the labour force than the amorphous information ‘sector’ discussed above.63 In his history of the emergence of these ‘information professions’ in the United States, Andrew Abbott (1988) identifies a number of competing occupational groupings which, throughout the twentieth century, have jostled for ‘jurisdiction’ over the information field. Such control has, Abbott argues, in practice proved extremely difficult to achieve in a heterogeneous work area affected by waves of rapid organisational and technical change. Hence, only a minority of groups have attained sufficient continuity and critical mass to develop the features of the classic profession – a national association, state licensing to practice, professional examinations, a national journal, codes of ethics and so on. More typical have been ‘small elite professions’ which claim ‘intellectual jurisdiction over large areas’ in a limited field of specialisation (Abbott, 1988, p. 246). Such niche groupings reflect the wide variety of the knowledge base, roles and functions within information work; the diverse nature of employing organisations and their goals; and the disruptive effect on stable work practices of successive waves of technology. As informational tasks involving finance and other numeric data burgeoned in the late-nineteenth century, competition developed between a number of emerging groups for jurisdiction over what Abbott characterises as the ‘quantitative task area’ of information work.64 One large and ultimately fairly stable profession – public accounting – established itself in both Britain and the USA between 1850 and 1900 on the basis of a standardisation of rules and laws about financial affairs of public companies. Other groups, however, never attained this combination of power and permanence. Some, like professional statisticians, had to be content 62 63

64

See especially Chapters 4, 5 and 7 below. Abbott (1988, p. 245) estimates that, at most, these new professional groups drew their members from a specialised workforce of some 1.5 million workers in the United States by the 1980s, a figure far short of the 53% of the labour force classified as ‘information’ workers by Porat et al. This brief account of the quantitative information area is drawn from Abbott (1988, pp. 226–39).

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with a role as a small, academically oriented, elite institute, even though the use of statistics by many other occupations became widespread from the 1920s. Operational research (OR), which briefly blossomed in the 1940s and 1950s as a marrying of mathematics and corporate and military planning, met a similar fate. In practice, the diffusion of technology gradually democratised the functions of expert groupings such as these, a process which made control and monopolisation of work processes very difficult. For example, from the 1890s onwards, the advent of calculating machines enabled the widespread development of business cost accounting, but this function was undertaken by engineers and general managers as well as specialised ‘cost accountants’ who never attained a monopoly over the work. From the 1950s onwards, the rise of the computer similarly made coded expertise widely available and inaugurated, gradually, the multi-tasking and flexible information worker. Although after 1960 computing spawned a wide range of expert groups (systems analysts, programmers, management information specialists, information resource managers) these specialists ultimately became dispersed over very large employment sectors where commercial competition presented a major barrier to professional collaboration. Although some generalist professional groupings, such as the British Computer Society (BCS), which received its Royal Charter in 1984, have more latterly aspired towards jurisdiction over the broad computing field, it is at present unclear how successful they will be in a fast changing field.65 Beyond BCS, most of the contemporary professional groupings in the quantitative information area are specialised, and tend to focus on academic and ‘leading edge’ technical developments. Their members ‘oversee commoditized professional knowledge executed by paraprofessionals, serving [only] elite clients themselves’ (Abbott, 1988, p. 246). In the late-nineteenth century, the conditions for professionalisation initially appeared to be much less adverse in the qualitative area of information work. This was because the revolution in the diffusion of recorded knowledge, which gathered pace from around 1850 onwards in Europe and the United States, became linked especially to the proliferation of a single institution – the library – and with a single occupation – librarianship. From the 1870s onwards, librarians gradually began to reorient their traditional functions as bookmen and custodians towards an emphasis on ‘access and utility’ and ‘the role of mediator between a swelling tide of publications and a voracious reading public’ (Hanson, 1994, p. 187). In Britain, this new role was underscored by the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and its common application to libraries, apparent in the work of writers such as economist Stanley Jevons;66 in the USA similar ideas became popular within the progressive movement and through the writings of Melvil Dewey (A. Black, 1996, pp. 45–67, 116–38; Frohmann, 1997). Librarianship hence began to focus upon the efficient 65

66

The British Computer Society claims over 50,000 members worldwide and aspires towards the structure of British engineering societies, where members have ‘chartered’ status. See http://www.bcs.org.uk (viewed 2 February 2006). In his essay ‘The rationale of free public libraries’ (1881), Jevons argued that ‘the main raison d’etre of the Public Libraries, as indeed of Public Museums, Art Galleries, Parks, Town Halls, Public Clocks and many other kinds of Public Works, is the enormous increase of public utility which is thereby acquired for the community at a trifling cost’: cited in Black (1996, p. 118).

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The Early Information Society

operation of libraries for maximum economic and social utility, and its practices began to resemble an applied form of the new science of management. Open access to library shelves, pioneered by John Cotton Dana67 in the United States and James Duff Brown in Britain, became the norm in Anglo-American libraries after 1918, remodelling them on retail lines as institutions offering choice and individuality. Textbooks such as Brown’s Manual of Library Economy (1903), which was reprinted and rewritten in numerous editions until 1962, reflected this new discourse of efficiency, educational improvement and economic advance. From this it was a small step to proclaiming the information role of the library and proclaiming librarianship as an ‘information’ profession. Between 1900 and 1925, just such an informatisation of the library gathered pace, underpinned by the establishment of ‘reference’, technical and commercial sections in public libraries and special libraries in industry and commerce.68 In Britain, enthusiastic supporters of the information function, such as L. Stanley Jast, librarian of Croydon and later Manchester, inaugurated information centres and services in metropolitan public libraries (Krauss, 1910). In the United States, Dana, by the 1920s librarian of the Free Public Library in Newark, New Jersey, made similar innovations, and by the end of that decade the ‘reference’ or ‘information’ desk was a common feature of large and medium sized American libraries (W. Martin, 1998, p. 50). By 1925 Dana would claim that the work of the librarian was ‘to make information function when and where it is needed, and to make it instantly available’ (Dana, 1925, p. 184). There were, however, limitations to this engagement with information which ultimately restricted the professional influence of librarians in the wider field of information work. Librarianship, in short, had other fish to fry. One of these was the conviction that libraries were primarily in business to collect and disseminate ‘best books’ – a conviction initially based on the idealist preoccupation with elite culture, derived from writers such as Matthew Arnold and Ralph Waldo Emerson (A. Black, 1996, pp. 40–44; Frohmann, 1997). Such a view of the purpose of librarianship was common in both the early UK and American Library Associations, established concurrently in 1876-77. Both were initially rather exclusive organisations, embracing those in charge of libraries but excluding their subordinates, and counting a good number of traditional ‘apostles of culture’ and bookmen among their leading members.69 In Britain, indeed, the focus on elite culture was formalised by the strong institutional links between the LA and scholarly bibliography – embodied in the publication, between 1889 and 1899, of The Library: a Magazine of Bibliography and Literature as the association’s official journal (Cornelius, 1996, pp. 141–2). Eventually, of course, bibliography

67

68 69

Dana is an important figure in the integration of librarianship into the early information society since, as well as pioneering utilitarian advances in public libraries, he led the successful foundation of the American Special Libraries Association in 1909. See Hanson (1994) for an overview of his life and work. See Chapter 2, pp. 61–6 and Chapter 5. The phrase is taken from Garrison (1979). Membership of the Library Associations by the turn of the century was no more than 980 in the USA (1901) and 497 in the UK (1899) (Abbott, 1988, p. 219; Munford, 1976, p. 69).

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became a profession distinct from, although related to, librarianship – a separate ‘Bibliographical Society’ in Britain was in fact formed in 1891. However, librarianship did not abandon culture: rather, as the twentieth century progressed, cultural elitism was replaced by the (arguably equally) idealist notion of cultural democratisation. The UK Library Association in the 1920s launched a drive for mass membership, which was mainly achieved through the recruitment of lower levels of public library staff, especially through the affiliation of regional branches and the Association of Assistant Librarians, whose members were largely library assistants (Munford, 1976, pp. 179, 192–3).70 This democratisation of the profession, coinciding as it did in Britain with an outpouring of ideas and plans for a new welfare state, tended to divert the association away from ‘information’ towards questions of public service, citizenship and communal culture. Professional discourse gradually became focused upon the agendas and interests of public, and, to a lesser extent, educational, libraries encompassing matters such as the ‘fiction question’; literacy and reading; children’s literature; and leisure and the arts. Some librarians became preoccupied with building a ‘wider public library’ which would become an agency for mass education and cultural uplift (Leyland, 1938; Muddiman, 2002a). Fuelled by economic depression and the consequent ‘new deal’ in the United States, similar trends affected American librarianship (L. Martin, 1998, pp. 45–97). All of this led librarians, according to critics like Jesse Shera, ‘into the popular cult of universal education and self-improvement’ and ‘towards implicit denial of the social dignity and significance of the information service’ (Shera, 1966, pp. 33, 36). Such perceptions, of course, highlighted the disjuncture, rather than the commonalities, between ‘library’ and ‘information’ work. The result was a longrunning dispute, common to most of the advanced industrial economies of the time, between those seeking to establish a new and distinct profession of documentation, information or intelligence work, and those who claimed that library and information work were one and the same.71 In Britain, J.G. Pearce, pioneer founder of ASLIB, was an early advocate of the separatist cause, arguing in a series of papers between 1917 and 1926 for the development of a separate domain of ‘information’ or ‘intelligence’ work in agencies which were ‘extensions of libraries rather than the libraries in themselves’ (Pearce, 1925, p. 12). Jason Farradane, founder of the Institute of Information Scientists, famously took up the separatist banner from the 1940s onwards, claiming that librarians had little interest in the analysis and dissemination of knowledge and were interested in its collection and organisation only (Agard-Evans and Farradane, 1958, p. 1489). Such assertions did not go unchallenged. Scientific and technical librarians especially, for example, the aforementioned Jast and S.C. Bradford in the 1920s and 1930s and D.J. Foskett in the 1950s contended that ‘the work of the information officer [should be] regarded as the natural dynamic extension of that of the librarian’ (Palmer and Foskett,

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Membership of the UK Library Association rose dramatically in this period from 850 in 1927 to 6039 in 1938 (Munford, 1976, p. 193). The dispute is explored in detail in subsequent chapters of this book. See Chapter 3, pp. 93–102; Chapter 5, pp. 176–185; and Chapter 6. For a brief review of its outcomes in the United States, Germany and France see the final section of this chapter.

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The Early Information Society

1958, p. 1495).72 However, the sentiments of some librarians towards occupational unity tended to be undermined, as Helen Plant demonstrates in Chapter 6, by the reluctance of the UK Library Association to adequately cater for specialised information work in its educational courses and (hence) its membership structures. Eventually, in the 1950s in Britain, this failure to establish a common educational programme for library and information work led to a schism between librarianship and ‘information science’ – the new name adopted by information officers and specialists – which would continue for over forty years. Similar issues regarding education and training led to comparable developments in the United States (Williams, 1996, pp. 177–8). In terms of formal professional organisation itself, this underlying dispute resulted in what Williams (1996, p. 173) aptly describes as a series of ‘splintered movements’ in the information sector between 1890 and 1960. In both Britain and the United States, the first of these was the formation of distinct groups of ‘special’ librarians who were typically employed in new specialised libraries in industry, commerce, and government. These librarians, who handled a range of information sources other than books, and who were developing proactive services to expert user groups, were typically dissatisfied with the public library and materials bias of the LA and the ALA, and were beginning to be frustrated by the lack of training and education for special librarianship inherent in the qualification systems of these associations.73 In the United States, they founded their own Special Libraries Association (SLA) in 1909, and between then and the 1950s, when it boasted a membership of 5000, the SLA effectively became the primary voice of American information work (Williams, 1996). In Britain, special librarians to some degree found a professional home within ASLIB, which some of them helped establish in 1924. Until the 1950s, ASLIB functioned, in part at least, as a quasi-professional forum for special library work; however, because of its corporate membership structure and its links to the state it could never become a professional association in the classic sense.74 British special librarians who included, in the inter-war years, increasing numbers of women, hence remained largely on the margins of professional influence until the 1950s.75 By then, it is clear that increasing numbers of them had received training in library work and, encouraged by the establishment of a ‘reference and research’ (later ‘reference special and information’) section within the LA, some sought to further the cause of information work within the main librarianship body (Ashworth, 1976, pp. 281–4).76 A similar rapprochement 72

73 74 75

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Jast, for example, in 1925 made strenuous attempts to prevent the separate formation of ASLIB, urging it to ‘come into membership of the LA fully and wholeheartedly’ (Muddiman, 2005, p. 414). See also the introductory section of Bradford’s Documentation (Bradford, 1948, pp. 11–17). See Chapter 6. See Chapter 3, pp. 87–93. See Helen Plant’s analysis of women’s employment in the field in Chapter 7, where she suggests that in the 1920s ‘organisations were increasingly assigning their lower status office appointments to women’ (p. 225), including those in the library service. There were, of course, notable exceptions such as Beryl Dent, Librarian at Metro-Vickers in Manchester and Marion Gossett at UKAEA, Harwell. The aforementioned Douglas Foskett is a noteworthy example of a librarian who straddled the library/information work divide: he worked for Ilford Public Libraries

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between special librarianship and librarianship in general occurred in the 1950s in the United States, although to this day the American SLA remains an independent body (Williams, 1996, pp. 176–8). For others working in the emerging specialist information sector, however, the lure of a new profession of information, distinct from librarianship or anything else, would prove irresistible. The roots of this idea, in Europe, at least, can be traced back to the late-nineteenth century and Paul Otlet’s inauguration of a new ‘discursive formation’ of documentation. This practice, which Otlet and his followers conceived as embracing all aspects of the processing of documents – ‘books, periodicals, newspapers, bibliographies, administrative records of government, patents, industrial catalogues, indexes, abstracts, reviews’ – seemed to offer an integrated approach to information handling and reach far beyond the library setting (Rayward, 1985, p. 123). By the second decade of the twentieth century, the term was being widely used in both Europe and the United States and the concept was proving attractive to those interested in the development of information services who had no background in, or allegiance to, librarianship. In Britain, as Chapter 2 demonstrates, documentation appealed especially to the growing number of scientists, managers and engineers establishing technical and commercial intelligence bureaux – J.G. Pearce, for example, addressed the 1918 Library Association conference on ‘The future of documentation’ (Pearce, 1918). Formal associations of ‘documentalists’ followed: Otlet’s International Institute of Bibliography was restructured as a federated international association in the 1920s and renamed the International Institute of Documentation (IID) in 1931.77 A British affiliate, the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) was established in 1927 under the leadership of Allan Pollard and S.C. Bradford in 1927.78 Although it never attracted more than 100 members, BSIB quickly established itself as an elite professional group which became known for ‘leading edge’ developments. Under the sponsorship of the IID, it co-ordinated British work on the Universal Decimal Classification, as well as focusing interest in Britain on both bibliometrics and information storage and retrieval on microfilm (Pollard, 1940). As we have seen, this latter technical development especially provided the impetus for the establishment of the American Documentation Institute (ADI) by G. Watson Davis, Director of the Washington Science Service, in 1937 (Farkas Conn, 1990). Like BSIB, until the 1950s ADI remained mainly a small, research oriented group, focusing especially upon the application of new techniques and technologies to scientific information services.79

77

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between 1940–8; thence he was Librarian at the Metal Box Company until 1957; thence Librarian at the London Institute of Education until retirement. He was President of the Library Association in 1976. See ‘The very model of a modern librarian’, Library Association Record Vol. 78, No. 1 (1976), p. 4. Rayward (1975) covers the detailed history of the IIB. Interestingly, Otlet himself resisted its transformation into a federal association in the 1920s, wishing to maintain its centralised focus around the Mundaneum in Belgium. Pollard was Professor of Optical Engineering at Imperial College, London , and a long time enthusiast on bibliographical matters. Between 1927–30 he was international chairman of the IIB. See Ditmas (1949) for a review of his career. Abbott (1988, p. 240) observes that the early ADI was ‘rather like a publishing house disseminating scientific information on microfilm’.

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The Early Information Society

After World War II, in continental Europe especially, documentalists tended to consolidate their position as the leading expert occupation within the information professions, a situation reflected internationally in the transformation of the IID to the Federation International de Documentation (FID) and its adoption by the United Nations as the main international body in the field. However, in Britain and the United States documentation gradually mutated in the 1950s into the more modern conception of information science. This shift reflected the increasing importance of information work focused on scientific and technical data, the development of scientific ‘information theory’, and the beginnings of information retrieval systems which were machine focused and driven. In this environment, encouraged by high profile events such as the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference, qualified scientists began to be attracted to information work in much greater numbers than before the war, and some of them, like Farradane in Britain and Mortimer Taube in the USA, began to canvass the formation of expert professional groupings in this expanding field (Taube, 1953; Farradane, 1954). In Britain, after nearly a decade of professional infighting involving ASLIB and the LA such a group – the Institute of Information Scientists, was formed in 1958.80 In the United States, the ADI gradually evolved in a similar direction becoming a membership organisation for individuals in 1952 and finally changing its name to the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) in 1968 (Farkas-Conn, 1990). Both of these groups became highly influential through their links to research, through the accreditation of educational programmes and through the intellectual development of a ‘science’ of information. However, despite recruiting some generalist information officers to their ranks, neither became the mass professional associations of information workers that some of their founders had hoped for, preferring instead to focus on status and expertise. By 1968 the British IIS had a membership of 750; ASIS a membership of 2200 (Farradane, 1970, p. 146; Borko and Taylor, 1968, p. 304). By the 1960s, then, as Abbott (1988, p. 245) observes, it was clear that ‘no coherent set of people had emerged to take jurisdiction’ over the qualitative area of information work. Instead, in the Anglo-American context, three groups continued to compete for control over the field: generalist librarians, ‘special’ librarians and information officers or ‘scientists’. Indeed, as the later-twentieth century unfolded new groupings, such as information systems specialists; information analysts and information ‘managers’ entered the fray. For some influential observers, such as Saunders (1989), such professional fragmentation was a source of weakness and regret. In Britain these sentiments led to a pursuit of the holy grail of a ‘unified professional organisation for library and information science and services’ culminating in the (not entirely successful) formation of the Chartered Institute of Information and Library Professionals (CILIP) in 2002, an amalgamation of the LA and IIS.81 In hindsight, however, professional diversity looks to be an endemic condition of an occupational field as large and diffuse as that of the information 80 81

For accounts of these events in detail see Chapter 6 and Chapter 3, pp. 93–98. At the time of writing (April 2006) the current edition of Library and Information Update contains a series of articles and letters which revive the ‘two cultures’ debate and the claim that ‘CILIP is public library oriented and doesn’t understand those of us who work in commercial libraries and information units’ (McKee, 2006; Nutting, 2006).

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area which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. There was (and is) no single unifying principle of information work: not only did the field straddle the ‘two cultures’ of science of humanism popularised by C.P. Snow, but in their goals and their employment bases the early information professions became inevitably almost as divided as society itself (Bowles, 1996). However, not all of the fruits of diversity were poisoned ones: through their differing responses to new technologies and work practices successive occupational factions arguably encouraged innovation, widened the range of information services and ultimately broadened the scope and potential of the field (Williams, 1996, p. 173). Indisputably, by 1960, such activity and debate had, perhaps most importantly of all, established a new professional discourse of ‘information’ in most of the advanced industrial economies of the time. An International Early Information Society What we have hypothesised as an early twentieth century information society was not, of course, a uniquely British phenomenon. The emergent information infrastructures and practices detailed in this book in Britain were, to a substantial degree, replicated in most other advanced industrial economies of the time – especially the USA, France, Germany and, from the 1930s onwards, the USSR. As the significance and value of information became apparent to substantial numbers of men of power in all of these states, so they attempted to rationalise and reconfigure their institutions of information to maximum national advantage. Some states adopted strategies of nationalisation and centralisation of information resources – such as those advocated by Bernal in Britain. In others, rationalisation was linked to the informatisation of large-scale industrial enterprises through the creation of company libraries and/or research and intelligence units; and these in their turn became enmeshed in national ‘corporate’ networks of information supply and demand. Each nation, too, developed its own particular forms of specialised labour needed to service the new management of information, resulting in varying models of professional organisation and, as we have seen in the previous section, ‘information wars’ between competing occupational groups.82 Linked to these, in some instances, new conceptions of information – documentation, informatics, information science – by the 1950s had become the dominant mode of praxis; in others, by contrast, nineteenth-century professions such as librarianship and bibliography were modernised and adapted. The various national models of informatisation which emerged between 1900 and 1950 were hence partly, although not entirely, determined by their political and economic context. In the United States, the broad lines of development proceeded along liberal capitalist lines. As Alistair Black demonstrates in Chapter 5, as early as 1914 the US had become the world leader in the development of the company library, the utility of such a resource having become recognised across a wide spectrum of industrial and commercial activity. Special libraries also flourished among professions and voluntary bodies at this time: by 1925 it was estimated that 82

See Bowles (1999) for a discussion of this process in the United States; see Chapters 3 and 6 of this book for Britain.

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there were over 1000 specialised libraries that were separate institutions (as opposed to specialised collections within larger libraries) in the United States (Rankin, 1926, p. 51). Moreover, perhaps uniquely, the powerful US library profession itself adapted quickly to establish professional control of this expanding field. In 1909, a ‘Special Libraries Association’, affiliated to the American Library Association, was founded by John Cotton Dana. By the end of our period it continued to be (numerically at least) the most important professional group practising the management of information in the US, having, in 1955, 5000 members (Williams, 1996). Co-ordination of this burgeoning provision of specialized information in a more strategic sense, however, proved problematic in the United States. Before 1945, the American federal government participated only marginally in this process, supporting a minimal range of central institutions such as the Library of Congress, a National Library for Medicine and (briefly during the First World War) a scientific research information service (P. Richards, 1994, pp. 29–38). More typically in the twenties and thirties, American co-ordination initiatives were based on capitalist enterprise or charitable endowments. World leading information services such as Engineering Index and Chemical Abstracts were funded by US industrial and technical associations, whilst the fortunes amassed by Rockefeller and Carnegie supported US National Research Council information initiatives and Biological Abstracts in the 1920s (P. Richards, 1994, p. 35). Perhaps most notably of all, it was E.W. Scripps, a newspaper proprietor interested in the popularisation of science, who in 1920 underwrote the foundation of the US Science Service which aimed to disseminate scientific news and information, and which, in the 1930s, under its second director G. Watson Davis, established itself as an American centre of scientific documentation. In 1937, Davis went on to establish the American Documentation Institute (a forerunner of the American Association of Information Science and Technology) which became a focus for research and experimentation in the information field (Farkas-Conn, 1990). Eventually, after 1945, under the impetus of the cold war, information research and co-ordination began to be seriously supported by the federal government through the establishment of a state funded Institute of Scientific Information and other organs of ‘big science’: Vannevar Bush, Roosevelt’s wartime scientific advisor, argued that America should take the lead in promoting the ‘international flow’ of knowledge (V. Bush, 1945, p. 19). In the 1950s, the subsequent partnership between the US government, industrial capital and academia inaugurated research and technical development which would lay the foundations of the computer driven information society of today. Only, then, at the end of the period covered by this book did the United States make any serious attempt to harness information for national, as opposed to competitive advantage. In European states, by contrast, it was more obvious and natural to build an information infrastructure which served national ends, although, for political reasons, Germany was to become more vulnerable than most to extreme shifts in policy and approach. At the opening of the twentieth century, in spite of its lack of centralised library institutions, Germany was arguably at the leading edge of specialised information provision. Its powerful technical publishing houses dominated international science; its state libraries in Munich and Berlin were open to all; many of its university libraries had excellent specialist

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collections in practical subjects of all kinds; and its specialized industrial libraries – such as the Coal Mining Association Begben Bibliotek in Essen (1880) and company libraries such as Krupp (1873) and Bayer (1897) – were models of their kind. However, after 1918, war and politics were to fracture these systems and distort modernisation. World War I resulted in poverty and isolation for Germany and its weak governments of the 1920s did little to reconstruct information services. Nevertheless, by the end of the decade, German publishing had recovered, industrial libraries were expanding again and ideas about documentation came into vogue. The state sponsored German standards committee (DNA) set up a sub-committee for libraries and documentation in 1927 which affiliated to Otlet’s FID (Ockenfeld and Samulowitz, 2004, p. 313). All of these trends were seized upon by the Nazi regime which came to power in 1933. The Nazis attempted, albeit erratically, to centralise specialised information resources and to shape them to the demands of the state. Control of library and information provision was unified under a new ministry of science, education and popular culture headed by Bernhard Rust, and projects such as interlibrary loan systems and an all German Union Catalogue (Deutscher Gesamkatalog) were initiated. A military/industrial information network was developed through investment in large corporate industrial libraries (many of which came under military supervision) and facilities such as the expanded technological university at Berlin Charlottenberg, planned as the Reich’s ‘universal technological university’.83 Documentation and dissemination of technical information was also unified in 1941 under the direction of a state sponsored Deutsche Gesellschaft f_r Dokumentation (DGD), charged with the co-ordination of efficient information provision throughout the Reich (P. Richards, 1994, p. 102). Significantly, these policies tended to bypass Germany’s established university and academic research libraries as well as its established Library Association (the Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare or VDB). These, undoubtedly because of their liberal traditions of scholarship and open access, were subjected to financial deprivation, censorship and nazification (P. Richards, 1994, pp. 56–61). All of this, moreover, aggravated pre-existing professional fissures between librarians and documentalists, creating a situation in Germany where ‘library and documentation systems drifted further apart than in any other industrialized country’ (Ockenfield and Samulowitz, 2004, p. 311). After the almost total destruction of German information resources in 1943-5, such fissures tended to complicate the reconstruction of a national information infrastructure in the FDR, which did not really rematerialise until the late 1950s.84 However the DGD was reformed in 1948 along the lines of an independent profession association and it became the German Society for Information Science and Practical Information Work (DGI) in the 1980s (Ockenfield and Samulowitz, 2004, pp. 321–2). Although arguably equally affected by war, in France a more consistent politics of democratic centralisation and the national interest provided the backdrop for informatisation between 1918 and 1950. As in Britain, at the end of World War I, 83

84

By 1943, the library at Berlin-Charlottenberg comprised 350,000 volumes, although it was destroyed shortly afterwards by Allied bombing. See Richards (1994, p. 64). In the DDR an information infrastructure was gradually develop which followed the model of the USSR. See Richards (1994, p. 132–3), and the discussion below.

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the French military, industrial and scientific establishment began to recognise that information was essential to survival as a great power, and the 1920s hence witnessed the beginning of a process of mobilisation of French informational resources. The Bibliothèque Nationale (BN) was modernised during the 1920s and 1930s, in part through technical improvements and in part through the foundation of an ‘Office of Documentation’ which aimed to improve reader services and access to materials. Suzanne Briet, the head of this office from 1928, and Jean Gerard, head of documentation at the French Maison de Chimie, in 1932 cofounded the Union Française des Organismes de Documentation (UFOD), a federation of documentation centres and special libraries with similar aims to ASLIB in Britain.85 Further, in 1936, the state established, under Jean Wyart, a major documentation centre at its Centre Nationale Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) which aimed to co-ordinate, index, abstract and disseminate national and international scientific information (P. Richards, 1992; Fayet-Scribe, 1996). All of these initiatives were interrupted by the trauma of invasion and occupation,86 but in 1945 most were revived and, if anything, centralisation and dirigisme were strengthened in the late 1940s and 1950s. In particular, under Wyart, the CNRS documentation centre became pre-eminent, enjoying both state patronage and the enthusiastic support of nuclear scientist and Nobel prize winner Frederic JoliotCurie,87 and serving as a model for a number of information centres developed largely through UNESCO – for example in Cairo, Montevideo, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in the mid-twentieth century (P. Richards, 1992, p. 304). Briet, too, went on to champion the development of a profession of documentation as an integrated modern science of the provision of information, perhaps with more permanent results in France than in any other nation. In 1951, she oversaw the inauguration of a documentation diploma at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris, and this quickly led to the establishment of an Institut National des Techniques de la Documentation (INTD). The INTD diploma remains the premier French qualification in information work today (Maack, 2004, p. 742). The French informational model of large, centrally directed and state funded institutions also proved popular in the new ‘scientific’ state being created in the USSR after 1917. When the Bolsheviks came to power they were careful to preserve both Russia’s science and industry and its libraries, Lenin considering both to be cornerstones of modernisation and economic development. In the interwar period, the Russians established a network of special and research libraries controlled by the National Commissariat of Education, and created a number of state technical libraries in the regions linked to the Lenin library in Moscow. Although this system attracted the admiration of Bernal and others in the 85

86

87

In a survey conducted in 1935 Briet identified 73 ‘documentation centres’; 40 were members of UFOD. See Maack (2004, p. 728). See Richards (1992) for an account of the impact of occupation on information provision in occupied France. In addition to his scientific career, Joliot-Curie was a high-profile member of the French communist party (PCF) and a leading international advocate of ‘planned science’. He shared J.D. Bernal’s ideas about scientific information and was a close friend and colleague of Bernal’s in the World Federation of Scientific Workers in the 1950s. See Goldsmith (1976) for an English biography.

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1930s,88 after 1940 it became clear that more dynamic access to information would be necessary if Soviet scientists, industrialists and engineers were to compete with the USA. Hence, after 1945, and after Stalin’s death especially, special libraries proliferated in industry and research: by 1957 a census reported 13,900 such libraries in industry and 3500 in research establishments (Poluboyarinov, 1964, p. 293). Equally significantly, Soviet interest in documentation as a means of identifying and accessing information accelerated after 1945 (P. Richards, 1996). In 1952, the Soviet Academy of Sciences established an Institute of Scientific Information (abbreviated VINITI), which was in many respects modelled on the ideas of J.D. Bernal and the CNRS service in Paris.89 Initially an abstracting service dedicated to conveying the fruits of overseas science to Soviet scientists, by the 1970s VINITI had expanded into an institution which gathered, translated, documented and disseminated scientific, technical and economic information across a huge field. At its height it employed 25,000 workers, produced over 70 abstract journals, and supported a Soviet science and profession of ‘informatics’ – equivalent to Western information science (Gilliarevski, 1999). Like CNRS, it was widely imitated elsewhere in the eastern bloc and in the developing world, spawning, in the 1960-1990 period, what Pamela Richards (1999) labels a ‘Soviet overseas information empire’ of state controlled, centralised information services staffed by documentalists trained in Russian techniques. In many respects, these ‘empires’ of state provision represented the most significant ideological challenge to the accelerating market-led globalisation of information in the later twentieth century. Soviet informational ‘expansion’ was also symptomatic of the growing globalisation of systems and infrastructures in the early information society. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such globalisation was still coloured by nationalism and imperialism; indeed information was beginning to be seen as a new weapon in a Darwinian struggle of empires.90 In Britain, such ideas were associated with the revival of ‘social imperialism’ in the 1880s, and especially the belief that only through the transformation of the white British empire into a unified federal state could Britain compete with the United States and Germany (Barnett, 1972, pp. 106–112). As we have seen in an earlier section, Britain hence led the way in a ‘scramble for cable’ between 1850 and 1914, a process which laid telegraph links to the four corners of empire and which succeeded (albeit temporarily) in establishing British pre-eminence in cable communication to many other parts of the globe (Mattelart, 1996, pp. 113–178). Attempts were also made to develop imperial systems of documentation, initially through the foundation of the Imperial Institute in 1887, which was charged with furnishing ‘all governments 88 89

90

See Bernal (1939, pp. 221–40); also Huxley (1932) and Webb and Webb (1935). In 1946 the Soviet chemist A.N. Nesmyanov visited CNRS and Joliot-Curie (Richards, 1992, pp. 303–4); later he became the President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in 1951–2 one of the leading advocates of the establishment of VINITI. Bernal visited Moscow in 1951 and discussed VINITI with him during his stay (Muddiman, 2003, p. 399). For an imaginative discussion of the links between information and the nineteenthcentury British empire, based mainly on discourse analysis of literary works, see T. Richards (1993).

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and government departments of the empire, as well as commercial and industrial interests, with scientific and technical information relating to the raw materials of industry and commerce’ (Lindsay, 1944, p. 21). Until the 1950s, the Institute seems to have functioned as a fairly effective ‘technical intelligence bureau’ at the fulcrum of a growing number of information services in both Dominions and Colonies. These flourished briefly in the late 1920s, under the sponsorship of imperialist colonial secretary L.S. Amery, when specialised bureaux on similar lines to those in Britain began to appear in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.91 In addition, from its foundation in 1934, the British Council began to open libraries and information bureaux worldwide; and it quickly became a focal point in British colonies for the dissemination of scientific and specialist periodicals (Bridge, 1937). Professional staff from these various bureaux became regular visitors to London in interwar Britain; typically they contributed papers to professional conferences and exchanged experiences with British colleagues. Even as late as 1946 the empire still permeated their discourse: at the Royal Society Empire Scientific Conference of that year, a special section was devoted to ‘improving scientific information services within the empire’. It recommended the establishment of an integrated ‘network of information services throughout the Dominions’ (Royal Society, 1948, p. 668). Beyond 1946, of course, British imperialism had little time to run, and little came of these proposals. Indeed, in hindsight, it is arguable that, even in the latenineteenth century, informational imperialism was much less significant than the establishment of an international infrastructure of information exchange: the foundation, as Giddens observes, of an ‘expanding cluster of organisations involved in monitoring the global information sources upon which modern states depend’ (Giddens, 1985, p. 261).92 The most significant of these in pure informational terms was the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB), founded in 1895 by Belgians Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine, which aimed to create a universal bibliography or catalogue and a universal indexing language (the Universal Decimal Classification or UDC), which could be applied as a metalanguage to all documents or parts thereof. Initially, Otlet envisaged the organisation as a centralised entity, and established, with the support of the Belgian government, a Universal Bibliographic Repertory in Brussels – by 1903 this contained more the six million references, usually in the form of catalogue cards (Rayward, 1975). However, it gradually became clear that such an ambitious, centralised scheme was unrealistic – rival indexing projects such as the British International Catalogue of Scientific Literature and the American/Swiss Concilium Bibliographicum (covering Zoology) adopted differing models of international standardisation; and in World War I the German occupation of Brussels, highlighted the problems of a centralised international institute (Murra, 1951; Rayward, 1993a). In 1924 the IIB’s members, with some opposition from Otlet himself, reorganized the institute as a federation of national documentation 91

92

For details see ASLIB, Report of the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference (London: ASLIB, 1944) which organised a symposium entitled ‘The empire contribution to the flow of world information’ (pp. 16–50). Giddens cites as examples the General Postal Union, established in Berne in 1874, and the International Health Office, established in Paris in 1908.

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organisations, changing its name to the International Institute of Documentation (IID) in 1931, and finally to the International Federation of Documentation (FID) in 1937. IID/FID subsequently focused on the development of international standards in documentation, becoming linked in the interwar period to the League of Nations Organisation of International Cooperation and post–World War II to UNESCO, with whom it signed a contract in 1947 to administer international documentation (Rayward, 1993a, p. 386). In Britain, the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB), founded in 1927, became the UK arm of IID/FID; its founder, Alan Pollard acting as international chair between 1927 and 1930 (Rayward, 1975, pp. 304–44).93 Indeed, Pollard, and his colleague S.C. Bradford, Keeper of the London Science Library, became ardent enthusiasts for universal (rather than national or imperial) approaches to information matters and, in large part through their efforts, by 1950 an internationalist consensus had begun to prevail in the British information professions (Bradford, 1948, pp. 122–30). Although Otlet is commonly regarded as the founding father of the international institutionalisation of information, it is perhaps arguable that his intellectual legacy of utopian internationalism is of greater significance. Otlet was not primarily a bureaucrat, and certainly in the second part of his life he veered away from the politics of the IID/FID to focus on his doomed project of the Mundaneum – an international centre for the storage and dissemination of knowledge, located at the centre of a global network of outliers and outlets (Rayward, 1993b). This scheme was symptomatic of a European revival, from the 1870s onwards, of scientific utopianism, and more especially the inclusion of new conceptions of information in the utopian mix (Kumar, 1987, pp. 65–8). Of course, utopias of knowledge underpinned by scientific enquiry had a long lineage – Bacon, Hartlib, Leibnitz, Comenius among others – but the dawn of the twentieth century saw their fusion with modern scientific rationalism and their adoption as a rationale for new techniques and technologies of information processing. Otlet’s Mundaneum was consequently followed by other European projects for the universal collection and dissemination of knowledge. Among the best known was German Nobel prize winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald’s Die Brucke, which briefly attracted funds and interest in the period before 1914, but floundered amid the destruction of World War I (Satoh, 1987; Hapke, 1999). In Britain, H.G. Wells’s attempts to establish a World Encyclopaedia had a more long-lasting influence. The origins of this scheme lay in Wells’s early scientific utopianism dating from the turn of the nineteenth century (in, for example, A Modern Utopia, 1903) where he had argued that universal access to information and knowledge was a major precondition for an ideal global state. Wells revived and elaborated these ideas in his campaign for a World Brain in the late 1920s and 1930s (Wells, 1994; Muddiman, 1998; Rayward, 1999). This provided a vision and, less successfully, a mechanism, of the diffusion of knowledge which would, Wells hoped, promote world peace and educational development. Wells’s proposals were internationalist – he campaigned for a ‘world encyclopaedia organisation’ which he envisaged as employing 17 million people worldwide with its headquarters in republican Barcelona (Wells, 1973, p. 422). Knowledge would be stored and retrieved using the innovative technology of 93

See Chapter 3, pp. 91–93 for more details on the BSIB.

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microfilm (see pp. 18–23). It would be gathered and disseminated worldwide through a vast postal network including national subcentres, and through a range of publications perenially revised. Although Wells died in 1946 before any of these plans could be brought to fruition, his ideas influenced thinkers as diverse as Bernal (who applied elements of them to both his cyber-utopia in The World, the Flesh and the Devil and to the state socialist information utopia described in The Social Function of Science) and, in the United States, Vannevar Bush, who, in ‘As we may think’ (1945a) is commonly considered to have ennuniciated the archetypal modern gospel of progress through access to information. More negatively, Wells also profoundly influenced George Orwell, who arguably penned the first modern information anti-utopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four.94 Indeed, by 1949, the year in which Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, it was clear that both the promise and the dangers of the systematic manipulation of information were becoming serious issues of both intellectual and popular concern. What we now call the information society debate had emphatically begun.

94

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, of course, the surveillance society sensationally comes of age: ‘With the development of television, and the technical advance that made it possible to receive and transmit on the same instrument, private life came to an end’ (Orwell, 1949, p. 214).

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PART II INFRASTRUCTURE, NETWORKS AND THE STATE

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Chapter 2

Science, Industry and the State: Scientific and Technical Information in EarlyTwentieth-Century Britain Dave Muddiman

War, Efficiency and the Crisis of Scientific Information, 1870–1918 In the years between 1870 and 1914, at least in the industrial economies of Europe and the United States, it is generally acknowledged that the world witnessed the dawning of a modern, scientific age. In these years the ‘second industrial revolution’ brought with it the systematic application of science to production and consumption through the emergence of ‘electrical power and motors, organic chemistry and synthetics, precision manufacturing and assembly line production’ (Landes, 1969, p. 235). From the 1870s onwards, it rapidly became clear that if nations were to play a part in this new industrial order they would need to invest heavily in a new infrastructure which would replace the voluntarism and individualism of early modern science. In Britain, the Devonshire Commission, appointed by Gladstone in 1872 to enquire into ‘scientific instruction and the advancement of science’, concluded that henceforth only the resources of the nation-state would be sufficient to support modern science.1 A period of expansion of scientific education followed, resulting in the foundation of natural science faculties in the major British civic universities, followed by Oxford, Cambridge and London after 1900. By 1910, a cumulative total of some 14,330 scientists had graduated from English universities, excluding Oxford and Cambridge (Edgerton, 1996, p. 20). Science hence became a significant profession: between 1860 and 1920, the membership of the Chemical Society of London is estimated to have risen tenfold – from 323 members in 1860 to 3721 in 1920 (Meadows, 1974, p. 13). Some of these newly qualified scientists – an estimated 180–230 per annum by 1902 – began to find employment in private industry (MacLeod and MacLeod 1976, p. 306). Others found work in an emerging network of facilities directly funded by the state: these included the National Physical Laboratory, opened in 1900; the Post Office, which in 1904 began organised research into the development of telegraph and telephone; and the Development Commission, 1

In its final report (1875) the commission concluded that ‘the Advancement of Modern Science requires investigations over areas so large and periods so long that the means and lives of nations are alone commensurate with them’. Quoted in Turner (1980, p. 594).

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founded in 1909, which began to open a number of specialist agricultural and biological research stations. In spite of these developments in the scientific infrastructure, by 1900 many public apologists for science in Britain were discontented with the slow, and relatively uncoordinated, pace of change. ‘Public science’ as it came to be known, became heavily critical of what it saw as government under funding, inaction and indifference to scientific development (Turner, 1980). In particular, there was disquiet about Britain’s relative industrial decline compared with Germany and the USA; the superiority of German science – which many British scientists trained in Germany had experienced at first hand; and an emerging German military threat.2 After 1900, and the near-defeat of the empire in the Boer War (1899–1902), this disaffection coalesced into a movement for ‘national efficiency’ which sought to promote the scientific rationalisation of British society and its institutions (Searle, 1971). The movement, a broad coalition of ‘Galtonian Social Darwinists, Liberal Imperialists and Fabian Socialists’ advocated modernisation based on the extensive application of science and scientific method (MacLeod, 1994, p. 156). Its supporters included politicians such as Lord Rosebery, A.J. Balfour and R.B. Haldane, together with scientists such as Norman Lockyer, discoverer of Helium, founding editor of Nature, and in 1903 President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). Lockyer used his address in that year to argue for investment in British science, proclaiming, famously, that ‘brain power’ (rather than sea power) would henceforth determine the course of history (Lockyer, 1903; Meadows, 1972, p. 270). In 1904, he established the British Science Guild (BSG) to ‘promote and extend the application of scientific method… in all matters affecting the national welfare’ (MacLeod, 1994, p. 161). Until the 1930s, the BSG was to form the core of a ‘science lobby’ within the British establishment which campaigned for improvements in scientific education, increased government support for science and industry and the improvement and rationalisation of scientific communication in the British empire. As this suggests, one issue beginning to be highlighted by the BSG and other protagonists of scientific improvement was the importance of the new commodity of scientific and technical information. Because science was becoming a cooperative and cumulative exercise, access to the results of scientific research now became a crucial issue in the emerging industrial (and indeed intellectual) economy. New industrial configurations began to rely on access to recorded data and information in order to function and expand; enterprises and organisations of all kinds began to adopt ‘scientific’ methods of managing both their technical and human systems in place of ‘rule of thumb’. The age was characterised by a popularisation of scientific discourse, signified by the emergence of generalist scientific journals, such as Nature, founded in 1869, and of ‘Science Primers’, popular textbooks, and increasing coverage of scientific matters in general

2

In a famous letter to The Times in 1887, T.H. Huxley, for example demanded that ‘the nation organise for victory in the industrial war that has been entered upon’. See The Times (20th January 1887).

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periodicals such as Contemporary Review.3 Specialist literature became international – in Chemistry, for example, journals were founded between 1870 and 1920 in locations as diverse as Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Argentina to supplement the German, British, French and American core. Sub-disciplines like Physical Chemistry also emerged with specialised journals of their own – eight new journals in the field emerged in this period (Vickery, 1999, pp. 524–5). All of this, together with the simple expansion in quantity of scientific papers, generally estimated before World War One to have doubled with each passing decade, began to worry contemporaries who perceived the possibility of documentary chaos.4 In his presidential address to the Chemical Society in 1894, H.E. Armstrong observed that: chemical literature is fast becoming unmanageable and uncontrollable from its very vastness. Not only is the number of papers increasing from year to year, but new journals are constantly being established. Something must be done in order to assist chemists to remain in touch with their subject and to retain their hold on literature generally5

Such sentiments persisted, and indeed multiplied, as the new century progressed. Indeed, thirty years later, at the inaugural meeting of ASLIB in 1924, J.G. Pearce remarked on ‘the enormous growth of “fact information” relating to all departments of human activity, [especially] in science and technology’ (Pearce, 1925, p. 12) and offered this as the fundamental rationale for the establishment of the association. To some extent, an embryonic system for collecting, organising and disseminating this new abundance of information did begin to be established in Britain before 1918. Scientific libraries began to proliferate and expand. After 1850, the existing specialist libraries of London, hitherto limited to those of the Royal Society and its subsidiary scientific societies, were supplemented by the Patent Office Library, founded in 1854, which held details of patented innovations and inventions, and the Science Museum Library in South Kensington, which was formally established in 1883 and by 1914 had evolved into a major reference library of science (Science Museum Library, 1996). In the regions, specialist scientific libraries in new university faculties and a few pioneer libraries in private industrial concerns began to augment the hitherto fairly haphazard collections of provincial scientific and philosophical societies (Wyatt, 1991).6 Systems of documentation, designed to improve awareness of current research and access to scientific information, were also inaugurated in this period. Some of these – like the Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1800–1900, which first 3

4

5 6

Meadows (1980, p. 54) estimates that Contemporary Review in the 1870s devoted about 9% of its coverage to scientific matters, the highest percentage of any general Victorian periodical. Estimates of rates of increase of course vary, but Vickery’s survey (1999, pp. 481–5) highlights the specific fact that the number of papers recorded annually in the first ten years of the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature (1900–1910) doubled. Quoted in Meadows (1974, p. 86). See Chapter 4 of this book for detailed discussion of the development of British company libraries.

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appeared in 1867, and its short lived twentieth-century successor the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature – aimed to produce a comprehensive index of world science. Others, especially abstract journals and supplements to journals, such as the Geological Record, from 1874, and Physics Abstracts, from the 1890s, aimed to provide detailed summaries and coverage of recent research in specific fields, and were arguably more popular with specialist working scientists (Meadows, 1980, pp. 48–53). Eventually, the provision of scientific and technical information gradually came to assume a position fairly high on the agenda of the British science lobby. In 1896, when the Royal Society called a conference to sponsor the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, Britain’s representatives included Norman Lockyer, Ludwig Mond, of Brunner–Mond Chemical Industries (later part of ICI) and the aforementioned H.E. Armstrong, Professor of Chemistry at the London City and Guilds Institute, and a leading architect of British scientific education. Under the editorship of Lockyer, and subsequently his successor Richard Gregory, Nature also began to highlight information matters; reporting advances in scientific bibliography; international developments such as Otlet’s International Institute of Bibliography; and campaigning for improved government support. Amongst others associated with the science lobby in the years before 1914 were several influential individuals who saw the particular importance of improved provision of information. These included Sydney Webb, Fabian Socialist and London politician, who worked for the streamlining of London’s libraries and the professionalisation of information work (Munford, 1976, pp. 95–8); H.G. Wells, a longstanding advocate of a national system of public libraries and a future propagandist for international information networks (Muddiman, 1998); and Arthur Schuster, physicist, Secretary of the Royal Society between 1912 and 1919, early advocate of improved international scientific documentation and father-in-law of R.S.Hutton, one of the founders of ASLIB (Hutton, 1964, pp. 103–6). In spite of the developments noted above, many of these advocates of ‘efficiency’ were critical of the largely uncoordinated and fragmentary nature of British information provision in the years before 1914. By then, responsibility for scientific and technical information was still dispersed between scientific societies and institutions, national government, universities, industry and libraries. Publication of the results of scientific research in Britain was fragmented amongst journals sponsored by a large number of small scientific societies, and long delays in publication were commonplace (Meadows, 1980, pp. 43–8). In the production of journals of international significance, German science remained pre-eminent – between 1900 and 1910, 36% of journals included in the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature were of German or Austrian origin, compared with only 8% from the United Kingdom (Vickery, 1999, p. 481). Attempts at bibliographical coordination in Britain seemed to result in limited success: the Royal Society’s flagship bibliographical project – the above mentioned International Catalogue – was heavily criticised both because of its lack of specificity and relevance and its failure to develop a truly international approach. It was effectively abandoned in 1916 because of lack of finance and political support (Bradford, 1948, pp. 102–5; Rayward, 1993a, p.384). In library provision, too, Britain lagged behind Germany, having nothing to match the network of German state and university libraries which provided general scientific information from the 1850s onwards, or

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Germany’s industrial libraries based on large companies such as Krupp (from 1873) and Bayer (from 1897) (P. Richards, 1994, pp. 43–5). The Science Museum Library, the closest Britain had to a central resource for scientific and technical information, had in 1908 105,000 volumes and was receiving 540 periodical titles in 1912, both British and international (Bradford, 1925, p. 27; Science Museum, 1996, p. 1). However, it was yet to develop a loan service, and even by 1920 relied upon a staff of only 14 (Follett, 1978, p. 125). Moreover, before 1914, science faculties in most British universities were still in their infancy, and British public libraries, in spite of calls for rationalisation and specialisation from critics such as H.G. Wells and Sydney Webb,7 had yet to focus on the public provision of scientific knowledge. After 1914, the industrial crises of World War I brought these limitations into sharper focus, and cleared the way for scientific and technical information provision that was, at least to some degree, sponsored by the state. At the opening of the war, Britain appeared to be reeling before German technical and organisational superiority, both in the trenches (where, as H.G. Wells remarked ‘novelty after novelty … more or less saved their men and unexpectedly destroyed ours’) and at home where crises of supply in optics, acetone and dyestuffs necessitated drastic, and state sponsored, industrial reorganisation (Rose and Rose, 1968, pp. 37–40). Gradually, as Wells observed, it was realised that ‘victory can fall only to the most vigorous employment of the best scientific knowledge’, and the result was arguably a revolution in the development of the British state funding of science.8 In July 1915, a Ministry of Munitions, initially under David Lloyd George, began to organise and systematise the deployment of scientific expertise across an expanding range of military laboratories and research centres. In December of the same year, a new government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) – which was charged with co-ordinating and promoting civil and industrial science and technology – was founded under the direction of the Lord President of the Council, a minister of cabinet rank. Between 1916 and 1920 the department established a network of government funded research boards and ‘stations’ (for example in the fields of fuel, food, buildings and industrial fatigue) which encouraged the industrial exploitation of knowledge in particular industrial sectors (MacLeod and MacLeod, 1976, pp. 308–17). In addition, the DSIR promoted innovative ‘research associations’ – sectoral groupings of industrial firms who, after agreeing to pool research resources, received government backing for research and development on a ‘pound for pound’ basis. Twenty-one such associations had been created by 1921, covering about one-half of British industry (Alter, pp. 213–21). These DSIR stations and associations, as we shall see, quickly adopted an informational role, and would go on to establish an institutional framework for technical information provision to British industry which endured for at least three-quarters of the century. 7

8

Wells set out his views on the role of the public library (including its contribution to scientific and technical advance) in Mankind in the Making (Wells, 1903, pp. 343–4). Webb’s essay ‘The library service of London: its co–ordination, development and education’ (Webb, 1902) was an extended plea for rationalisation and library co– operation. See H.G.Wells to The Times (11th June 1915).

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Meanwhile, the approaching end of World War I inaugurated a series of debates about the indispensability of scientific and technical information in a modern industrial state. At its 1917 conference, the Library Association resolved that ‘commercial libraries should be established in all great trade centres of the Kingdom’ and that technical libraries should similarly be supported ‘in all important manufacturing towns’, and it approached the DSIR (unsuccessfully as it turned out) for financial support in this respect (Munford, 1976, p. 138). In the following year, J.G. Pearce, at that time Head of Research and Intelligence at the Metropolitan Vickers Company in Manchester, began to advocate the establishment of a new type of ‘active’ information bureau – which he called an ‘intelligence department’ – in all ‘works, universities and laboratories’ of a reasonable size (Pearce, 1918). Pearce also advocated a ‘central body’ for the coordination of such information bureaux, an idea which he proposed to a special Faraday Society meeting on the theme of the Co-ordination of Scientific Publication, in May 1918 (Faraday Society, 1919, pp. 122–3). This meeting, which, as well as Pearce, brought together many leading figures in British public science and documentation, such as Schuster, Gregory and Robert Mond, effectively set a post-war agenda for the development of British scientific and technical information provision. Lack of ‘co-ordination and co-operation’ emerged as a key issue, and participants mooted a range of solutions. The development of a state controlled institute of documentation was seriously considered, some speakers calling for the establishment of a ‘Central Board’ for processing and publishing scientific and technical papers. Others called for the development of a ‘common library’ of science and technology, and the establishment of a ‘college of librarians’ who would index and disseminate information (Faraday Society, 1919, pp. 111–18). None of these proposals attracted consensus support – Richard Gregory, for example, rhetorically appealed to traditional Victorian notions of the freedom of science when he cautioned that ‘independence and freedom of action are national characteristics; and there is not a journal or society of any standing which will consent to [central control]’ (Faraday Society, 1919, p. 119).9 Nevertheless, by 1918, the need for investment in, and rationalisation of, scientific communication became abundantly clear, and it was apparent that in Britain such development would have to be sponsored, in part at least, by the state. As we shall see, this tension between, on the one hand, state and national and, on the other, voluntary and market solutions to this early-twentieth-century crisis of scientific and technical information would characterize the development of provision in Britain over the next 40 years. The Foundations of a National Information Infrastructure, 1914–1939

9

Gregory’s characterisation of the British suspicion of the state as a ‘national characteristic’ had a long lineage. In 1851, in a remarkably similar observation, astronomer George Airy remarked in a speech to the BAAS that ‘in science, as in almost everything else, our national genius inclines us to prefer voluntary associations of private persons to organisations of any kind dependent upon the state’. Quoted in Turner (1980, p. 591).

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After 1918, such tensions gradually became apparent in decision making about the development of a central British resource for scientific and technical knowledge, based at the Science Museum Library in London. On the one hand, a lobby comprising the library’s keeper, S.C. Bradford,10 museum director Henry Lyons and sympathetic scientists and engineers such as Henry Tizard, A.G Church and Magnus Mowat11 campaigned for the transformation of the library into a national centre for scientific information. This group succeeded in convincing the committee which produced the Kenyon Report (1927) – an enquiry into the state of library provision in the UK12 – that ‘the necessity for a central library to provide for the needs of scientific workers has been widely recognized... and the most easy and least expensive way of solving the problem would be to make the Science Library complete’ (Board of Education Public Libraries Committee, 1927, p. 137). The Board of Education, on the other hand, which ultimately controlled the purse strings of the library, was much more sceptical about central provision and the ‘aggrandisement’ of the Science Library. Between 1927 and 1934 a debate about funding and expansion ensued, culminating in 1934 in the rejection of the Museum’s plans for library expansion by the Board’s Standing Committee on Museums and Galleries: the Committee (with some logic) favouring a network of scientific libraries co-ordinated by the DSIR (Follett, 1978, pp. 127–36). However, this rebuttal was overtaken by events: de facto, Lyons and Bradford incrementally managed to raise the book purchasing fund of the library from £1000 p.a. in 1920 to £3000 p.a. in 1933, and, in the same period, to more than double the staff from 14 to 32 (Follett, 1978, pp. 125–7). By 1934, the stock of the library comprised a quarter of a million volumes; it received 8500 periodicals annually, the largest figure of any library in the world; and its bibliographical resources were estimated by Bradford as totalling ‘some forty million references’. 23,000 readers used its reading room annually and its loan service, inaugurated in 1927, loaned out 12,000 items annually (Bradford, 1934). It was, arguably, a National Science Library in all but name: indeed, legend has it that Bradford placed a brass plaque on its entrance with words to that effect (Science Museum Library, 1996). In spite of the success of its loans scheme, the Science Library alone could never be expected to meet the range and diversity of national need; especially outside London, where the demand for multifarious forms of technical data and knowledge was becoming ever more apparent in the industrial regions. As we have already noted in the previous section, some public librarians had already declared an interest in at least partly addressing this emerging need: as early as 1901, L. Stanley Jast had argued in Library World for the development of technical 10

11

12

Bradford, who had joined the Museum in 1898, became full-time head of the library in 1925, with the rank of Deputy Keeper. In 1930, he was promoted to the rank of full keeper, retiring in 1938. His wider activities as a documentalist are noted in Chapter 1 of this book. Tizard was Rector of Imperial College at this time, having attained eminence as the organiser of British military research during World War I; he was later to become Principal Scientific Adviser to Attlee. A.G. Church was an MP, and first president of the Association of Scientific Workers; Mowat was an an engineer and first Hon. Treasurer of ASLIB. The title of the Kenyon Report was A Report on Public Libraries in England and Wales, but in fact the report covered most aspects of UK library provision.

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collections in the public library (Jast, 1901). During World War I, pioneer technical services were established in public libraries, often together with commercial libraries, in Coventry (from 1915) and Glasgow (from 1916); and in 1916 the Library Association formed a Technical and Commercial Special Services Committee under the chairmanship of Coventry librarian E.A. Savage. This lobbied for support from industry, local authorities and central government, and in 1917–8 it approached the newly formed DSIR for funds which would support the foundation of regional technical and commercial libraries. Despite marshalling a powerfully argued case, this approach was ultimately rejected by the DSIR and the Ministry of Reconstruction: in 1919 it was decided by the UK government that ‘in the case of general libraries the unit of organisation and administration is the local authority; in the case of the technical library system it should be the industry’.13 Of course, this did not prevent many public library authorities responding to local demand and establishing scientific and technical sections, such as those in Leeds (1918) and Manchester (1922). By 1924, the aforementioned Kenyon Report recorded ‘industrial collections’ in 70 locations, together with commercial collections in 46 (Board of Education Public Libraries Committee, 1927, p. 128). Most of these were general in nature, but some industrial cities very quickly began to develop specialist services in fields relevant to local industry. Notable among these was Sheffield, where, under technical information enthusiast J.P. Lamb, the public library from 1924 began to build a specialist collection in metallurgy. From 1932, it also assumed the role of co-ordinator of a local network of six specialist libraries and 12 industrial firms dedicated to the free interchange of technical publications (Lamb, 1935). SINTO, as the network later became known, is now regarded as the pioneer of regional library networking in the technical field. In spite of the evident success of some aspects of public library provision, the DSIR argued in 1919–20, probably correctly, that general libraries could never hope to address the particular requirements of ever more complex and knowledge intensive scientific and industrial concerns. In some cases, as Chapter 5 will show, these concerns – especially very large conglomerates such as Metro-Vickers, Rowntree, and ICI – founded their own specialist libraries or information bureaux; however many more, especially medium-sized enterprises, had neither the will nor surplus capital to follow suit. For these organisations especially, the DSIR’s sponsorship of information bureaux based on specialist industrial sectors was a critical innovation. From the beginning, the department recognised that the collection of information and data relevant to industry would be a key function of both its directly controlled research ‘stations’ and its sponsored research associations: at its conference of 1918, it even contemplated the establishment of a centralised ‘records bureau’ of technical data and knowledge (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1920, p. 9). The bureau never materialised; nevertheless, information centres were gradually inaugurated at research stations and associations, and quite speedily at those like Cotton, Non-Ferrous Metals and

13

See Ministry of Reconstruction (1919), Third Interim Report of the Adult Education Committee: Libraries and Museums, p. 10. Lamb (1955, pp. 19–54) contains a detailed discussion of the work of Savage’s committee and the government response.

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Cast Iron, where information enthusiasts were appointed to executive posts.14 By the mid-1930s, specialist libraries and information units directly controlled by the DSIR existed at its Building Research Station, its Chemical Research Laboratory, its Food Laboratories, its Forestry Station, its Fuel Research Station, the National Physical Laboratory, its Road Research Laboratory and its Water Pollution Laboratory. Most services at these locations were freely available to science and industry (Urquhart, 1956). In addition, information bureaux had been established at the following research associations: Scientific Instruments; Wool; Cotton and Fibres: Linen; Rubber; Confectionary; Non–Ferrous Metals; Refractories; Laundry; Leather; Electrical; Cast Iron; Flour; Paint; Food; Iron and Steel; Printing; and Automobiles. These bureaux provided services to subscribing members – most research associations were subsidised by the DSIR on a pound for pound basis to match subscriptions, and the department encouraged all British companies to join (Davy and McLachlan, 1978). Of course, by no means all did. One feature of this new provision sponsored by the DSIR which some contemporaries especially promoted was its focus on the active dissemination of information rather than simply the passive collection and management of books. J.G. Pearce, an engineer who in 1915 had became Head of the Research Section at Metropolitan Vickers Company in Manchester, was a particular enthusiast for this new conception of information as mobile knowledge, and from 1916–26 he presented a series of papers to professional conferences, where he elaborated the idea of the information or ‘intelligence’ bureaux.15 At the Fifth Conference of DSIR Research Associations in 1922, Pearce argued that new services to science and industry had to radically depart from the library model. He described libraries as ‘museums of books... they have little concern for matter other than that contained in books... conditions which become serious handicaps where technical information is involved’. Instead, Pearce argued, the way ahead lie in ‘intelligence bureaux’, characterised as: a working collection of information as small as is consistent with efficiency. It is a channel for collecting information rather than a collection in itself. It attaches comparatively little importance to books, but is particularly well supplied with data from sources which yield information long before it is embalmed in book form... It is active, aggressively so, in collecting, sifting and distributing material to experts, and usually provides them with more than they could obtain for themselves with an overall economy of time and expense (Pearce, 1922, p. 27).

14

15

R.S. Hutton, of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association; J.G. Pearce, of the British Cast Iron Research Association and J.C. Withers, of the British Cotton Industry Research Association were all founder members of ASLIB council. In his memoirs, Hutton recalls that at BNFMRA ‘the planning of a service which would provide members with information from world-wide sources’ was a priority second only in importance to new research (Hutton, 1964, p. 162). See, for example, Pearce (1918; 1921; 1922; 1926). As noted above, Pearce in 1922 became Director of the British Cast Iron Research Association, and was arguably the ‘brains’ behind the foundation of ASLIB in 1924. For more on Pearce and ASLIB, see Chapter 3.

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Indeed, ‘bureaux’ along these lines seem to have become popular if not pervasive in inter-war Britain, especially in the emerging industrial and technical sectors here described. As early as 1924, ASLIB incorporated the term ‘information bureaux’ in its title; and in 1932 its conference received a lengthy report, drawn up by a panel of its leading members, detailing The Establishment and Operation of an Information Service (Ridley and Fullman, 1932). This highlighted matters such as those raised by Pearce and offered advice on the development of ‘active’ services such as current awareness; publication of bulletins and abstracts; targeted dissemination and the acquisition and handling of serials; reports; ephemera and raw data. Some librarian members of ASLIB – such as J.P. Lamb and B.M. Headicar (of the London School of Economics) argued that many of these functions were equally applicable to ‘special’ librarianship and that the new bureaux were a development of, rather than a departure from, the model of the library.16 In practice, of course, some organisations, such as Pearce’s Metropolitan Vickers Company itself, ran an information department and a library, although these were an exception. More usual was a ‘special library’ which adopted an information role; or an ‘information’ department which incorporated a library. Whatever their specific titles and functions, it is clear that between 1918 and the early 1930s the number of new specialist institutions of information in Britain significantly increased. ASLIB membership figures for 1932 reveal a total corporate membership of 400: a patchwork of information bureaux and special libraries in the private sector; DSIR research associations; scientific and technical associations; and public and university libraries offering specialist provision (Muddiman, 2005, p. 408). However, as many contemporaries observed, these institutions effectively lacked control and co-ordination, and government, in spite of recommendations such as those of the Board of Education’s Standing Committee on Museums and Galleries (see this section above), proved reluctant to exercise consistent control. Although by the late 1930s the DSIR did establish a coordinating office for scientific and technical information,17 the most important mechanism of coordination – ASLIB, the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux – was, as we have already noted in Chapter 1, founded in 1924 as a voluntary association of corporate members, albeit with significant indirect state support from membership subscriptions, key personnel and the like.18 ASLIB set up a permanent office and initiated a series of co-ordinating and networking schemes, including publication of The ASLIB Directory – a regularly updated guide to the location and sources of specialist information; ASLIB Information, a current awareness newssheet; and, from 1928, a telephone enquiry point which provided a referral service for sources of specialist information. Gradually, especially under its energetic general secretary Edith Ditmas (1933–49), ASLIB became a focus for innovation in scientific and technical information in inter–war Britain.

16

17

18

Helen Plant discusses these matters in more detail in the context of training and education in Chapter 8. This subsequently became known in the 1950s as the Technical Information and Documents Unit of the DSIR. See Chapter 1, pp. 33–4. Chapter 3 examines ASLIB’s role and development in detail.

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Despite ASLIB, and the evident success of pioneering local networking projects such as that in Sheffield, as the twenties and thirties progressed many contemporaries continued to press for more organised and co-ordinated systems of scientific and technical information. The vogue for ‘planning’, in particular, was to have a significant influence on some leading scientists and documentalists, such as Jason Farradane, eventual founder of the Institute of Information Scientists, and Donald Urquhart, later first director of the National Lending Library for Science and Technology. In the 1930s both were heavily influenced by the rhetoric of planning, believing that techniques such as scientific management and operational research provided the solution to the chaos of Victorian informational laissez–faire (Lewkowitsch, 1938; Urquhart, 1990, pp. 5–7). The gospel of planning began to be aired at annual ASLIB and Library Association conferences in the 1920s and 1930s, which both regularly hosted speakers from organisations such as Political and Economic Planning and the International Management Institute.19 More importantly, perhaps, the development of national ‘plans’ for scientific and technical information became commonplace. These plans ranged from institutional proposals, such as those of J.G. Pearce (1926) for a network of organisations which would form a ‘national intelligence service’, to proposals aimed at rationalising national standards of publication and bibliography, such as those proposed by railway engineer John Frederick Pownall in his book Organised Publication (Pownall, 1926). Lewkowitsch (Farradane) synthesised these proposals in a paper presented to the International Federation for Documentation conference at Oxford in 1938, arguing for the rationalisation of journal publication, the standardisation of bibliography and the establishment of a central library of science (Lewkowitsch, 1938). At the same conference, A.F. Pollard, of Imperial College and the British Society for International Bibliography, linked such ideas to H.G. Wells’s vision of a ‘Permanent World Encyclopaedia’, popularised at the time in his World Brain campaign (Pollard, 1938). So began, as we shall see, a debate about the ‘nationalisation’ of scientific and technical information in Britain which would not be resolved until the early 1950s. Towards the Informational State? Bernal and the Challenge of the Left, 1939–4820 In the period immediately before World War II, these calls for the rationalisation of scientific and technical information took on an additional head of steam. That they did so was undoubtedly due to the publication, in 1939, of J.D. Bernal’s manifesto for ‘planned science’ – The Social Function of Science. The book specifically included proposals for the nationalisation of British scientific publication, arguing 19

20

Planning and scientific management were, for example, key themes at ASLIB conferences in 1927 and 1934. See Muddiman (2005). Parts of this section of the chapter were originally published in Muddiman, D. (2003) ‘Red information scientist: the information career of J.D. Bernal’, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59, No.4, pp. 387-409. My thanks to Emerald Publishing Group Limited for permission to reproduce them here.

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that ‘the problem of the re–organisation of science will not be solved by administrative or financial changes alone. It will also be necessary to reorganise in a most comprehensive way the whole apparatus of scientific communication’ (Bernal, 1939, p. 292). In a chapter of this name Bernal envisioned a complete, alternative, mechanism of scientific communication based on the principles of centralised planning. This system was seen as encompassing the publication, bibliographic control, dissemination and popularisation of science. Bernal proposed the replacement of the scientific journal by a central bureau which would publish, store and disseminate individual scientific papers (and summaries of them) in response to the expressed needs of scientific workers. The goal was efficiency: ‘a system in which all relevant information would be available to each research worker in an amplitude proportional to its degree of relevance’ (p. 294). The bureau would also function as an abstracting, indexing and archival service ‘for recoding, filing, co-ordinating and distributing scientific information’ (p. 297). In addition, Bernal speculated, it might sponsor a connected series of monographs; volumes such as the German handbucher; and popular works about science aimed at improving public participation in scientific debate. Following H.G. Wells, Bernal also proposed that such an organised national system of information might become a component and building block of an integrated international network of scientific communication. Bernal’s importance owed much to the reputation he had established, already by 1939, as the figurehead of a ‘social relations of science’ movement which had gathered pace in Britain in the thirties. This movement, popularly known as ‘red science’, marked a politicisation of British science which went beyond the advocacy of science and its methods characteristic of earlier establishment groups such as the BSG. Scientific workers, perhaps for the first time in the 1930s, began to question the purpose and nature of science itself: they intervened critically in politics and challenged the priorities of a science geared to profit and war. Some of these scientists, like Bernal, were, or became, committed Communists who looked to the Soviet Union as an ideal scientific state; others, however, came from a much wider cross section of the liberal and social democratic left. They organised around a trades union – the Association of Scientific Workers (AScW) – and a large number of campaigning and issue groups, such as anti-war groups, anti-poverty groups, and more latterly anti-fascist campaigns. As the 1930s passed, their support grew and they began to influence the scientific establishment: in 1938 the British Association for the Advancement of Science formed a ‘Division for the Social and International Relations of Science’, its members including such celebrities as H.G. Wells and Richard Gregory, editor of Nature.21 From the early 1930s onwards, Bernal himself,22 originally a Cambridge scientist of international repute and a pioneer of X-ray crystallography, began to 21

22

For a detailed study of ‘red science’ in Britain, see Werskey (1978). For Bernal’s own recollections of his activism in this period see ‘Correspondence with Gary Werskey’, Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, J.246. The main existing biographies of Bernal are Goldsmith (1980) and Hodgkin (1980) , together with Swann and Aprahamian (1999), an interesting collection of essays. All of these titles mention Bernal’s information career only in passing; Muddiman (2003) gives an account of this aspect of his life.

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argue for the reform of science in journal articles, at public meetings and through radio broadcasts. As a supporter of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), he visited the Soviet Union on a regular basis. In 1934 he joined the national executive of the AScW and he began work on a major analysis of the social role of contemporary science, eventually published as The Social Function of Science (1939). Despite his Marxism, during 1935/6 Bernal became involved in producing a report commissioned by the newly formed British Parliamentary Science Committee on the financing of British scientific research, and his interest in scientific information (and its problems) seems to have had at least some of its origins in his work for this (McGucken, 1984, pp. 81–90). Around this time also, Bernal made contact with United States Science Service Director G. Watson Davies, who in 1933 had published a Plan for the Restructuring of Scientific Publication and Bibliography – a document which contained a number of proposals for the creation of planned national (and international) institutions of information of the kind favoured by Bernal. When Social Function was published in 1939, Bernal praised Davis’s work and included his Plan as an Appendix to the book (Muddiman, 2003, pp. 391–3). Whatever their origins, the informational proposals in Social Function of Science evidently made a favourable impression on a good number of young British (and international) documentalists of the time – including Donald Urquhart, future Director of the National Lending Library for Science and Technology; Brian Vickery, future Head of Research and Consultancy at ASLIB; Herbert Coblans, future Director of Library and Information Services at CERN; and Eugene Garfield, American founder of the Science Citation Index (Urquhart, 1990; Vickery, 2004; Coblans, 1964; Garfield, 1982). In the short term, however, discussion of Bernal’s book was cut short: World War II broke out four months or so after the publication of Social Function. Nevertheless, after the crisis years of 1939–41, the arguments for a more rational approach to scientific communication began again to be advanced in the UK. At the 1942 conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Ritchie Calder, a popular Daily Herald science correspondent and a friend of Bernal, outlined a plan for a UK Institute of Scientific Information. At the 1943 conference of ASLIB, J.G. Crowther, another CPGB colleague of Bernal’s, and wartime director of the science department of the British Council, addressed members on a similar theme (Crowther, 1943). Bernal himself was at this time preoccupied with wartime concerns, but in 1945, when he returned to civilian life, he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the first post-war conference of ASLIB. There he revisited the proposals in Social Function and caught the mood of the audience by observing that ‘the experience of war taught a very large number of scientists the vital place of an efficient information service’ (Bernal, 1945, p. 20). More generally for the British scientific left, the approaching end of the war heralded a renewed interest in developing the planned scientific state. Within the AScW specifically, there was a revival of interest in proposals for the systematic and centralised publication and dissemination of scientific information. A working group of members, based at Herts. Pharmaceuticals in Welwyn Garden City, drafted a detailed elaboration of Bernal’s plan entitled Reform of the System of

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Scientific Publications.23 This was circulated throughout the union in June 1945. It proposed the establishment of a centralised ‘British Publishing Authority’ which would oversee scientific publication and documentation. Other proposals included the adoption of the individual scientific paper as the main format of publication; the establishment of an indexing and abstracting service under the auspices of the Authority; and an international network of such organisations linked by an ‘International Central Science Library’. Bill Pirie, a friend of Bernal’s and member of the AScW executive, also drew up some specific proposals regarding the desirable length and structure of published papers (Pirie, 1946). Both of these schemes were passed to Bernal at the end of the war, and in August 1945 he encouraged Eric Reid, one of the members of the drafting committee, to present it for discussion at the ASLIB conference that September. The paper was in fact presented to a fringe meeting of some thirty conference participants, and as a result ASLIB were persuaded to set up a joint working party with the AScW to explore the proposals further (Reform of the System of Scientific Publications, 1945). This joint committee met during the first part of 1946. Its outcomes were undoubtedly disappointing from the perspective of AScW radicals such as Reid and Pirie. Although ASLIB representatives on the committee accepted that individual papers rather than journals ought to be the ‘fundamental unit’ of scientific communication, they nevertheless appear to have insisted that ‘the autonomy of scientific societies and other publishing bodies should remain unchallenged’ and that the ‘financial position of publishers should not be impaired’, under any new arrangements. An editorial in Nature commented that these conditions seemed to ‘frustrate any hope of advance’.24 Nevertheless, at the Royal Society Empire Scientific Conference (June/July 1946), Bernal was able to present his proposals for ‘the better organisation of the production and distribution of the basic unit of scientific publication – the individual paper’ and infer that he had at least some measure of professional support (Bernal, 1946). Partly because of this, and partly because of his own prestige, these proposals were remarkably well received, and the conference agreed to recommend that they be considered in more detail at a special conference on scientific information to be organised by the Royal Society. In addition, the conference accepted the conclusions of another working party (which included Bernal and several other members of the scientific left) that a British ‘Institute of Scientific Information’ be established along the lines of Science Service in the United States (Gregory et al, 1948). 23

24

See Reform of the System of Scientific Publications (June 1945), Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, H.27.5.1. The members of its ‘joint drafting committee’ are noted as J.W. Crawford, C. Gee, H. Granichstadten, C.W. Picard (Chairman) and E. Reid. Eric Reid seems to have been the driving force behind the paper and he led the discussion of it at the 1945 ASLIB conference. Bernal later corresponded and met with him in the run up to the RSSIC in 1948. I have been unable to trace detailed records of the committee either in the Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Archives, or in records held at ASLIB headquarters, London. However, Edith Ditmas, who was Secretary of ASLIB at the time, records a meeting in her diary on 16 January 1946 (Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, A1982/67, Box 7). The editorial in Nature summarising its main conclusions, from which these quotations are taken, appears as ‘Rationalisation of the literature of scientific research’ [Editorial], Nature, Vol. 157, No. 3997, pp. 745–8.

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Disappointingly for Bernal and his colleagues the impetus of the Empire Scientific Conference was not maintained into 1947. There was delay in arranging the proposed Scientific Information Conference and no progress was made with the proposals for an Institute of Scientific Information (Ditmas, 1948a, p. 218). However, in November 1947, the Royal Society decided to go ahead with the conference the following June. Bernal was invited to be a member of its organising committee and chairman of the steering committee for the opening theme: the ‘publication and distribution of papers reporting original work’.25 It was decided that accepted papers would be circulated prior to the conference in spring 1948, and Bernal quickly took the opportunity to develop the existing AScW proposals in a more specific form. His resulting paper: ‘Provisional scheme for the central distribution of scientific publications’, spelled out in detail a scheme for ‘National Distribution Authorities for Scientific Information’ which would (i) replace the publication function of the scientific journal (ii) develop a major bibliographical role (iii) be the first stage of ‘the setting up of a complete world organisation for scientific publication and distribution’ (Bernal, 1948a, p. 257). Simultaneously, Bernal worked with John Kendrew (another Cambridge scientist and future Nobel prize winner) on a pilot study of the reading habits and information needs of working scientists, which he hoped would lend empirical support to his proposals (Bernal, 1948b). The AScW also organised two meetings in October 1947 and April 1948 entitled ‘The Publication and Classification of Scientific Knowledge’, where Bernal spoke to sympathetic audiences about the proposals and produced a wall chart illustrating his classification of types of publication and how the National Distributing Authorities would deal with them.26 Bernal’s forthcoming Royal Society Scientific Information Conference (RSSIC) paper was circulated in February 1948 to Royal Society members and prospective conference participants. Coinciding as it did with a growing general disquiet about Soviet science and Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe, it seems to have had a catalytic effect on a hitherto dormant scientific establishment and upon libertarian opinion more generally.27 The Royal Society received immediate protests about the Bernal/AScW proposals from a large number of individual scientists. F.M.R. Walshe typically expressed ‘a grave disquiet at the proposals... what a planner’s paradise is here envisaged. There are possibilities of censorship that I dislike and my general view is that it is far too authoritarian... the possibility of a central body deciding whether or not a paper should be published is surely abhorrent’ (Royal Society, 1948, p. 535). Most of the UK scientific societies concurred: in a letter of 22nd April to the Royal Society, the Biological and Geological Societies of the UK lodged formal objections to the plans (Royal 25

26

27

See ‘Correspondence between J.D. Bernal and the Royal Society’ (December 1947– March 1948), Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, H.27.5.3. The meetings are reported in Nature, No. 4071 (8 November 1947), which reproduces Bernal’s wall chart on p. 649. Soviet development of the atom bomb was imminent and the Berlin airlift commenced on 24 June 1948, during the RSSIC. The Lysenko crisis in the Soviet Union was also beginning to deepen, with Soviet biologists who refused to accept his genetic theories being exiled and imprisoned. For more on Lysenko, including Bernal’s role, see Jones (1979).

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Society, 1948, p. 516). As the conference approached, these protests became public. G.P. Thompson and John R. Baker, of the Society for Freedom in Science, wrote to Nature on May 15th arguing that the ‘scheme for centralized printing and issue of scientific papers... seems to threaten scientific freedom very directly’. A letter to The Times followed in similar vein, and was published on the opening day of the conference for maximum effect. A minor media free-for-all followed: even the liberal Observer labelled Bernal ‘the well known left wing planning enthusiast’ and argued that ‘under Professor Bernal’s streamlined regime, the centralized agency could easily be captured by an intolerant majority or a highly disciplined minority’. The National Review concluded (correctly) that ‘for a small but influential group of scientists – the AScW – the scheme was only one phase of a campaign for planned science that had been going on for over a decade’.28 Bernal had to some extent tried to pre-empt these attacks by including in his scheme a stipulation that editorial freedom and pluralism would continue in the National Distribution Authorities (Bernal, 1948a, p. 254), and he defended the scheme in these terms in his letter to the Times of 23rd June 1948. He also tried to argue that ‘the proposals were essentially those considered by the Joint Committee of ASLIB and the AScW and put before the Empire Scientific Conference of 1946’.29 However, these arguments never really addressed the basic contention of his opponents that state-controlled ‘national’ authorities potentially threatened scientific freedom, and Bernal was forced to withdraw his proposals at the opening of the conference (Royal Society, 1948, p. 101; pp. 257–8). In the event, he used the results of the survey he had been working on with John Kendrew as a fig leaf, arguing that its findings suggested that the National Distribution Authority plans were no longer relevant because they revealed the extent to which scientists relied on libraries. Although this tactic appeared to save Bernal’s face, there was little doubt that for many of his comrades on the left the withdrawal was a real disaster. R.C. Murray, the conference correspondent for Scientific Worker saw it as a ‘triumph of the vested interests of the status quo’ and argued that the establishment had ‘succeeded in turning a question of the technique of publication into an ideological battleground’. He concluded that none of the final piecemeal recommendations of the conference would ‘do much to reduce the long delays in publication of papers in this country which are anything from 6–24 months’ (R. Murray, 1948).30 The defeat of the campaign for nationalisation was brought about by the eventual mobilisation of established scientific opinion against Bernal in a rapidly shifting general political climate. In this context, it is interesting to note that Bernal’s proposals did not initially attract opposition of a similar order among the documentalists, information workers and librarians who attended the conference. 28

29

30

The quotations from this public debate are taken from East (1998). East gives an excellent overview of the media coverage of the conference. J.D. Bernal to The Times (23 June 1948), Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, H.27.5.5. Bernal’s claim was a distortion of the truth: ASLIB had never fully supported his proposals. Bernal attempted to spike this report which he regarded as ‘confrontational’. See J.D. Bernal to T. Ainley (16 July 1948), Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, I.71.

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As we have seen, in the immediate post-1945 period ASLIB had invited Bernal to its conferences and had hoped to enlist him as a powerful public advocate of improved information services. It had also been prepared even to work with the AScW, even though, in the joint committee of 1945/6, its representatives had been extremely circumspect about disturbing the establishment of British science, and especially the scientific societies. Moreover, as we have already noted, a number of leading documentalists of the time, like their counterparts in the AScW, were consistent advocates of the benefits of centralisation and planning, and some had presented papers to this effect at the RSSIC. Farradane, characteristically, had argued that planning was the key to ‘a scientific approach to documentation’ (Farradane, 1948, p. 422); and Urquhart, by now Secretary of the Scientific and Technical Information Committee of the DSIR, submitted to the conference detailed proposals for the efficient distribution of scientific information (Urquhart, 1948). More grandly still, Alan Pollard, long-standing President of the BSIB, submitted his own plan for a network of national information bureaux linked to an ‘International Information Council’ with some of the functions of a Wellesian World Brain (Pollard, 1948).31 For these documentalists, it is clear, Bernalism held few fears. Documentation was planning and rationalisation, and they were prepared to adopt Bernal as an advocate of their own pursual of more efficient and effective information services, turning a blind eye, perhaps, to the more extreme aspects of his politics. However, the RSSIC clearly confronted documentalists with the potential political danger of such schemes, especially when they involved the centralisation of the production of information as well as its means of access and distribution. Some were moved to express reservations. J.E. Holmstrom, Head of Information at ICI and a fellow conference committee member, wrote to Bernal before the conference confiding that ‘some of the criticisms [of your scheme] impressed me as sound’. G. Watson Davis (who had experienced opposition to his own proposals in the USA) also wrote to Bernal advising that he champion a less controversial scheme for a ‘supplementary’ reprint scheme for scientific papers along the lines he was developing in Washington for Science Service.32 By the time Bernal appeared at the ASLIB conference in 1949, he had seemingly accepted that such piecemeal solutions to ‘documentary chaos’ represented perhaps the only option for progress in the UK. ‘Although’, he argued, ‘the most economical methods of production and distribution would be to regulate the flood of papers at source … the main burden of correct distribution would now have to fall on libraries’ (Bernal, 1949, p. 101).

31

32

Other eminent documentalists were, of course, critical of such schemes, and debates about nationalisation and centralisation occasionally bubbled to the surface in contemporary professional discourse. One such debate occurred at the 1944 meeting of the BSIB, when Pollard’s old colleague, S.C. Bradford, bitterly attacked Pollard’s proposals and stated that he could not ‘entertain the idea of the canker of Government control’ (Pollard, 1944, p. 70). Bradford died in 1948 and did not attend the RSSIC. J.E. Holmstrom to Bernal, 3rd June 1948, and W. Davis to Bernal (20 April 20 1948), Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, H.27.5.1. Details of the American scheme, which significantly no longer aspired to control the publication process, appear in Nature (5 June 1948), p. 896.

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At this point it can be suggested that, in the UK at least, the campaign for a centrally planned and nationalised system of scientific documentation had effectively ended. Bernal and the AScW had pressed consistently and repeatedly between 1945 and 1948 for the creation of a state–controlled system of the production and dissemination of scientific information. In the end, however, they reached the limits of tolerance of a capitalist democracy like the UK. Although many scientists and documentalists were prepared to argue for the centralisation of access to information on the grounds of efficiency, they drew the line at the nationalisation of publication. In a year (1948) which saw the development of the apparatus of censorship in a number of Soviet puppet regimes in Eastern Europe, the dangers of regulating papers ‘at source’ (in Bernal’s phrase) seemed only too stark. In this context it is unsurprising that Bernal’s statist information utopia was shunned by the British government and scientific establishment. Scientific information systems in the UK would henceforth progress on more incremental lines, and although central institutions, as we shall see, would develop in the 1950s, they would do so in the context of the plurality of institutions and services which came to typify the emerging British welfare state. Information and the Post-War Welfare State: the Settlement of 1948–56 Although the ideological arguments about the direction of British scientific and technical information services were essentially settled at the 1948 Royal Society Conference, the policy, administrative and institutional details still needed to be worked through. In mid-century Britain, the usual mechanism for this policy process was a committee system which brought together civil servants and lay experts to draw up ‘recommendations’ for ministers who nominally made political decisions – although as Rose and Rose (1969) argue, in fields like the branch of science policy under discussion here, this often resulted in civil servants and key advisors exercising a great degree of power and influence.33 In the period immediately after World War II, Attlee’s Labour government established a number of these committees in order to kick–start state policy for science and technology: the Advisory Council on Science Policy (ACSP) and the Defence Policy Committee – both under the chairmanship of Henry Tizard – and a new National Research Development Corporation with a committee chaired by Patrick Blackett (Rose and Rose, 1969, pp. 72–7).34 Tizard, as we have seen, had been sympathetic since the 1920s to the need to improve information services and in 1947 he agreed to the formation of a DSIR Panel on Technical Information Services which would

33

34

Donald Urquhart’s account of his time at the Department of Scientific Research (1945– 56) in his memoirs, Mr Boston Spa, provides an excellent case study of the activities and influence of such an ‘insider’ civil servant. See Urquhart (1990, pp. 20–54). Patrick Blackett, one of Britain’s most eminent atomic physicists and Nobel Prize winner in 1948, was a leading socialist scientist and President of the AScW between 1943–6. He became an important science policy advisor to the Labour Party until the late 1960s. See note 11 of this chapter for Tizard.

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report to ACSP on scientific information policy.35 In addition, following the RSSIC, the Royal Society, through its Information Services Committee, also formed a number of working panels – covering Publication of Original Research; Abstracting Services; Classification; and Information Research – which aimed at developing and furthering the recommendations of the conference (D. Martin, 1950). Together, all of these groups and committees, through both formal relationships and interconnected personnel, formed a policy network which by 1952, when most of the Royal Society panels were wound up, had evolved the basic structure and elements of scientific and technical information provision in Britain for the next thirty years or so. In their account of the trajectory of science and technology policy as a whole in these years, Rose and Rose highlight a shift from a radical statism in the immediate post-war period to a more passive pluralism and incrementalism in the mid–fifties. An initial spending boost for science in the Attlee years – civil science spending rose from £6.5 million to £30 million and defence research spending from £34 million to £63 million between 1945 and 1950 – was replaced by a financial freeze by the incoming Conservatives in 1951 (Rose and Rose, 1969, pp. 72–81). National plans for science – like those of Bernal – initially in vogue, were gradually trimmed and, under the Conservatives, state intervention was gradually reconceptualised as fire fighting and ‘action by request and hope’ (p. 84). As we have seen, in the sphere of information, the RSSIC of 1948 proved a great watershed in this transition. Although the conference put forward the vision of planned information provision – indeed many information professionals of the time chiefly remember it for this – its actual recommendations, and the activities of the subsequent Royal Society panels, were largely piecemeal and incremental. Hence, in the field of publication, the panel’s energies were largely directed at minor agreements on rationalisation of formats and so on, through the voluntary cooperation of publishers. Voluntary standardisation was similarly the order of the day in the panel examining abstract services (D. Martin, 1950). The classification panel, chaired by a newly pragmatic Bernal, also eventually rejected the adoption of a standard classification scheme for science such as UDC, concluding that ‘all general schemes of classification are likely to be of little value to active scientific workers’ and recommending specific schemes based on particular needs.36 35

The panel, which was for a time known as the ‘King Committee’ (after its influential chairman, DSIR civil servant Alexander King) produced two reports: Scientific and Technical Library Services (1949) and Technical Information Services (1950). The second of these was published: see Panel on Technical Information Services of the Committee on Industrial Productivity (1951). In 1950 it was replaced by a standing Scientific Library and Technical Information Committee of the ACSP. See Advisory Council on Science Policy (1950).

36

As well as Bernal, other scientist members of this committee included Bill Pirie and John Kendrew. The committee was disbanded inconclusively in 1952, when it passed its mantle to a classification ‘think tank’ which became known as the Classification Research Group (CRG), whose members in the main were documentalists and librarians. See Bernal Papers, Cambridge University Library Archives, H.27.6.2 for detailed records and correspondence of the Royal Society Committee, and Foskett (1964, pp. 191–202) for the CRG.

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Beyond the Royal Society Conference, decision making regarding the urgent question of national scientific and technical library provision also reflected this shift from central planning to pluralism and incrementalism. Initially after 1945, there was general enthusiasm for a so called ‘Science Centre’, to be located on the South Bank of the Thames; a proposal first put to Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council and Minister responsible for the DSIR, in 1944, and apparently well favoured by him (Lamb, 1955, p. 287; Urquhart, 1990, p. 30). The plan proposed the bringing together of the Patent Office Library, the Science Museum Library and the Royal Society and other learned society libraries and locating administrative headquarters for these societies and the DSIR on the same site. It was endorsed in 1947–8 by the DSIR Panel on Technical Information Services, which in its Report on Scientific and Technical Library Facilities recommended the establishment of both a Central Reference Library for Science and Technology (the Science Centre) and a National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLLST), ideally located outside London (Lamb, 1995, p. 288; Urquhart, 1990, p. 30). In the event, the proposal for the Science Centre, although still attracting political support from Morrison in 1950, was shelved: a casualty of caps on public spending after 1951 imposed by the Conservatives, and the tacit and active opposition of some vested interests, especially the ubiquitous DSIR civil servant Donald Urquhart, who wanted to prioritise the establishment of a national lending library.37 In contrast, the case for the NLLST continued to be doggedly pressed through the DSIR committee structure by Urquhart, eventually leading to a decision by the ACSP in 1954 to look for premises for it outside London, and to delegate executive responsibility for the service to the DSIR (Advisory Council on Science Policy, 1954). A site was found at Boston Spa, near Leeds, on a disused wartime base and in 1956, Urquhart began work organising the library, which eventually opened formally in 1962, but from 1957 assumed the lending functions of the Science Museum Library. Between 1957 and 1962, a temporary Science Lending Library Unit was operated from Stanmore, Middlesex (Urquhart, 1990, pp. 42–63). Despite the eventual establishment of the NLLST, for some observers in the 1950s and early 1960s the apparent abandonment of central state institutions and of the Science Centre in particular represented a real failure of state policy. J.P. Lamb, perhaps the leading expert among public librarians in the scientific and technical sphere at this time, lamented in his book of 1955 the lack of central direction in scientific documentation. He argued that ‘some authority should be created to lay down standards of production; to prevent overlapping, and to ensure adequate [access to] subjects’. Lamb advocated a national documentation centre ‘financed by government along the lines of the Centre de Documentation du Centre National de la Recherche Scientific ... or the newly created Soviet Institute of Scientific Information’ (Lamb, 1955, p. 284). Similarly, in memoirs published in

37

In his memoirs Urquhart notes that he believed that ‘the proposed reference library would, at the most, only be of marginal value … as I saw it there was a real need for a better lending library and the sooner the reference library proposal was out of the way the sooner could the committee [the ACSP] consider the real problem’ (Urquhart, 1990, pp. 32–3).

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1964, R.S. Hutton, one of the founders of ASLIB and a leading figure in the world of scientific information since World War One, reflected upon the ‘lack of government appreciation of the national importance of a depositary library of scientific and technical information’.38 Like Lamb, he too compared Britain unfavourably with ‘the first class information services for new industries being established in the USSR (Hutton, 1964, pp. 156–61). In hindsight, it is clear that there is some justice in these critiques, in the sense that they highlight a retreat from centralisation and failures of rationalisation and planning. However, as Donald Urquhart has observed in his memoirs (Urquhart, 1990, p. 32), and as Edgerton (1996) has suggested about science policy more generally, British scientists and professionals have generally tended to understate the extent of state sponsorship of science and technology, in particular conflating the absence of strong central institutions with lack of support as a whole. In this case, in particular, it might especially be observed that Hutton and Lamb tended to underplay the fact that the early and mid–1950s saw the emergence of a devolved and pluralistic, but nevertheless extensive, system of state support for scientific and technical information. The late 1940s, effectively, marked the end of centralisation; it did not, however signal the demise of state support. Most of the institutions of this devolved information infrastructure had already been established in the twenties and thirties, and have been described in section two of this chapter. The majority expanded rapidly after World War II, and with state support most transformed what were, in the thirties, precarious and piecemeal services onto a secure footing. DSIR Research Associations had by the late 1950s increased to approximately fifty in number, each providing an information service to members in a distinct industrial sector; these were now supported by grant aid from the DSIR on a five-yearly basis (Davy and McLachlan, 1978). The department’s own Research Stations by then numbered 15, and these provided a free service to industry and commerce as a whole; moreover they were supplemented, increasingly in the fifties and sixties, by the foundation of library and information units in government ministries and nationalised industries such as electricity, nuclear power and coal (Urquhart, 1956). Increasingly, as the 1960s progressed, these units began to link together in sectoral networks, typically producing union catalogues, abstracting and indexing bulletins, current awareness services and other informational tools relevant to specialised fields (Burkett, 1965). Sometimes these networks included public libraries, where after 1945 technical information provision also began to be developed on a professional footing. Most large city libraries opened separate commercial and technical libraries, and recruited specialist staff in the field. Regional interchange networks along the Sheffield model also multiplied in this period, notably in Manchester (from 1948); West London (1951); Hertfordshire (1956) and Liverpool (1955) (Kelly, 1977, pp. 387–91). Linking all of these services, institutions and networks, and arguably unique to Britain, was a greatly expanded ASLIB. From 1944 funded by the DSIR as a research association in its own right, ASLIB from 1948 attained financial security when its grant–aid moved onto a five yearly footing. By the mid–1950s, 38

Hutton had in fact been a member of the ACSP Scientific Library and Technical Information Committee which, when first established in 1950, had endorsed the Science Centre project.

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the Association’s membership had almost quadrupled to over 1800 organisations, from 520 in 1945, and its enquiry service handled over 16,000 enquiries per annum (L. Wilson, 1954). As the decade progressed, it would develop an expanded role in consultancy, specialist translation and information research to complement its ‘clearing house’, training and publication functions. By the sixties, it had undoubtedly become the key co-ordinating agency for scientific and technical information in Britain, and its eventual success was due in large measure to the stable sponsorship of the state.39 In essence, then, what had emerged in Britain by the mid–1950s was a devolved and, to a large extent, self-organised network of national scientific and technical information provision. The role of the British state, it is clear, had been fundamental in the shaping of this network. Between 1900 and 1920 it had been forced to recognise the limitations of Victorian informational laissez–faire, and had responded to some degree in the 1920s, albeit in a largely piecemeal and incremental way. In the 1930s and 1940s, a shift from this approach to a planned, centralised and directed informational state looked for a time to be a real possibility, as ideas such as those of Bernal about planned science attracted widespread political and professional support. However, the international, political, and financial crizes which followed World War II, together with the residual liberalism of the British political and scientific establishment, eventually halted this drift to centralisation and nationalisation, symbolically at least through Bernal’s climb–down at the RSSIC in 1948. The result was the shelving of most of the plans for powerful central institutions and systems, and a concentration of state support on information services and libraries providing access to information, as opposed to the processes of publication or documentation itself. State sponsorship, as it eventually stabilised in the 1950s, effectively maintained rather minimalist central library services (the NLLST and the Science Museum Library) together with fairly extensive, if thinly spread, support through industrial sectors, in the shape of information units in research stations and associations. In addition, regional services were funded locally through public libraries and scientific collections in universities and elsewhere in education. This system was not, of course, ‘nationalised’ in the sense that it was a centralised system with unified state command of its elements: indeed, as the DSIR Report on Technical Information Services of 1951 expressly stated, even ‘a comprehensive central information service’ could never hope to meet the needs of a complex industrial economy such as Britain.40 Instead, state support was channelled through a plurality of institutions: through those directly controlled by central government (such as the NLLST and DSIR research stations); through public libraries, controlled by the local state; and through autonomous research associations and ‘voluntary’ associations such as ASLIB, supported indirectly by grant-aid. The goal, as the DSIR in 1951 expressed it, was to devolve funding to 39 40

The rise, and the significance, of ASLIB is the detailed subject of the next chapter. Ironically, at precisely this time (1952) the Soviet Union established just such a centralised system based upon VINITI, the All Union Institute of Scientific Information – a model that was replicated widely in the Communist bloc. In a later review of VINITI, Giliarevskii (1999) was to argue that inflexibility and over centralisation were crucial weaknesses.

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‘centres of live research specialising in particular fields of applied science’ (Panel on Technical Information Services of the Committee on Industrial Productivity, 1951, p. 100). Moreover, as Edgerton (1996) demonstrates for science and technology as a whole, public spending in this pluralist system was relatively generous,41 and it constituted a flexible and effective means of allocating state resources, balancing central policy imperatives and market needs. From the standpoint of political economy, we might observe in conclusion, this mid-century system effectively amounted to a quasi-nationalisation of information, a means whereby British welfare capitalism assimilated the new resource of information into its goals of a national scientific, but ultimately liberal democratic, welfare state. Just as significantly, in the emerging information sphere itself, the system enabled the development of a multiplicity of innovative institutions which, because of their relative distance from both market and state, were able to exercise high levels of professional autonomy. These institutions – information bureaux, special libraries, intelligence centres – together with their highly original networking association (ASLIB), were perhaps some of the first organisations to describe their primary purpose as the exploitation of ‘information’. For that reason, at least, the early-twentieth-century development of scientific and technical information in Britain might be justly said to embody the beginnings of a self-conscious information age.

41

Edgerton estimates that by 1964 total British government expenditure on scientific and technical research and development, of which information services were part, was £433 million. Of this, £300 million was military. The DSIR budget by then was £25 million per annum. See Edgerton (1996, p. 39).

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Chapter 3

The History and Development of ASLIB, 1924–1960 Dave Muddiman

Science, Industry and the Origins of ASLIB The recognition of the emerging importance of information by science and industry was, as Chapter 2 has demonstrated, a key determinant of the early information society in Britain. In broad terms, it had led, by the 1950s, to the construction of an infrastructure of institutions, services and systems dedicated primarily to the transfer and exploitation of this new resource. More specifically, however, some of the more particular aspects of this science/industry/information conflux merit special attention. One of these is undoubtedly the emergence, in the 1920s, of ASLIB – the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux – a voluntary association dedicated to the networking of specialist information that was probably unique, in this period at least, to Britain. By the 1960s, ASLIB had become the fulcrum of specialist information provision in Britain, linking a network of nearly 3000 members and establishing itself as a focal point for innovation, professional development and information research. This chapter1 hence examines its rise and expansion, analysing both its institutional and professional importance as well as its significance for the development of information provision in Britain in the early twentieth century as a whole. ASLIB, the chapter argues, in many respects came to typify the informational pluralism of Britain in this period: its position between the market and the state reflecting, for a while at least, the goals of a society seeking to reconcile scientific efficiency and liberal democracy. The beginnings of ASLIB can be traced to the end of World War I, and its origins are undoubtedly rooted in the science and efficiency movement described in Chapter 2 of this book. Its founders were essentially important men of science and industry who had become convinced of the value of information. The best 1

As well as published sources, the chapter is predominantly based on two collections of unpublished documents: Aslib’s own records, held at Aslib Headquarters, London (‘Aslib Archives’); and the papers of Edith Ditmas, held at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (‘Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth’). The papers of H.G. Wells, held at the Archives Department, University of Illinois, Urbana– Champaign, are also cited in two references (‘Wells Papers’).

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known of them, R.S. Hutton, was an eminent chemist and metallurgist, with connections to the science lobby and the British Science Guild – his father-in-law was Arthur Schuster, Secretary of the Royal Society between 1914 and 1920 and a leading advocate of international co-operation in science. Hutton had studied chemistry in Germany, taught at Manchester University between 1900 and 1908, and more latterly run the family business, the Sheffield Flatware Company, between 1908 and 1920, at which time he became director of the newly formed DSIR Research Association for Non-Ferrous Metals (BNFMRA) in Birmingham. Significantly, Hutton was also a committed advocate of the importance of information and library services: as early as 1907 he had headed a campaign for the creation of a scientific and technical section in Manchester Public Library (Hutton, 1964, p. 150). More latterly at BNFMRA he set about establishing a centre for information in the non-ferrous metals industry, appointing A.F. Ridley as the association librarian. Very quickly, Hutton recalls, he and Ridley became aware of the need to co-ordinate their information resources with other organisations and they ‘realised that others in different fields of science and technology might be up against similar problems’ (Hutton, 1964, p. 162). In 1922, Hutton became a close colleague of J.G. Pearce, who, like himself was appointed to head up a newly formed DSIR Research Association based in Birmingham, this time in the field of cast-iron. Pearce was an engineer who had worked for the Metropolitan Vickers Company in Manchester; from 1915 he had been in charge of the company’s research and intelligence section and had become convinced of the value and indispensability of what he saw as a new commodity information. Between 1917 and 1922, in a series of far sighted addresses to conferences and meetings, Pearce campaigned for the widespread adoption throughout industry of information bureaux. At the 1918 Faraday Society meeting on the Co-ordination of Scientific Information (see Chapter 2) he took these proposals further by advocating the creation of a number of agencies to link such bureaux, including one which would index and abstract scientific and technical information (Faraday Society, 1919, pp. 122–3). Pearce refined these ideas further in a paper entitled ‘The future of documentation’ (Pearce, 1918), in which he advocated a ‘central body’ for the co-ordination of information bureaux, and he promoted his proposals further in addresses to a conference of DSIR Research Associations (1919); the Library Association Conference (1921) and the American Special Libraries Association Conference (1923) (Pearce, 1921; 1925; Johns, 1968, pp. 59–62). This body, of course, eventually materialized as the embryonic ASLIB. When Hutton and Pearce came together in Birmingham, Pearce appears to have suggested to Hutton and Ridley that they organise a conference to which delegates from British special libraries and information/intelligence bureaux be invited, with a view to exploring the creation of an association of some kind.2 The result was

2

Sadly, the question of original conception of the first ASLIB conference seems to have become, in their old age, a matter of dispute been Hutton and Pearce. See Hutton (1967); Pearce (1967). In the end, the weight of contemporary evidence suggests that Pearce provided the ideas; Hutton provided the connections to industry and the science lobby, and Ridley – Hutton’s librarian at BNFMRA – the organising effort. As Pearce (1967) points out, in his introductory address to the first conference, Hutton himself explained

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what was to later become known as the first conference of ASLIB (at the time it was simply called ‘Information Bureaux and Special Libraries’), held at Hoddesdon, Herts., in September 1924. The conference was ‘open to all men and women who need to utilise information systematically, or who are interested in the conduct of information bureaux, intelligence services and special libraries’.3 In the event, 84 delegates attended and participated in sessions devoted to types of special library and information bureaux; corporate information strategy; information retrieval and bibliography; education and training; and the technical press (Information Bureaux and Special Libraries, 1925, pp. 4–6). More significant, however, were the decisions of the delegates. They appointed a standing committee of 16 members with a wide range of commercial, scientific and technical expertise and influence, such as Richard Gregory, editor of Nature and chairman of the British Science Guild, H. Vincent Garrett, librarian of Rowntree of York, and William Barbour, of Nobel Explosives. The committee was chaired by Pearce, with Ridley as Honorary Secretary and Hutton as effective Deputy Chairman (Information Bureaux and Special Libraries, 1925, p. 66). They resolved that within ‘two or three years’ an organisation could be evolved which would promote the ‘fullest co–operation and assistance’ among special libraries and information bureaux; and the committee was empowered to discuss matters with the Library Association (LA) with a view to securing ‘desirable co–operation’ (p. 102). The committee proved to be highly motivated and effective. It speedily secured a two year grant of £750 per annum from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust,4 and this allowed it to appoint a permanent organising secretary (G.W. Keeling) who secured office accommodation at the Textile Institute in London (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1926, p. 124). A second annual conference was organised, and held in September 1925 at Balliol College, Oxford, with a much expanded programme, 211 delegates and an international cast of speakers (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1926, pp. iii–xiv). By this time, the committee had formulated the name of the association (at a meeting on 21 May 1925), and it was immersed in discussions with the Library Association about closer collaboration and possible affiliation. In the event these discussions floundered in early 1926 (for reasons explored below), and this cleared the way for ASLIB to formally constitute itself as an independent voluntary association. On 29 March 1926, at a special meeting in London, delegates approved a ‘Memorandum of Association’ and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux was born.5

3

4

5

that ‘the conception of this conference is, I believe, due to my friend, Mr J.G. Pearce ...’ (Information Bureaux and Special Libraries, 1925, p. 9). See the programme for a ‘Conference on Bureaux of Information and Special Libraries’ (5–8 September 1924), Aslib Archives, Box 51. See ‘Memorandum submitted by the Standing Committee to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees’ (c. 1924), Aslib Archives, Box 51. ‘Memorandum of Association of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux’ (1926), Aslib Archives, Box 51. Hutton (1945, p. 9), however, points out that ‘ASLIB was only formally incorporated on 30th November 1927’.

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A National Clearing-House for Information: ASLIB and its Network, 1924–456 From the beginning co-ordination, or what might now be called networking, was fundamental to ASLIB’s mission. The new association’s objectives were formulated by its first standing committee as follows: ‘THE OBJECTS OF THE ASSOCIATION ARE: To examine, foster and coordinate the activities of special libraries, information bureaux and similar services; to act as a clearing house for these services; to develop the usefulness and efficiency of special libraries and information bureaux under whatever titles they may function; and generally to promote, whether by conferences, meetings or other means, the wider dissemination and systematic use of published information. The Association aims at assisting members who desire information of any kind to get in touch with the appropriate library or other body specialising on the subject; it does not itself attempt to build up any centralised organisation to provide the detailed information direct’.7

For Pearce, elected in 1926 as the first chairman of the organisation, the primary purpose of ASLIB was to act as a ‘clearing house for specialised information; a common ground whereon all those interested in the collection and dissemination of specialised information could meet… and pool their experience’. It was emphatically not intended, Pearce argued, to create ‘a vast central repository of information’ along the lines of Otlet’s Mundaneum. Instead, it was to be ‘something in the nature of a telephone service, with ASLIB as the central exchange’. In this way, Pearce argued, in a surprisingly (post) modern turn-ofphrase, that ASLIB would help unlock the ‘intellectual capital of Britain’. By linking up millions of ‘scattered morsels of specialized information’, it would result in a ‘tremendous advance in knowledge itself’. The goal of ASLIB was thus to be the promotion of a ‘free trade in non-confidential information’ and it aimed to put in place the ‘machinery to make exchange effective’ (Pearce, 1927, pp. 17–20). In the 1920s and 1930s, then, the success of ASLIB largely depended on its ability to position itself as a networking organisation which delivered tangible benefits to British science, commerce and industry. Initially, it began promisingly, developing a series of fairly high profile functions and services which were generally well received. It moved to permanent premises, initially a small office in Bloomsbury Square and in 1928 larger premises in Bedford Square, from where its staff began to operate a modest ‘enquiry bureau’ – in effect a telephone referral 6

7

Parts of this and the following section of this chapter were originally published in Muddiman, D. (2005) ‘A new history of ASLIB, 1924-50’, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 61 No.4 pp. 402-428. My thanks to Emerald Group Publishing Limited for permission to reproduce them here. This statement of objectives first appeared on the title page of ASLIB’s 1927 conference and it was used in much subsequent publicity in the 1920s and 1930s. See Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1927, p. v).

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service for sources of specialist information (Nathan, 1930, pp. 4–5). It secured a further £2000 from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust to fund the compilation of the first ASLIB Directory, and G.F. Barwick, a former Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, was in 1926 appointed editor. In 1928, the directory (subtitled, A Guide to Sources of Specialised Information in Great Britain and Ireland) was published by Oxford University Press (Barwick, 1928). It was of a high professional standard, and over 2200 copies were sold or distributed in the first 18 months after publication (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1929, p. 19). In 1929, under its new permanent secretary, S.S. Bullock (1928–1933), the association could afford to appoint two new office staff and launch a quarterly magazine, ASLIB Information, a current awareness news sheet circulated to all members. In addition, it established a register of specialist translators in response to a growing demand for the translation of technical and commercial documents (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1931, pp. 14–16). In the meantime, ASLIB’s annual conferences had become an important feature of the UK information scene, attracting regularly 200 or more delegates each September from the UK and abroad. Already, in the 1920s, the conferences were managing to successfully balance practical matters of ‘technique, organisation and equipment’, relating to the ‘daily professional life’ of information officers and special librarians, with weightier theoretical accounts of developments in indexing, bibliography, international co-operation and information and library policy (Hutton, 1945, pp. 10–12). As a result, they appealed to an impressive cross section of the British information community of the time, and their proceedings were from the beginning professionally published and widely circulated. Organisationally and financially, ASLIB gradually moved towards selfsufficiency. It constituted itself primarily on the basis of institutional, rather than individual membership, and, in the main, its corporate members were drawn from scientific, industrial and commercial organisations which had established an information bureau, research department or specialised library.8 In 1927, ASLIB was able to include 220 corporate members in its first published list, the figure rising to 400 by 1932. Of the original 220 members listed in 1927, 53 were business and industrial enterprises from the private sector; 50 were scientific and technical associations, and 18 were research associations or stations sponsored by the DSIR. 17 public library authorities and 18 institutions of higher education were also in membership in 1927 and these were predominantly those with specialist scientific, technical and commercial interests or sections. Significantly, ASLIB’s executive council also was from the outset dominated by specialists in scientific and technical matters: only two of the original 18 council members hailed from a non-technical background. In the 1930s, the council did diversify its membership to include humanities scholars such as Theodore Besterman, and social scientists 8

Throughout this period numbers of individual members remained under 100. In 1927 the number was 54 (compared with 220 corporate members); by 1945 the figure was 70 (compared with 450 corporate members). Analysis of membership figures in this section is based on the following sources: ‘Members and associate members to May 17th 1927’ (1927), Aslib Archives, Box 51; ‘Growth of ASLIB membership 1925–45’, in Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1945, p. 16).

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such as B.M. Headicar of the London School of Economics.9 However, by 1949 the overall balance of membership largely remained the same, even though the total had risen to an impressive 1043 organisations. In that year, approximately 550 (53%) of corporate members were drawn from commerce, industry, science and technology. 84 public library services and 30 colleges and universities had also signed up by then; the remaining members comprising a miscellaneous range of military, governmental, international, welfare and media organisations (Aslib, 1949). Meanwhile, in the 1930s, development was uneven and at times problematic. In part because of the economic depression, expansion was temporarily halted and Pearce’s vision of a national intelligence service began to seem remote. Membership dropped from a high point of 400 in 1932 to a low of 280 in 1934 and income with it; even by 1939 numbers had recovered to 340 organisations only (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1945, p. 16). The Carnegie grant had ceased in 1930. Attracting new members proved difficult – in hard times it was rare to find heads of industrial and commercial concerns who understood the nature of information and its problems (Ditmas, 1961, p. 269). There had to be retrenchments: a move to smaller premises in Russell Square in 1931; cuts in office staff. Edith Ditmas, who succeeded S.S. Bullock as general secretary in 1933, claimed that she had been favoured at appointment because ‘a smaller salary could be offered than would [have been] necessary to secure the services of a man’ (Ditmas, 1961, p. 269). Indeed, Ditmas consistently remarked on the ‘paradox’ of ASLIB in this period, contrasting its position at ‘the centre of a spider’s web of contacts, each with a vast range of sources of information’ with the reality of ‘an organisation whose only visible assets were one small room on the top floor of a Bloomsbury house’ (p. 270). In an unpublished short story of this period – Fantasia – penned by her, the central character imagines that ‘London had become the central exchange for scientific knowledge in all the world’ and that she worked in the ‘nerve centre’ of all knowledge, which ‘recorded and indexed all new information’. The story ends when the character wakes in a ‘familiar shabby office, with its overflowing piles of correspondence and its inadequate files’.10 In spite of this pessimism, ASLIB’s survival in the thirties undoubtedly owed much to the energy and organisational skills of Edith Ditmas. In professional terms, although Ditmas knew little of documentation or information work (she had graduated from Oxford with a degree in English and subsequently, after a range of teaching posts, focused her interests on careers for women through work for the Student Careers Association), she quickly learned to hold her own. By mid-career 9

The two non-technical members in 1924 were Percy Cohen, of the Unionist Party Central Office, and W.H. Dawson, of the Universities Bureau of the British Empire. See Information Bureaux and Special Libraries (1925, p. 3). By 1938, the Council of 26 members was a little more diverse, including, as well as Headicar and Besterman, two public librarians, Luxmore Newcombe of the National Central Library, Miss D. Hughes of the Journal of Careers, and Alexander Farquharson of the Institute of Sociology. See Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1938, p. 4).

10

See Edith Ditmas, Fantasia [Unpublished MS.] (c. 1935), Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, A1981/40, Box 6.

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she had become an expert professional in the field, able to organise international conferences, participate in lecture programmes and write discursive papers.11 It was in terms of personal commitment, however, that Ditmas turned out to be a ‘tower of strength’ for ASLIB in this period, as well as a ‘lady very determined and outspoken’.12 She combined ‘drive’ with ‘capacity for interpretation, planning and performance. Her manner was decisive but friendly and she secured co-operation in the new field by good humour, patient unpatronising encouragement, obvious lack of self interest and unfailing courtesy’ (Kimber, 1986, p. 218). These qualities undoubtedly galvanised ASLIB. Despite retrenchment, Ditmas developed the enquiry service considerably and the annual enquiries recorded rose to over 700 by the late 1930s.13 From 1935, ASLIB added a quarterly Book List to its range of regular publications, a current awareness listing of important recent scientific and technical books. It also began to produce a series of important reference publications such as the Classified List of Annuals and Year Books (1937) and the Select List of Standard British Scientific and Technical Books (1937) (Hutton, 1945, p. 13). As well as this, Edith Ditmas served as Honorary Secretary of the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) and continued to successfully promote and organise ASLIB’s conferences, culminating in a joint conference with the Federation International de Documentation (FID), held at Oxford in September 1938. It was not until World War II, however, that it can be said that ASLIB’s future was secured. Initially, the war opened badly for the association; membership dipped below 300; there was a financial crisis, and for much of 1940 Edith Ditmas tended the London office alone, even supporting the association for a short time out of her own funds (Ditmas, 1961, p. 270; Kimber, 1986, p. 220). Gradually, however, the war began to highlight serious problems with access to scientific, industrial and military information, and the need for an organisation like ASLIB which could co–ordinate remedial action became clear. The flow of German and other overseas scientific and technical periodicals and reports to Britain all but ceased; European channels of communication were destroyed, and documentation flows were heavily disrupted by factors as diverse as shortages of paper and conscription of personnel. In mid-1941, the Royal Society and the Rockefeller Foundation funded ASLIB to launch an urgent investigation into ways of surmounting these problems. Eventually the ASLIB survey led, in December 1941, to the establishment of a microfilm/reprography service based at the Science Museum Library, London, which was managed by ASLIB under the direction of 11

12 13

See, for example Ditmas (1948a). Edith Ditmas also edited the Journal of Documentation between 1947 and 1962. Recollections of Brian Vickery, personal communication (19 August 2003). The service even attracted interest from the national press _ the Daily Mirror, in 1933, dubbed Edith Ditmas the ‘Woman Oracle of Russell Square’ _ and for a short while ASLIB was misconceived as a general national telephone enquiry service. See ‘Photographs and press cuttings’, Vol. 3 (c. 1970s), Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, A1982/67, Box 7. The enquiry service figures are given in Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1938, p. 19).

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Lucia Moholy.14 Supported by both the British and United States government, the service procured, reproduced and distributed German and other difficult to obtain information to Allied industry, scientific researchers and the military. In the main, the service was a tremendous success, and although its activities were kept secret at the time, it underpinned a revival in the fortunes and the visibility of ASLIB as a whole. In 1941 the association began producing a series of War Time Guides to Specialized Sources of Information in fields such as fuel, agriculture and electrical engineering, all of which quickly outsold their print runs. In 1942, ASLIB annual conferences, deferred since 1939, were restarted, initially as day meetings in London. Use of the enquiry service doubled to over 1500 enquiries per annum by 1945; and membership, and the financial stability that came with it, rose to 530 by that date (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1945, pp. 12–16). The advent of peace thus heralded a new organisational and financial security for ASLIB, but it also inaugurated a series of debates about the identity and future direction of the association. Some members advocated the development of ASLIB into a professional organisation, highlighting the need for the professionalisation of documentation and special library work (see below). Others, however, such as E. Lancaster-Jones (Bradford’s successor as Keeper of the Science Museum Library) and Theodore Besterman, argued for an expansion of the information service and publication functions of ASLIB, calling for its evolution into a ‘National Documentation Institute: a direct supplier of information instead of a clearing house or liaison centre’.15 A further matter of debate concerned ASLIB’s relationship with government, and proposals that it become, as Bernal and others on the political left advocated, part of a ‘fully organized state system along the lines of the library system of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR’ (Ditmas, 1948b, p. 713). As we shall see in the penultimate section of this chapter, it would be a decade or so before many of these issues were settled: only by the late 1950s was the precise configuration of British informational pluralism resolved. Conceptualising Information Work: Professional ASLIB and the Advent of Documentation, 1924–1948 Although, in the 1920s and 1930s, ASLIB commonly described itself as a ‘clearing house’ or ‘national intelligence service’, it is obvious that these labels only partially described the range of its work. Indeed, for many of its early supporters, these functions were much less important than the association’s professional activities – its training courses, its conferences, its international links. As we have seen, the founders of ASLIB had always tried to play down any suspicion that it harboured professional aspirations, insisting that it was ‘primarily an organisation 14

15

The wartime history of the ASLIB Microfilm Service is explored exhaustively in the work of Pamela Spence Richards (1988; 1994) and no attempt is made to examine it in detail here. See also the contemporary account by Lucia Moholy (Moholy, 1946). See E. Lancaster-Jones, ‘ASLIB – Documentation Institute’ (19 March 1942), Aslib Archives, Box 52; Theodore Besterman, ‘Memorandum on ASLIB reorganisation’ (c. 1942), Aslib Archives, Box 52. The quotation is from Lancaster-Jones.

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for information users’ and establishing corporate, rather than individual membership, as the norm (Hutton, 1945, p. 10). Nonetheless, inevitably because of its name, ASLIB was often understood to be an interest group for special librarians – in part because of the precedent of the American Special Libraries Association, formed in 1909, which functioned largely in that way (Williams, 1996). Indeed, special librarians did, from the very beginning, represent an important constituency within the association, even though most, as we have seen, represented their employers rather than functioned as individual members. In the first membership statistics published in 1927, 63 ‘librarians’ are identified as organisational contacts, in a listing of 220 corporate members. Moreover, ASLIB’s original standing committee of 16 members, formed in 1924, included four who described themselves as ‘librarians’, and this kind of proportion remained throughout its first 25 years. On the 1947 governing council there were nine librarians out of a total of 30 council members.16 Statistics aside, it is clear that ASLIB quickly became the main forum in Britain for the discussion of the practice of ‘special’ librarianship and information work. ASLIB’s annual conferences regularly attracted large numbers of delegates who were working librarians or information officers, and the programmes invariably contained sessions and papers which focused on the dissemination of good practice in special library work. This was true of the inaugural conference in 1924, which devoted a major block of time to ‘The special library, its functions, scope and development’; and it was still the case in 1947, when the conference concluded with a debate on the value of the special librarian entitled ‘Both sides of the librarian’s desk’ (Simons and Exley, 1947). Three regional branches – in Lancashire and Cheshire, Yorkshire, and London – were also established, following a proposal at the conference of 1930, and librarians appear to have played a particularly active part in them. Typically, these branches organised series of professional meetings, visits and discussions, and they intermittently served as a focus for the development of local co-operation between industrial, commercial, public and academic libraries (Hutton, 1945, p. 17; Lamb, 1935). The most successful of them appears to have been the Lancashire and Cheshire branch, which flourished between 1931 and 1936 under the energetic leadership of Beryl Dent, Librarian at Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester (Plant, 2004, p. 57). In 1932, the branch boasted 26 members, organised four meetings (including one addressed by Henry Tizard, President of ASLIB) and was compiling a union list of publications for special libraries in North West England (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1932, pp. 14–15). Eventually, after World War II, it was to form the basis for the ‘Northern Branch’ of the association, an amalgamation of regional groups formed in 1946 (Brightman, 1956).

16

For membership see ‘Members and associate members to May 17th 1927’, Aslib Archives, Box 51. Members of the Council are listed in annual conference reports – for members cited see Information Bureaux and Special Libraries (1925, p. 3) and Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1947, p. 2). The original four ‘librarians’ on ASLIB council were Ridley, H. Vincent Garrett, of Rowntree Ltd., E. Wyndham Hulme, of H.M. Patent Office, and Miss L. Stubbs, of Metropolitan-Vickers.

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Inevitably, ASLIB also became involved in discussions about training and vocational education for special librarianship and information work. In its early years, the association attempted to promote the study of ‘special librarianship’ in existing librarianship programmes, resolving at its 1929 conference to request that both University College London (UCL) School of Librarianship (which offered a one year librarianship course for graduates) and the Library Association (which offered part-time examinations leading to associateship and fellowship) offer options to study the topic (Ridley, 1929, p. 112). The request met with some success: Ernest Baker, Principal of the UCL School, was sympathetic to the emerging world of documentation and information work and an optional ‘special libraries course’ ran intermittently at UCL in the 1930s, although it was poorly subscribed (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1933, pp. 144–5). The Library Association too, in syllabus revisions of 1930, offered its fellowship (but not its associateship) candidates the chance to study the special library, rather than public or university library administration. However, it quickly became apparent that this was little more than ‘token recognition’ of special librarianship, as most of the remainder of the syllabus was skewed towards the public library (where the majority of Library Association members were employed), and remained that way for the next twenty years at least (Bramley, 1969, p. 40). As this suggests, ASLIB’s relationship with the library profession in general, and the Library Association in particular, became a deeply ambiguous one. On the surface, as R.S. Hutton (1945, p. 17) noted, ‘friendly relations’ were maintained, with co–operation regarding joint meetings, premises and exchange of information commonplace by the late 1930s. Some librarian activists in ASLIB, such as B.M. Headicar, of the London School of Economics, and J.P. Lamb, City Librarian of Sheffield, were especially keen to forge closer ties, and, as we have seen, librarians appear to have been especially active in the development of ASLIB’s three regional branches.17 However, the majority of ASLIB’s founder members were much more circumspect about relationships with the LA, arguing, like Hutton, that ‘ASLIB influence could best be exerted as an independent body’ (Hutton, 1945, p. 9). Their views were undoubtedly shaped to some extent by failed attempts at amalgamation between the LA and ASLIB – first in 1925, and second in 1928–30. The impetus for these came initially from the LA, which was keen to avoid the formation of what it saw as a separate ‘special libraries association’ and was undoubtedly concerned about the threat that this might present to the foundation of industrial and commercial sections in public libraries, a development which the LA was at that time keen to promote (Munford, 1976, pp. 169–70). On the first occasion, after visits to the 1925 LA conference by Arthur Ridley and a reciprocal visit by Stanley Jast to the ASLIB Conference of the same year, exploratory talks were convened. At these Jast urged ASLIB to ‘come into membership of the LA fully and wholeheartedly’, and offered to confer fellowship of the LA on special librarians or documentalists of approved status; the development of a ‘special 17

At the 1932 ASLIB conference Lamb and Headicar spoke in the same session about the usefulness of public and academic libraries to industry and commerce: see Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1932, pp. 62–9). See Chapter 2 for more on Lamb.

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libraries diploma’; and the possibility of a ‘special libraries section’ of the LA. However, he was rebuffed by Hutton and especially J.G. Pearce, who argued that the LA misunderstood the corporate nature of ASLIB; insisted that most ASLIB members ‘would not desire to become fellows of the LA, since most were not librarians in any form’; and argued that ‘no business firm would assist [ASLIB] if it were absorbed in the LA’.18 On the second occasion (1928–30), negotiations were rather more prolonged, mainly because of pressure put on the ASLIB by its financial supporter, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, which wished to see the ‘library and information services of the UK speak with one voice’.19 This time around, the LA formally drew up a proposed agreement for amalgamation (substantially along the lines that it had negotiated with the Association of Assistant Librarians earlier in the 1920s), which would have given ASLIB a good degree of autonomy, albeit within the LA as parent organisation. This was discussed at length by ASLIB Council in 1930. However in spite of some evident practical and financial advantages of amalgamation, the council decided that it did not wish to give up its separate articles of association. More generally, it accepted the advice of its General Secretary, S.S. Bullock, that ‘libraries and librarians are everything to the LA; to ASLIB they are incidental to its main interest in the organisation of information’.20 On July 24th 1930, it discontinued negotiations and resolved to pursue its own identity. Such a path led naturally enough to links and alliances with other individuals and organisations animated by an awareness of the growing importance of information, especially in science, commerce and industry. High profile scientists and industrialists such as Magnus Mowat, of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and Frederic Nathan, of Nobel Explosives, were recruited onto the ASLIB Council. Public figures such as Richard Gregory of the British Science Guild, Henry Tizard, of the DSIR, William Beveridge, and H.G. Wells (unsuccessfully) were approached to become the association’s president in the 1930s.21 Links with the 18

19 20

21

Library Association, ‘Meeting with representatives of the Association of Special Libraries’ (6 November 1925), Aslib Archives, Box 51. Jast was City Librarian of Manchester at this time and one of the undoubted power brokers of the Library Association: he had been its Honorary Secretary between 1905–15. J.M. Mitchell to S.S. Bullock (15 July 1929), Aslib Archives, Box 51. S.S. Bullock, ‘Aslib’s Memorandum of Association and the LA Charter [Memorandum for ASLIB Council]’ (c. 1930), Aslib Archives, Box 51; Library Association, ‘Proposed agreement between the Library Association and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux’ (30 May 1930), Aslib Archives, Box 51. For its part, the Library Association view was one of ‘incomprehension and dismay’ at what it saw as a fracturing of the UK library community – ‘the (LA) Council deplored the new association’s formation… it could hardly have done more to make it unnecessary’ (Munford, 1976, p. 170). R.S. Hutton later recollected that among industrialists Sir Hugh Beaver, President in the 1920s of the Federation of British Industries; Sir Robert Hadfield, the Sheffield steel magnate; and Sir Arthur Fleming, of Metropolitan Vickers, had especially encouraged the formation of ASLIB (Hutton, 1967, p. 21). Tizard attained eminence as the organiser of British military research during World War I and subsequently as Principal Civil Servant at the DSIR and Principal Advisor to Attlee on scientific policy. He was President of ASLIB between 1930–32 and developed a longstanding interest in the

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‘science lobby’ in Britain – a movement now developing rapidly in its awareness of the ‘social relations’ of science and of the significance of scientific communication – thus assumed a continuing importance. In the late 1930s, a number of leading ASLIB members such as Herbert Coblans (later to be Director of Library and Information Services at CERN) and Brian Vickery (the future Head, in the 1960s, of ASLIB’s research department) began to be influenced in their thinking about information by J.D. Bernal’s The Social Function of Science (Coblans, 1964, p. 113; Vickery, 2004, p. 4). Bernal himself also became quite closely associated with ASLIB, giving the keynote address at its first post-war conference, and more latterly serving on the association’s council between 1958 and 1965.22 Partly because of these links with influential scientists such as Bernal, ASLIB became a significant presence at the important post war conferences – the Empire Scientific Conference (1946) and Scientific Information Conference (1948) organised by the Royal Society. It also began to participate in the growing number of committees and planning groups on information matters initiated by the UK government (usually under the umbrella of the DSIR); the Royal Society itself; and other bodies such as the Association of Scientific Workers (Muddiman, 2003, pp. 393–8). Meanwhile, ASLIB conferences themselves had become, from the late 1920s onwards, a central forum for the discussion of strategic and theoretical aspects of the emerging ‘universe’ of information. Conference themes included statistics, planning and scientific management (1927; 1934); technological advances such as microfilm and reprography (1929; 1937; 1939); and, perhaps most consistently of all, new developments in bibliography, or, as it was increasingly beginning to be termed, the science of documentation. In this latter area, ASLIB’s links with the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB), were to become especially significant. The BSIB was founded in 1927 by Alan Pollard, Professor of Optical Engineering at Imperial College, and a long time enthusiast on bibliographical matters, and Samuel Bradford, at that time Deputy Keeper at the Science Museum Library (Ditmas, 1949). It aimed to further the study of bibliographical methods in the UK and especially ‘to secure unity of bibliographical procedure and classification’ (Pollard, 1940, p. 14). Although it never seems to have attracted more than 100 members, it became important because it was recognised as the British affiliate of Paul Otlet’s International Institute of Bibliography (IIB), from 1932 the International Institute of Documentation and from 1937 the Federation International de Documentation (Rayward, 1975, pp. 299–362). Under Bradford’s impetus especially, BSIB became the main British focus of the development and implementation of the

22

improvement of information services. See Richards (1994, pp. 25–6). On the approach to Wells see Theodore Besterman to H.G. Wells (23 February 1937), Wells Papers, Archives Department, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, B.219. For a detailed analysis of Bernal’s links with ASLIB see Muddiman (2003). Bernalist ideas about scientific communication undoubtedly influenced an important minority of British documentalists and information scientists in the mid-century period. However, as we have seen earlier in this chapter, ASLIB’s establishment ultimately rejected Bernalism and its advocacy of state centralisation of scientific information, preferring instead to support pluralist models of provision which guaranteed the expansion of an independent ASLIB.

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Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), an international tool of classification and retrieval being especially developed for specialist information services under the co-ordination of the FID. In 1930, recognising their common interests, ASLIB and the BSIB established a joint standing committee under the chairmanship of Frederic Nathan, an industrial enthusiast for international bibliographical control (Nathan, 1930, pp. 6–7). The committee subsequently served as a focus for UDC development and other initiatives in classification and indexing in the 1930s. By 1947, the continuing close relationships of the two organisations, coupled with the precarious finances of the BSIB, led logically to proposals from both sides for amalgamation, a move which was unanimously approved and ratified in 1948 (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1947, p. 108). There followed a brief attempt to launch a ‘British National Committee on Documentation’, involving ASLIB, the Royal Society, the Library Association and others, but after lack of support for this committee from other organisations, ASLIB also took over as British affiliate to the FID in 1950.23 One positive consequence of these close ties with BSIB was the almost instant creation of an international profile for ASLIB. The 1920s and 1930s marked the rapid development of a European documentation movement and the evolution of Otlet’s original International Institute of Bibliography into the network which was to become the FID. Pollard especially was at the centre of these developments: IIB president between 1928 and 1931, and a tireless campaigner for the internationalisation of knowledge, he ensured that important Europeans were regular visitors at ASLIB gatherings and that news about ASLIB was disseminated abroad (Ditmas, 1949). As early as 1925, Paul Otlet himself addressed the second ASLIB conference, arguing for a ‘Bibliotheque Internationale’. At the same conference, Pollard spoke about UDC and Gilbert Murray about the League of Nations Committee on International Co–operation (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1925, p. iv). Such themes were revisited throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with visits from F. Donker Duyvis of the IIB; Jean Gerard of the Union Francais des Organismes de Documentation; G. Watson Davis, founder in 1937 of the American Documentation Institute, and Rebecca Rankin of the United States Special Libraries Association. In September 1938 this international activity culminated in a joint ASLIB/BSIB gathering in Oxford, on the occasion of the Fourteenth International Conference of the FID. Chaired by eminent scientist Sir William Bragg, the conference attracted over 400 delegates including celebrities such as Beveridge, President Elect of ASLIB that year, and H.G. Wells, who was billed to address delegates about his plan for a ‘World Brain’, but in the event failed to appear. According to Edith Ditmas, the conference, which coincided with the Munich crisis, was characterised by ‘great tension between the delegates, especially the contingent representing Nazi Germany, who walked out’.24 23

24

See the records of the British National Committee on Documentation, Aslib Archives, Box 54. See Edith Ditmas, ‘Photographs and press cuttings’, Vol. 3, Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, A1982/67, Box 7. Wells dined with Bradford and Pollard on 5 July 1938 to discuss his contribution to the conference, but he subsequently failed to attend. See S.C Bradford to H.G. Wells (30 June 1938), Wells Papers, Archives

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ASLIB was therefore, by the late 1930s, clearly linked to a new international network of organisations dedicated to the development of ‘documentation’: a conceptualisation of information which was beginning to reach beyond the library and the book. Taking their cue from Paul Otlet’s Traite du documentation (1934), documentalists were beginning to explore the notion of an all enveloping ‘universe of information’ with many types and many levels of ‘document’, all of them potentially the focus of organisation, representation, retrieval and dissemination (Rayward, 1985). Even though some in the field, such as S.C. Bradford (1948, p. 12), argued that documentation was ‘no more than one aspect of the larger art of librarianship’, others claimed that it was both broader and deeper than librarianship, and underpinned, potentially, the development of a new occupation and profession. Most of the leadership of ASLIB concurred with this broader view: Edith Ditmas, for example observed that documentation was a ‘discipline distinct from and outside librarianship’ because it applied to the ‘whole world of recorded thought’ including ‘micro units’.25 Reflecting the need, as it saw it, to establish this new discipline and praxis of information in the UK, ASLIB in 1944 appointed bibliographer and documentalist Theodore Besterman as general editor of publications and there followed, in 1945, the establishment of a new theoretical and discursive periodical – the Journal of Documentation – under Besterman’s editorship.26 In 1948, ASLIB council also decided to publish ASLIB and BSIB conference papers on a quarterly basis in journal format under the title Aslib Proceedings. The new journals were both an immediate success, and they are highly regarded and widely read some sixty years on, even though their titles derive arguably from the discourse of an earlier age. In the mid- twentieth century, their foundation confirmed the position of ASLIB at the centre of the new theoretical and professional field: documentation, or what would quickly become, in the English speaking world, ‘information science’ (Meadows, 2002, p. 171). In hindsight, their foundation arguably marks the point where, in Britain at least, the discipline and profession of documentation/information science came of age The Rise of Corporate ‘Aslib’: 1945–60 The period immediately following World War II marked a watershed in the development of specialised information provision in Britain. After the election of Attlee’s Labour government in 1945, there were substantial political and economic pressures for increased state support and direction, but these were countered by

25

26

Department, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I.47. The complete attendance lists and conference papers are recorded in International Federation for Documentation (1938). See Edith Ditmas, ‘Documentation and Librarianship [Memorandum]’ (7 September 1953), Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, A1981/40, Box 6. Besterman, an eminent humanist and bibliographer, had been a member of ASLIB council since 1931. He was well known as an expert on Voltaire and compiler of the World Bibliography of Bibliographies (first published in 1938–9), and he coordinated a number of other bibliographical projects whilst working for UNESCO after World War II. See Carter (1977) for an overview of his career.

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powerful corporate and professional resistance to centralisation, perceived bureaucracy and state control. In the information sphere, these tensions were played out in a series of meetings and conferences about the future of scientific and technical information provision: especially, of course, the Empire Scientific Conference of 1946 and the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference of 1948. ASLIB itself (and many of its leading members) was prominent at these meetings, usually advancing the case for improved co-ordination of information services and increased state funding, but favouring (in contrast to Bernal and his supporters) a decentralised network of services and an arms-length approach to state support.27 As we have seen in Chapter 2, this form of informational pluralism eventually prevailed in mid-century Britain: the Report on Technical Information Services (1951) recognizing the ‘undesirability of a comprehensive central information service’ and advocating devolved information provision through DSIR research associations and stations; specialist libraries and local co-operative schemes. As for central ‘co-ordination’ of services, the Report envisaged that this would be provided by the DSIR Headquarters Information Service and ASLIB itself (Panel on Technical Information Services of the Committee on Industrial Productivity, 1951, pp. 97–101). For ASLIB, the major consequence of these events was a period of expansion under the partial sponsorship of the state. Its wartime successes had undoubtedly impressed the British government, and in particular civil servants at the DSIR, which had by then established a technical information section in its intelligence division (Urquhart, 1990, p. 20). In 1944, ASLIB was encouraged to apply for state support as if it were a DSIR research association, and a grant was made for a five year period on a pound-for-pound basis linked to membership income. This grant was extended for a further five year period in 1949, and by 1953 it was worth £6000 p.a. with an additional £10,000 capital for premises.28 Its effects were considerable, inaugurating a period of ‘rapid growth, in membership, in responsibility, and the scope of ASLIB’s activities’ (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1947, p. 108). In 1945, as we have already noted, the Journal of Documentation was launched. By 1947, the ASLIB enquiry service could record that it handled some 2875 telephone enquiries per annum (Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, 1947, p. 109). In the same year, Edith Ditmas was designated ‘director’ and a management structure involving a policy committee, a publications committee, and an education and conferences committee was established. The association moved to larger offices in Palace Gate, London W8 and, by 1949, it was employing some sixteen people and had an increasing membership of over 1000. By that year, its 25th anniversary, it could with some justice claim that it had ‘achieved recognition as the main British clearing–house for specialized information’ and it could plan the expansion of its 27

28

For example, Edith Ditmas, at the Empire Scientific Conference in 1946, called for a ‘combination of government encouragement and private initiative’ in the development of specialised information services (Ditmas, 1948b, p. 714). For details of the first grant see E. Lancaster Jones, ‘Draft of letter to DSIR’ (2 May 1944), and C.A. Spenser [DSIR] to the President of ASLIB (30 August 1944), Aslib Archives, Box 52. For the second see ‘The ASLIB Programme for the Quinquennium 1949–54’ (November 1948), Aslib Archives, Box 52.

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enquiry service, its publishing and its international activities.29 These changes were reflected in the adoption, in 1948, of a new association title – ‘Aslib’, in the lower case. Although it was originally coined to reflect the merger with BSIB, the new title (and accompanying logo) severed the explicit reference to ‘special libraries’ and came to symbolise a new, corporate ‘Aslib’ increasingly operating on modern and businesslike lines and replacing the shoestring existence of the pre-war voluntary association.30 This transformation from voluntarism was further accelerated by the resignation of Edith Ditmas, the association’s longstanding general secretary and more latterly director. In early 1950, she was replaced by Leslie Wilson, an outsider with experience in publishing and journalism. According to one contemporary, Wilson ‘saw himself as a sophisticated modernising manager, who could build up ASLIB’s general prestige’.31 During the first five years of his tenure as director, Wilson concentrated on consolidating ASLIB’s position as a national networking organisation by ‘gaining the confidence of HM government and of a demanding industrial public by ensuring that both new and existing services were run at the highest possible level of efficiency’ (L. Wilson, 1954, p. 251). Core services such as the information department were strengthened and put on a professional footing: by 1954 the enquiry service was processing over 16,000 enquiries per annum.32 Longstanding initiatives were enhanced in scope and volume: ASLIB’s panel of specialist translators, for example, by 1954 comprised 158 translators and 265 referrals were processed. New services were initiated, such as a consultancy project inaugurated in 1952, which aimed to assist organisations wishing to establish or enhance a specialised information service. After a rather shaky start, by 1954 this service was attracting seven clients per annum. 33 At the 29

30

31

32

33

See ‘The ASLIB Programme for the Quinquennium, 1949–54’ (November 1948), p. (c), Aslib Archives, Box 52. Although the lower case form ‘Aslib’ had been used informally since the 1930s, its official adoption as the association’s title dates from 1 January 1948 and the merger with the BSIB. The new title is enshrined in the ‘Principles of amalgamation’ between ASLIB and the BSIB approved by ASLIB members at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 18 April 1947. Article 3 states that: ‘The name of the new organisation shall be registered as “Aslib”. This term should be a code word, and should not be considered in any way to comprise the initials of any Society or Association. The letter-heading of the new organisation shall be suitably arranged to include reference to both present organisations.’ See Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (1947, pp. 111–12) for the full text of the ‘Principles of amalgamation’. Recollections of Brian Vickery, personal communication (19 August 2003). At the time of his appointment, Wilson was foreign editor of the Times Educational Supplement: see Aslib (1951, p. 146). The 1954/5 statistics cited in this paragraph are taken from The Work of Aslib, 1954 (Aslib, 1955). Initially ASLIB appointed a full–time consultant for a year with extra grant support from the DSIR, but the project never really grew as had been hoped. At the end of one year the decision was made to continue the service, but without a ‘specialist’ consultant, distributing consultancy projects around ASLIB’s general staff. Usage of the service appears to have continued at the 1954 level throughout the decade. See Aslib Executive and Finance Committee, ‘Aslib Consultant Service’ (12 December 1952), Aslib Archives, Box 52.

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end of that year, Wilson could reflect on solid organisational expansion in a less than ideal financial, economic and political climate, arguing that that ‘members were now getting from ASLIB the sort of services they expected and were willing to pay a reasonable subscription to get it’ (L. Wilson, 1954, p. 252).34 Even though, in 1954, the terms of ASLIB’s grant aid from government became less favourable, grant shortfalls were more than allayed by increased revenue from membership (approaching 1800 by the end of that year) and increases in subscriptions, which seem to have been accepted with little negative effect. In addition, income expanded from consultancy, training and the sale of publications. By 1955, Wilson was projecting a total income of over £35,000 per annum, enough to support an increasingly complex organisation with a total staff of 27. All was not plain sailing, however. In spite (or perhaps because) of expansion, the longstanding debates about ASLIB’s purpose and identity (see pp. 86-7) finally erupted in the post-war years. Fundamentally, the debate was rooted in the contradictions inherent in ASLIB’s dual ‘professional’ and ‘corporate’ role, and fuelled by uncertainties latent the association’s relationship to library work in general and the UK Library Association (LA) in particular. Problems first surfaced in the late 1940s with a revival of discontent among members about basic training for specialised information work, and, especially, the seeming inability of the LA to cater for this growing field in its qualification schemes and syllabi.35 In 1948, a motion was put to annual conference suggesting that ASLIB independently sponsor a postgraduate qualification in information work, but this was only inconclusively carried (by 68 votes to 65) and little decisive action followed. Matters came to a head again in 1954, when, frustrated by what they saw as fruitless committee work and negotiations with the LA, a cabal of scientific and industrial information officers led by Jason Farradane proposed to ASLIB council that a separate but affiliated ‘Information Scientists’ Institute’ be formed to sponsor educational courses and to act as a professional body for individual information workers.36 For a time, this group was persuaded by Leslie Wilson and others on the association’s council to put the proposals on hold, whilst attempts were made to achieve the group’s aims within ASLIB and avert what Wilson himself saw as the ‘fragmentation’ of the information field.37 However, in 1957, the patience of the ‘rebels’ gave way. Council proposals at annual conference for an educational syllabus approved by ASLIB and an association register of successful students were defeated by what Farradane later described as ‘organised opposition … from librarians who were members of ASLIB’ (Farradane, 1970, p. 144). In January 1958, the inaugural meeting of an embryonic ‘Institute of Information Scientists’ 34

35

36

37

The Conservative administration elected in 1951 had imposed spending constraints on the DSIR and from 1954 ASLIB’s ‘pound for pound’ grant aid support was scaled back to 63% of subscription income. See Aslib (1955, p. 2). See Chapter 6 of this book ‘Education for the early information professions’, by Helen Plant, for a detailed account of these educational developments and for detailed listing of archival sources. As well as Farradane himself, the members of the group included Agard-Evans; Hanson; Liebesny; and Gordon Foster. See Farradane (1970, p. 145). See Aslib Education Policy Committee, ‘Information Scientists’ Institute’ (October 1954), Aslib Archives, folder 6/4/4 IV.

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(IIS) was held, and its constitution was approved in May of that year (p. 145). By 1961 the Institute was sponsoring (ironically with the support of ASLIB) a new course entitled ‘Collecting and Communicating Scientific Knowledge’, at Northampton College (now City University), London, and most of its founding group were teaching on the programme (p. 148). By 1970, similar courses in ‘information science’ had been adopted at three other British higher education institutions and IIS membership stood at 750 (p. 146). Although the educational issue was effectively the casus belli of the above events, it had much wider ramifications for mid-century ASLIB and for the emerging information professions in Britain. Underlying the debates were basically three visions of the future direction of the association. Radical advocates of a ‘new’ information profession, such as Farradane and Chris Hanson, envisaged ASLIB’s transformation into a fully fledged professional body representing what they saw as the burgeoning field of documentation and information science.. At the opposite extreme, librarian members of ASLIB, like J.P. Lamb and Douglas Foskett, together with some industrialists and administrators, argued that its corporate and networking functions were paramount and that ‘information work’ was essentially a modern form of librarianship. For them, a reformed Library Association represented the best way of accrediting and organising individual information professionals.38 Between these factions Wilson, and most other members of ASLIB’s council in the 1950s, argued that both these scenarios represented ‘fragmentation’ of the information field, and they hoped to develop ASLIB into a multifunctional organisation which would reflect both corporate and national perspectives as well as those of individual members.39 In the end, conflicting interests, crystallised in the events of 1958, made this inclusive vision impossible to maintain. Although the formation of the IIS was not a ‘split’ in the conventional sense (many IIS members represented their parent organisation at ASLIB, and most of ASLIB’s establishment became IIS members)40 it undoubtedly affected the strategic direction of the association and in the long term it arguably weakened it, as Wilson had warned. From 1958 on, ASLIB would of necessity prioritise its services to corporate members and its links with government; whereas the professional education and affiliation of individual information workers became something of a turf-war between the Library Association and the IIS.41 38

39

40

41

Interestingly both of these factions decamped to Washington DC in the autumn of 1958 to give their side of the story. At the International Conference on Scientific Information, 16–21 November 1958 Agard-Evans and Farradane gave a paper on ‘Training the scientific information officer’, and Bernard Palmer, the UK Library Association’s education officer, and Foskett responded with ‘Training for scientific information work in Great Britain’. See Agard-Evans and Farradane (1958) and Palmer and Foskett (1958). See Aslib Education Policy Committee, ‘Information Scientists’ Institute’ (October 1954), Aslib Archives, folder 6/4/4 IV. For example, Chris Hanson, one of the founders of the IIS and in 1958 its first vicepresident and chairman of council became in 1959 head of ASLIB’s research department. The Library Association formed a ‘Reference, Special and Information Section’ in 1949 and a ‘Special Libraries Committee’ in 1961, although, according to Munford (1976, p. 288), neither were particularly well supported compared with the IIS. Such turf-wars

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In the short-term, however, these educational and professional debates appear to have had little deleterious effect upon ASLIB. The IIS provided an outlet for frustrated individual educational and professional ambitions and its initial activities mainly complemented the work of its ‘parent’ association. Indeed, between 1955 and 1960, ASLIB’s expansion continued unabated: in the five year period 1955–60, membership rose to 2500 (including 500 overseas members); new headquarters were purchased in May 1958 with a grant of £60,000 from central government; and by 1960 around 40 staff typically processed a workload of 30,000 enquiries per annum (L. Wilson, 1963). Moreover, Wilson and ASLIB council embarked on a deliberate strategy of developing the association as a centre of excellence, research and knowledge exchange in documentation and information science, over and beyond the core services which had been the focus of the previous five years. The scope and number of short training courses were increased, and in 1960 a full-time education officer was appointed (L. Wilson, 1963, p. 423). Specialised interest group activity in the association was encouraged, and between 1951 and 1960 no less than nine subject groups were formed based on industrial sectors, with the intention of fostering co–operation between information officers working in particular fields.42 Perhaps most importantly, Wilson steered ASLIB in the direction of information research, an area which as early as 1954 he had argued to represent ‘a vast and exciting field of activity’ which could provide a future rationale for the association (L. Wilson, 1954, p. 253). In 1957, the association appointed a research committee, recruiting luminaries such as J.D. Bernal to advise on strategy; and in that year it oversaw its first research project – the so-called ‘Cranfield’ research into the relative efficiency of indexing systems, directed by Cyril Cleverdon and sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. The success of this project persuaded the association, in 1958, to establish a permanent research department, and in early 1959 it appointed C.W. Hanson, of the British Scientific Instruments Association, to be its director. By 1960, the department was managing no less than six research projects, including an extension of Cleverdon’s research, and complementing this activity through the vigorous promotion of its journals – Aslib Proceedings and Journal of Documentation having by then attained world leading status – and a growing publications programme. During the subsequent decade ASLIB would become the most important centre for research in documentation and information science in Britain, and arguably one of the most important in the world (P. Taylor, 1978). In Retrospect: ASLIB and the Early Information Society By 1960, it could hence not only be said that ASLIB was a permanent feature of the emerging information landscape in Britain, but that it provided a unique focus in the early information society for the worldwide exchange and production of

42

were, of course only ultimately resolved by the merger of the LA and IIS in 2001 to form the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). Groups formed were: Aeronautical; Chemical; Economics; Electronics; Engineering; Film Production; Food and Agriculture; Fuel and Power; Furniture; Textile. See Wilson (1960, p. 265).

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professional knowledge. Leslie Wilson argued that its success might ‘reasonably be regarded both as an acknowledgement of the part to be played in the nation’s life by special library and information services, and as a sign of confidence in ASLIB’s capacity to assist that development’ (L. Wilson, 1963, p. 422). Although its material expansion would peak in the mid-1960s, ASLIB would go on to play a pivotal role in the specialised information networks developed within British industry, commerce and the public sector – the mid-century corporate state – until at least 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, and coincidentally Leslie Wilson retired (L. Wilson, 1976). Thereafter, arguably, the computer revolution, marketisation and globalisation would reverse the conditions which led to its rise and herald gradual decline, culminating in the ‘privatisation’ of the association in the new millennium (CILIP, 2005). Paradoxically in the contemporary ‘information’ society, ASLIB’s unique position as a ‘national clearing house for information’ would be tenable no more, and the ‘Aslib’ brand would be forced to compete in the information business like many others – a casualty, perhaps of technological and ideological change. An account of this later ‘ Aslib’ is, of course, beyond the scope of this book. In the early information society of pre-1960s Britain, however, we can conclude that there are essentially two narratives of ASLIB: the professional and the institutional. In its emergence as a quasi-professional organisation, and especially because of its refusal to countenance absorption into the Library Association, it is possible to view ASLIB as one of a series of ‘splintered movements’ which characterised the fragmentation of the information professions in the early-twentieth-century. Such movements, like the formation of the Special Libraries Association and the American Documentation Institute in the USA, resulted typically from ‘the inability and reluctance of the larger library profession to welcome non-traditional materials, new technologies and subject based personnel and approaches to the field’ (Williams, 1996, p. 173). However, in ASLIB’s case, such a view must be qualified by the observation it was a reluctant professional association indeed. In this period its most important ‘professional’ function was to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge about specialist information work: a function reflected in the importance assumed by its conferences and more latterly its journals and research department. Beyond this, however, it conspicuously refrained from attempts to regulate the occupational practice of either special librarianship or ‘information’ work. Its members were predominantly employers rather than employees, and this ensured that in the end it adopted a management, rather than a strictly professional, perspective (L. Wilson, 1976, p. 19). Although it provided short training courses and attempted from time to time to influence educational curricula, it never sought authority to accredit courses, to award qualifications, or to license practitioners in the field. Consequently, unlike the UK Library Association, it exercised only ‘normative’ (in the sense of disseminating desirable norms of practice) rather than ‘structural’ authority in the field: it did not, in the final analysis, control or guarantee methods or standards of specialist information work, and it did not attempt to control access to this emerging labour market (Winter, 1988, pp. 58–62). There were, of course, periodic calls, such as those in 1948 and 1957, for ASLIB to take the lead in the regulation of the field, but, as we have seen, these calls were not heeded because there was no clear majority in the association for its transformation into a conventional professional body. This (lack

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of) strategy left something of a professional vacuum in the emerging area of special librarianship and information work in the UK, at least as far as the individual practitioner concerned to validate and enhance his/her occupational status was concerned. Gradually the situation led to the recruitment of special librarians by the Library Association in the 1950s and 1960s and, perhaps more importantly, to the formation of a separate professional body for information officers – the Institute of Information Scientists – in 1958. In the final analysis, then, it would be a mistake to think of ASLIB, as some contemporaries understandably did, primarily as an emergent professional association which sought to challenge the Library Association for control of an emerging information profession. Rather, as this chapter has suggested, the real impetus for ASLIB came less from any professional ‘split’ than from UK corporate, government and scientific interests. By the 1920s, it is clear that a number of far sighted members of this industrial and commercial establishment, and especially the British ‘science lobby’, had become convinced of the need to coordinate and exploit the explosion of specialised information which accompanied the second industrial revolution. Worldwide, librarians, documentalists and ‘intelligence’ officers were responding to this challenge through the creation of a variety of institutions ranging from, at one extreme, Otlet’s centralised Mundaneum (Rayward, 1975) to, at another, the proliferation of industrial, commercial and special libraries, and networking ‘associations’, in the United States (Johns, 1968, pp. 65–84). In the ‘liberal industrial state’ that was Britain in the 1920s, as Chapter 2 has demonstrated, the mode of institutionalisation lay somewhere between these two poles (Alter, 1987, p. 246). It was characterised by the development of both publicly and privately funded library and information services and specialist units in industry and commerce; ASLIB, as we have seen, was devised by its founders as a means of facilitating this pluralist system. J.G. Pearce, in 1926, hence conceptualised ASLIB as a decentralized ‘national intelligence service’, with the goal of linking and co-ordinating the proliferating number of specialist services. Even though, in the early years, this function sometimes amounted to being little more than a ‘clearing-house’ for dysfunctions and bottlenecks, ASLIB’s value as a networking organisation came to be gradually recognized – especially after its successful work disseminating enemy information during World War II. By 1960 – through its enquiry service, its current awareness publications, its conferences, its reprographic services and latterly its research and consultancy initiatives – ASLIB had clearly demonstrated its indispensability as a co-ordinating agency for specialist information in Britain. Throughout this time, the association developed and maintained its independence despite the various sectional, governmental and professional interests which sought to influence it. By the end of the period considered here, it had evolved an ‘arms-length’ relationship with government along lines which were to become increasingly common in the British welfare state of the mid-twentieth century. In its early years, ASLIB was supported only rhetorically and intermittently by government: in the 1920s it would have collapsed had it not been for the support of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. However, as state support for science and industry became the policy norm in Britain, ASLIB was rewarded, from 1944 onwards, with continuing sponsorship from the DSIR (from 1964 onwards, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information of the Department of

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Education and Science) on the basis of grant-aid which matched its membership income. This arrangement, which continued until the 1970s, guaranteed stability and continuity, but it also allowed the association freedom to innovate and expand without the bureaucratic and structural constraints of direct state control. In the 1950s and 1960s, ASLIB consequently became an established part of a network of government information provision in Britain, a set of arrangements which, although less rigorously planned than, say, the centralised system of scientific and technical information services being developed in the USSR, nevertheless provided arguably more flexible informational support for British science, commerce and industry. The association was subsequently able to expand its links with commerce and industry (membership stood at 2830 organisations by 1965) through an information consultancy service, enhanced short course and training programmes and a proliferating range of publications (L. Wilson, 1968). In addition, as a result of the growing importance of its research department in the 1960s and the sharpening academic focus of its journals, ASLIB would cement its international reputation as a centre for the development of the new discipline(s) of documentation and information science. More latterly, from the 1980s onwards, ASLIB would be forced, in part because of the decline of the corporate state that sustained it, to transform itself into a commercially focused ‘Association for Information Management’ offering information consultancy, training and publishing services to the international business world. For some, this process, involving the closure of its research division, the gradual sale of professional journal titles and the lowering of ASLIB’s professional profile, represented decline – culminating in 2004 in the ‘privatisation’ of its assets, a dramatic decline in membership, and the end of the association’s voluntary status.43 For others, it marked an inevitable response to the realities of global informational capitalism, an opportunity to expand the Aslib brand worldwide, and new opportunities for the co-ordination of specialist information provision (Bowes, 1999). Seventy-five years earlier, however, in what we have called the early information society in Britain, ASLIB’s founders could perhaps claim to be innovators who actively shaped, rather than passively responded to, historical change. With the benefit of hindsight, we can conclude that they successfully began to build an ‘informational’ paradigm in early-twentieth-century Britain: the economic, social and technical significance of information began to be recognised; capital began to restructure in informational terms, and the concept of ‘information’ became, for the first time, part of the common vocabulary and currency of modern life. The early ASLIB, perhaps more clearly than any other organisation, not only reflected but positively engendered these trends. As a quasiprofessional body, it quickly became the most important British forum for discussion and development of new kinds of specialist information work. After humble beginnings, ASLIB also came to gradually realise the idea of a decentralised ‘national intelligence service’, with the goal of streamlining and co43

Library and Information Update reported in January 2005 that ‘membership has fallen from 1,600 three years ago to around 775, and over time staff numbers have fallen from around forty to ten’ (CILIP, 2005, p. 3).

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ordinating informational resources for science, commerce and industry. Gradually, too, ASLIB came to influence the international development of this informational turn: through its links with Europe and the FID, its union with the BSIB, its enthusiastic sponsorship of academic publishing and (more latterly) its research, the association became an international focus for the new sciences of documentation and information. In sum, what had begun in 1924 in Britain as an uncertain gathering of special librarians, intelligence officers and information users had, by 1960, evolved into a multifunctional and arguably unique organisation at the centre of an increasingly information conscious, and information intensive, world.

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PART III THE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION IN THE EARLY INFORMATION ECONOMY

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Chapter 4

A Pre-History of the Learning Organisation: Information and Knowledge Management before the Digital Age Alistair Black

The ‘Learning Organisation’ and Associated Concepts In recent decades the concept of the ‘learning organisation’ has emerged as a prominent discourse in management and business studies (Argyris and Sch_n, 1978; Marquardt and Reynolds, 1994; Senge, 1990; Stahl, 1993). The concept is closely related to, and overlaps with, other business and management concepts, such as human asset accounting, human resource management, information resource management, business process re-engineering, information management, knowledge asset management and knowledge management (Abell and Oxbrow, 2001; Albert and Bradley, 1997, pp. 66–72; Best, 1996; Earl, 1988; Hammer and Champy, 1993; Koenig, 2000; Megil, 1997; Mentzas et al, 2003; Mertins, Heisig and Vorbeck, 2003; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Special Libraries Association, 1997; Schwartz, 2006).1 Each of these discourses challenges the traditional view of labour as a cost, its value being increased as expenditure on it falls; rather, each conceptualises labour as an asset in the form of ‘human capital’, and specifically as an investment in intellectual capital. For their value to increase, an organisation’s assets have to be not only protected but also enhanced. Labour is no different in this regard. Its value can be boosted by training and by improvements in infrastructure, both of which raise productivity. The value of labour can also be increased by providing it with information, which is internalised as knowledge. In 1

Much of the literature on the learning organisation and on associated concepts like knowledge management is motivational and non-critical. The work of scholars like Day (2001), Fuller (2002), Hodgson (1999) and T. Wilson (2002) take a more detached view. Bryant (2006, p. 1) believes that: ‘The term itself ought to promote more uneasiness than it appears to do so … and should be viewed with less enthusiasm and more suspicion.’ Nunes (2006, pp. 102–3) provides evidence that enthusiasm for knowledge management is fading: knowledge management budgets and departments have been slashed; it is increasingly outsourced; there are fewer best-selling books on the subject; critiques of it have increased in number significantly; and there are far fewer chief knowledge managers in corporations since five years ago. See also, Tom Wilson’s letter to the Library Association Record, Vol. 104, No. 3 (March 2002), p. 157.

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this respect, labour’s value increases when it learns. Because organisations are essentially collections of people, when individuals learn the organisation can be said to learn also: that is to say, there is no organisational learning without individual learning (Argyris and Sch_n, 1978, p. 20). This, in a nutshell, is the ‘learning organisation’ discourse. Although knowledge and information management theory maintain separate identities, they share a number of components and concerns, including an emphasis on the importance of ‘information flows’ in organisations (knowledge management is discussed more fully in the next paragraph; information management was defined by Vickers in 1984 as the coordination of an organisation’s information handling skills, its information technology and its information sources and stores, both ‘internal’ and ‘external’). Within an organisation, ‘information flow’ refers to various formal or informal processes that circulate information. It may involve such informal processes as information obtained from telephone conversations, the distribution of memos, or internally published newsletters, magazines and bulletins (Stanat, 1990, p. 31). Information flow can also be quite sophisticated, facilitated, for example, by the existence and availability of databases and technical and administative reports. Whatever the flows of information are, like any other input or resource they are subject to standard management disciplines of planning, budgeting and control (W. Martin, 1993, p. 266). In any organisation – in our personal lives indeed – information flows have to be managed in order to achieve success and improve efficiency. This perhaps explains the enduring nature of the concept of information management.2 Despite the availability of established terms prefixed by the word ‘information’ (information management, information society, information economy etc.), in recent years the knowledge economy (or learning economy) proposition has gained credence among theorists of management and organisational change. Theories of the knowledge economy at the macro level have been reflected in the construction of concepts at the micro level of the firm and organisation. ‘Knowledge sharing’ between individuals in organisation (Jacobson, 2006) is seen to be as beneficial as free access to, and abundant flows of, knowledge in society and the economy. The term ‘knowledge management’ has emerged to underline the importance of investment in ‘intellectual capital’. It is argued that knowledge management is about ‘connecting people with people – enabling people to share and build on what they know’ (Oxborrow and Abell, 2006, p. 27). How an enterprise manages its investment in intellectual capital and the connectivity between people goes a long way, it is said, to determining its levels of efficiency and success. Knowledge management theory states that intellectual capital comprises two elements. The first element is unstructured ‘knowledge capital’, being the total stock of employees’ tacit knowledge. The second element is structured ‘knowledge capital’: that is to say, an organisation’s complete array of formal mechanisms designed to capture, store, retrieve and communicate knowledge (Koenig 2000). Examples of this second kind of ‘knowledge capital’ range from email to the

2

In the influential Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, the first discussion of ‘information management’ as a leading concept appears to have been by Svenonius and Witthus (1981).

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contents of filing cabinets, from databases to business meetings. Another example would be a company’s library service. It has to be said that elements of the knowledge management and information management discourses bear a striking resemblance to each other. The notion of structured ‘knowledge capital’ appears to be little removed from information management’s concern with processes and conduits that circulate information in organisations. Bawden (2001, pp. 96–7) quite rightly describes the debate over whether information management and knowledge management are separate concepts as ‘sterile’. For him the difference is quite clear: information management gained currency in referring to the handling of information that was ‘formal, structured, and with a clearly defined life-cycle’, the type of information that is ‘commonly important within commercial and governmental organisations, and is relatively amenable to computer processing’. The management of this information – essentially documentary – excludes the management of information that exists as ‘tacit’ knowledge, in the minds of employees, information which is helpful for creativity and innovation. Moving on from these observations, however, it is important to point out that tacit knowledge does not exist a priori. It is formed by explicit knowledge, as well as by experience. Equally, tacit knowledge finds outlets in the form of explicit knowledge – i.e. knowledge that is represented, or articulated, in some way.3 To separate tacit from explicit knowledge from each other so starkly, even though this serves to give knowledge management a distinct identity, surely misrepresents the way both individuals and organisations learn. As early as 1959, this fact was understood by I.M. Slade, information officer at the British Iron and Steel Research Association and author of an article in the journal Engineering which attempted to map the information infrastructure available to the typical large company in the engineering sector. At the centre of the infrastructure the author placed the following elements: (i) knowledge of firm’s employees (meaning their accumulated knowledge, not knowledge ‘of them’ by the firm due to surveillance); (ii) company correspondence and publications; and (iii) internal meetings, committees and conferences (Slade, 1959, p. 375). No distinction, in terms of importance, is made in her article between these core elements. The assumption is that each is of equal value and each contributes to the other. Moreover, they share the function of enhancing the firm’s performance, its economic value and its status as an ‘intelligent’ organisation. This relatively early statement of the components of what four decades later came to be termed ‘knowledge management’ demonstrates that, like the learning organisation, it commands a long pre-history. It is a history that extends back into the late-nineteenth century. The recognition of such a history rather detracts from over-zealous preaching about the novelty of knowledge management and its various vehicles – i.e. training materials, newsletters, databases, reports, presentations, letters and meetings (Nunes, 2006, p.

3

The difference between knowledge and information has occupied theorists for decades. One way of distinguishing between the two is to understand that knowledge only exists in people’s minds. When it is conveyed from one individual to another, in speech, writing or by some other means, it becomes transmitted or recorded knowledge, which can be equated to information.

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113) – all of which, along with other instruments of business communication, can be found in the early large-scale corporation (Locker et al, 1996). Followers of the knowledge/information/learning economy creed are tempted to view the perceived ‘new economy’ as a fundamental break in history, representing a shift away from the ‘control’ capitalism of the past two hundred years. The European Commission, for example, has asserted that: A new economy is emerging. An economy that is transforming the fundamental rules of business. An economy based on exploiting knowledge … This economy is based on economic values far removed from those of the industrial economy.4

Others are less convinced of the radicalism of this observed departure. Hodgson (1999), for example, has predicted the evolution of a new socio-economic system (not so much utopian as ‘evotopian’) somewhere between capitalism and socialism, where worker control over the production process is enhanced by increased IT-rich knowledge intensity. Hundley (2001, p. 17) does not believe that the idea the ‘new economy’ is particularly helpful, and sees ‘little sympathy for the notion that we have witnessed or will witness some discontinuous change in economic processes, economic behaviour, or fundamental economic laws. If the learning economy and the learning organization have a future they also have a past. The nineteenth century witnessed a significant upgrading of information infrastructure in industrial capitalist economies. Information infrastructure can be conceptualised on two levels: the macro-level of investment in structures – like postal, telecommunication or library systems – to facilitate information exchange locally, regionally, nationally or globally; and the microlevel of the organization. In the context of the micro-level, Temin (1991, p. 2) states that ‘information is the key to the functioning of an enterprise’, but he also reminds us that the modern business enterprise is a creature of the nineteenth century. The management of information in organisations is not new. Organisations have long been places where ‘social capital’ (to mobilise yet a further organisational management term) has accumulated. Social capital – a concept which resonates with the network society/economy idea – is defined as the flow of information which results from the direct relationships between individuals who communicate with each other in a framework of trust (Lesser, 2000).5 The modern enterprises that evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century may not have displayed the flat structures which supposedly characterise the model post-Fordist, or ‘post-capitalist’ organisation, but they were to an increasing extent networks, pools of social capital. Information systems are not primarily technological systems, but social systems; and this was certainly true of pioneering corporations where new information systems were built to manage the emerging complexities of production and the market. 4 5

R. Zobel, of the European Commission, in her Foreword to Mentzas et al (2003, p. vii). Networking and communication are also at the core of knowledge management, the essence of which Abell et al (2002, p. 32) see as ‘connecting people to people, to the resources that they need within an environment that supports and encourages the development and well-being of individuals and organisations’.

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After establishing the existence of the late-nineteenth-century learning organisation, this chapter examines how organisational learning in the first half of the twentieth century was fostered through the accession, creation and organisation of what in ‘knowledge management’ parlance is fancifully termed the ‘knowledge document’.6 Particular emphasis is placed on the production and function of registeries, protocols and in-house magazines, and of course their supporting technologies and implications for management.7 Three distinct contexts are offered: the state, private enterprise and libraries. It should be stressed, however, that although particular forms of knowledge organisation or ‘knowledge document’ may be highlighted in a particular context (for example, protocols and in-house magazines in firms) this does not mean to say that they were exclusive to this setting and were not important in a whole range of other contexts. The Early ‘Learning Organisation’ The historiography of the learning organisation, as discussed in the discourses of management and organisational sociology, is extensive yet temporally short. However, make no mistake, as a process central to the operation of complex organisations, the learning organisation has existed for well over a century. The first sophisticated large-scale enterprises of the nineteenth century invested heavily not only in technology, but also in marketing and management techniques. The firms who performed best – and increasingly in the decades leading up to the First World War one is speaking about German and American firms – were those who continually learnt about customers and suppliers (to ensure ‘throughput’, being the continuous, coordinated and efficient flow of inputs and outputs) as well as about products and processes (to secure technological leadership and economies of scale). Both required the gathering of ‘intelligence’. In such organisations knowledge was developed not just through trial and error and from observing developments elsewhere, it was also generated internally, through rational and systematic monitoring and evaluation of the market and of operations. Accurate data, often in complex statistical form or resulting from sophisticated accounting methods, was required by management for decision making, the results of which were communicated to the workforce and installed into operations, strategy and

6

7

Kulkarin and Freeze (2006, p. 606) state that knowledge documents represent explicit knowledge. Such documents, they explain, include ‘project reports, technical reports, policies and procedures, research reports, publications, pictures drawings, diagrams, audio-visual clips, and so forth’. Knowledge documents, they add, ‘encompass internally generated as well as external information’. Of course, this exhaustive list begs the question: what is the difference between a knowledge document and a document per se? As such, this chapter engages with both business and management history. It might also be said to connect with a relatively new area of study, termed ‘governmentality’, which is not concerned, as might be initially assumed, with grand subject of the arts and regimes of state administration, but, in the tradition of the work of Michel Foucault, with the ‘guidance of conduct’, or the ‘conduct of conduct’, at the ‘micro’ level through (often) bureaucratic practices. See Dean (1999) and Lemke (2002).

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planning (Chandler, 1977, p. 109).8 Yates (1991, p. 120) succinctly explains the process thus: At each level, the information was analyzed and used in monitoring and evaluating lower levels as well as in making decisions about operations. The downward flow was made up of written orders, instructions, and policies – the results of decisions based on the upward flows – communicated down the hierarchy to those implementing policy (Yates 1991, p. 120).

In other words, enterprises developed ‘organisational capabilities’ of the informational kind, capabilities referred to today as ‘organizational learning’ (Chandler, 1992). This historical analysis undermines the notion that business is only now ‘entering the knowledge era, where knowledge is power, and learning rapidly and competently is seen as the pre-eminent strategy of global success (Marquardt and Reynolds, 1994) While it is true that the ‘learning organisation’ of today aims to include a wider range of worker than in the past, representing ‘an environment that maximizes collective experience and learning’ (Abell and Oxbrow, 2001, p. 33), where ‘collective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how to learn together’ (Senge, 1990, p. 3), the proposition that the ‘learning organisation’ is a new phenomenon is rather difficult to swallow, given the work of historians of information management like Chandler (1977; 1990; 1992), Temin (1991), Yates (1990), Beniger (1986) and Campbell-Kelly (1992, 1994). Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995, p. 3) statement that ‘organisational knowledge creation’ is the ‘capability of a company as a whole to create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organisation, and embody it in products, services and systems’ would not have been unfamiliar to the complex, information management-rich corporations that began to emerge in the late-nineteenth century. The main difference between early corporations and those of today, apart from the larger amounts of information, or social capital, in circulation, is the use of digital technology to manage information flow. Cronin and Davenport (1991, p. 1) have explained that computer technology is central to a definition of information management: The term information management is commonly associated with formal representation of information entities and flows to facilitate the construction of computer models which allow specific functions (transaction processing, decision making, information retrieval) to be automated.

Similarly, Prytherch (2000, p. 424) states that the process of knowledge management ‘depends on electronic storage and access, typically through an intranet’. Information technology has certainly become a competitive weapon, a means of gaining competitive advantage. However, it is evident that: ‘IT alone cannot create competitive advantage; it needs non-IT as well’ (Earl, 1988, p. 290). This highlights the importance of information flows not mediated by IT, which by definition characterised the pre-computer organisation. It is said that today’s 8

See Boyns and Wale (1995) on early information management systems in a British context; see also Fleischman and Parker (1990) and Edwards and Newell (1991).

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corporation is essentially a ‘cybercorporation’, a description arising from cybernetics, the science of communication and control. In the ideal cybercorporation ‘employees can access information anywhere instantly’ (W. Martin 1995, p. 5). This level of access was clearly not a feature of the precomputer, or even pre-IT, corporation. However, it is possible to say that from the middle of the nineteenth century there existed a science of organisational control and communication of a kind, based on an embryonic but systematic management of information, and underwritten by a new science of management promulgated in management literature and manuals. The First Office Management Revolution In the small businesses of the industrial revolution, owners and managers were able to retain details of operations in their memory and issue most instructions verbally. But as firms (and other organisations) grew in size, the importance of the document also grew. The management of these documents constituted what is now termed information management. The first information management revolution, which began a hundred years or so ago, was very much an office management revolution. The office, and office management, became central to the fortunes of the firm. As Braverman (1974, p. 306) put it, ‘the purpose of the office is control over the enterprise, and the purpose of office management is control over the office’. In the decades immediately either side of the turn of the twentieth century, a range of new devices and methods transformed office technology. Yates (1991), in the context of the United States, has identified 5 facets to this revolution: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

recording and compiling information transmitting information disseminating information analysing information storing and retrieving information

Orbell (1991) has written of a four-faceted British office technology revolution in regard to: 1. recording of information 2. copying information 3. communicating information 4. organising and analysing information Campbell-Kelly (1998, p. 29) has been more economical in his analysis, pointing to three main tasks that shaped the mechanical office of the time: 1. document production 2. data processing 3. database assembly The first of Campbell-Kelly’s categories, document production, can be considered to be synonymous with both Yates’s and Orbell’s first three facets.

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Important innovations here were standardised printed forms; the fountain pen; typewriters; addressing machines (which entered heading on sheets and cards, not just addresses on envelopes); photography of various kinds, including the photostat and microfilm; stencil duplicators, including rotary machines; carbon paper used in tandem with the typewriter; and the teleprinter. The appearance of the telephone did not directly increase document production; however, although at face value acting as a substitute for documentary communication, this is not to say that it did not have the opposite effect and generated rather than reduced recorded data, by virtue of its general effect on levels of activity, as in the case of orders communicated down the wires. By 1900 the telegraph, of course, had been in existence for nearly three-quarters of a century. Yates’s fourth facet and the second element of Orbell’s fourth facet correspond to Campbell-Kelly’s task of data processing. Although mid-nineteenth-century offices used calculating machines, the first ‘keyboard style’ machines (comptometers) did not appear until the 1880s. Machines with printed output arrived around 1900, while machines that could divide and multiply appeared in the 1920s. Tabulating (mechanical computer) machines – i.e. punch-card Hollerith machines – were first used in Britain in 1904, having been first used in the United States in 1890 to analyse the returns from the US Census. These were installed by the Woolwich Arsenal, Vickers, the Great Western Railway and the Lancashire and North Yorkshire Railway (Orbell 1991, p. 78). In 1915 Powers accounting machines were first used in Britain: installed at His Majesty’s Stationery Office and at the Prudential, and shortly after at the firms of Cadbury’s and Coleman’s (Orbell 1991, p. 78). Powers machines could also give a print-out of results, and consequently, as Campbell-Kelly (1998, p. 29) points out, they not only assisted data processing but document production and database assembly as well. The final facet of Yates’s analysis and the first element of Orbell’s final category relate to Campbell-Kelly’s database assembly task. One of the major examples of improved information management in the early-twentieth-century office was in the area of filing systems. In the mid-nineteenth century the number of papers handled by most firms was, as Hudders noted in an office management manual of 1916 (p. iii), ‘so limited that the filing question was a more or less negligible one, the usual procedure being to jab the paper on a stick or spindle file, or else stow it away in the drawer of a counter or cupboard’. However, the next half-century saw an astonishing increase in the volume of papers received and generated by organisations. The information technologies and techniques of the mid-nineteenth-century organisation would have been unable to cope with the new level of document production. Faced with ‘document overload’, the late-nineteenth century-organisation required better filing equipment and procedures. In the late-nineteenth century most storage and retrieval of documents was undertaken using pigeonholes, cabinet drawers, letter boxes, ring-binder (Shannon) files and bound volumes (i.e. the ‘flat-file’ system). Around 1900 came the ‘manila’ file and the vertical filing system, devised (according to Schwartz and Hernon, 1993, p. 24) by Melvil Dewey’s Library Bureau in the United States and based on the model of the card catalogue. Most early use of the vertical file was in government offices. In the ‘manila’ file, letters were pierced with two holes and secured in place by threading metal strips attached to the file through the holes and

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bending them down over the top letter. Because of new duplicating technology – not only typewriters using carbon paper but also Gestetner machines that made it possible to obtain loose duplicates on tissue-thin paper at speed – outgoing letters could be copied more easily (the previous method was a laborious one of copying into letter books using a special copying ink, damp paper and a screw press). This meant that all documents on a single subject, whether outgoing, incoming or internal, could be brought together and stored vertically. Moreover, because the content of any document can relate to more than one subject, copies could be lodged in more than one file. The effects of the new system were significant. As Yates (1991, p. 127) explains: The shift from a predominantly chronological system that separated documents by origin to one that combined all related documents with access based on subject or some other function or some other functional scheme clearly made information more accessible for those making or implementing decisions.

New filing and indexing technology and techniques were widely publicised and became, in effect, a quasi-scientific discourse linked to the formulation of management theory at the time and inspired in particular by the growing influence of scientific management (Hudders 1916; Kaiser 1908; Kaiser 1911).9 ‘Filing and indexing’, announced one of its experts, ‘in one sense is one phase of efficiency work.’ This same expert believed it was possible to lay down universal principles of filing and indexing in the office, and for organisations to have regard to the ‘general study of filing and indexing’ (Warren, 1920, pp. 22–3).10 Intensified database assembly (for the most part meaning the collection, organisation and indexing of documents) placed a premium on the operation of the registry. The central registry became a widely adopted method of document control in the early large-scale organisation. The primary role of the registry was to register and distribute incoming letters and dispatch the outgoing. But beyond this basic task, it was the registry’s responsibility to formulate and implement the standing rules of office administration. The registry would also fulfil an archival role, taking decisions on retention, preservation and destruction of documents. In short, it was the registry’s job to coordinate and control documents in the organisation (Jenkinson, 1937). By the 1920s the growing tendency was, where possible (because not all records could be centralised), to bring all files and indexes into one department, sometimes termed the ‘registry’, sometimes described as the ‘filing department/room’. It was advised that this department be placed in the charge of ‘a file clerk who is trained for such work and who is also a competent executive’. Information from a central document repository would be sent to various employees, as needed, ‘by means of a messenger service, house phones, or by 9

10

F.W. Taylor’s Shop Management (1903) and Principles of Scientific Management (1911) encouraged others to transfer their idea to the context of the office; e.g., see Leffingwell (1917) and Galloway (1918). Irene Warren was the director of the Chicago School of Filing and Indexing. This short article was the first of a series of twelve on filing and indexing in organisations carried by the Journal of Electricity in consecutive issues in the first half of 1920.

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lending materials to departments in much the same fashion that patrons borrow books from the public library’ (Warren, 1920, p. 22). The filing department in the construction company Wates was described as the ‘nerve centre’ of the business, a place where there were gathered the ‘records and histories of each and every transaction’. By the late 1930s the filing department in Wates was dealing with over 5,000 letters a week, around half of these coming into the company and the other half going out. It was also the department’s job to file internal communications.11 The emerging science of documentation taught the importance of rigorous filing and indexing systems, for it was realised that correct information, which came from good records management, was a powerful factor in the making of decisions by management. The ultimate purpose of documentation practice, of course, was the arranging and filing of the data embodied in the documents (De Voogd, 1935). Most organisations of the period did not develop systems of filing and indexing that gave deep access to documents, that is to say to information embedded in whole items (although there were exceptions, as the discussion below of the work of the registry in the Security Service, MI5, shows). However, this did not mean that the records management that did take place was not beneficial to organisational efficiency. Early-twentieth-century developments in manual and mechanical information technology, as well as developments in the ‘science’ or records organisation, complemented the emergence of scientific management and its application in the giant corporation. The first office management revolution eventually yielded real dividends in terms of the efficient management of the giant corporations that emerged in the heated merger activity and rationalisation of the 1920s and 1930s. In the increasingly large enterprises of the interwar years, hierarchies deepened and chains of command lengthened. ‘Distance’ and ‘interface’ between branches, departments or subsidiaries was reduced by a number of organisational and technological changes. Communication was improved markedly by advances in telephony. Increasingly standardised practices – down to the level of proforma documentation and printed protocols – created uniformity and delivered efficiency. Further heavy investment was made in mechanised office technology, such as punched-card machines (Cortada, 1993).12 ‘In the interwar years’, writes Hannah (1976, p. 86), ‘typewriters, duplicators and accounting machines of various kinds were widely used in business and the mechanisation of routine information gathering and processing was helping to overcome the problems of information presentation, and hence co-ordination and control.’ For example, the typewriter allowed encouraged the wider use of the spreadsheet, making this particular way of presenting data a shared information management method. From the First World War onwards, therefore, the ability of an organisation to ‘learn’, to invest in techniques and technologies that improved communication and enhanced the spread of information and the accumulation of knowledge by individuals became critical. Organisational learning was progressed in ways which 11 12

‘Our nerve centre: the filing room’, Wates News Sheet, No. 5 (24 November 1939). As occurred in the Prudential: see The Prudential Assurance Company Limited, Achievement of an Ideal in Social Welfare (c. 1939), published illustrated pamphlet, Prudential Archives.

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would today be described as information and knowledge management. Higher management posts with responsibility for information matters in organisations began to appear. In 1952 one leading engineering professor, in recognising the information function as a core function of management, advised that the first step any leader of a large concern had to take was that of ‘charging a senior executive with the responsibility for reviewing and reporting upon and maintaining the essential key information services required by the organisation at all levels’; and secondly, he had to ‘seek for means of educating and training his existing staff to make use of the information services provided’ (Matthew 1952, p. 202). At one level, this may have meant requiring staff to familiarise themselves with the company via the ‘central brain’ of the registry: In the central filing department there is an excellent opportunity to study in detail the policy of the firm and the various departments in it, the business that comes in and the firm’s methods of handling it. For this reason some organisations are requiring the new clerical workers to spend a certain length of time in the filing department and are teaching there the principles of filing and indexing and the various records kept in the organisation (Warren 1920, p. 23).

At a higher level, increased emphasis began to be placed on research, statistical, forecasting and marketing work, each of these areas requiring large inputs of data and information (e.g., Cooke, 1926; Dobbs, 1933; Lyall, 1924; Nightingale and Bennie, 1927; Tattersall, 1927; W. Wallace 1927); and visible manifestations of this important work was the appearance of research departments, technical libraries and information rooms.13 Also at this higher level, the years after 1900 witnessed an increased interest in preserving archival sources. The motivation behind this was often the celebration of the importance and ancestry of organisations through the production of their history. The production of company histories escalated markedly in the early-twentieth century (E. Green 1991, p. 7).14 Another means of preserving the corporate memory was the internal report on the past development of administrative systems and structures. This form of knowledge management appears to have become fairly common after 1918 and was certainly a procedure

13

14

Information rooms were different from technical libraries in that, although some contained literature and records, their main function was to display information in a digestible form, by means of graphics, artefacts and models. The room at the British Electric Authority (East Midlands Division, Nottingham) was designed ‘to afford easy access to information of value to all departments … to avoid the duplication of records … and to display graphically the progress that is being made’. The centerpiece of the facility was the lining of the walls with Graphdex panels, information on which could be changed instantly, thereby making it possible to compare at any moment, ‘within the boundaries of one room’, the results of each division and department: ‘An electrical information room at Nottingham’, Engineering (9 February 1951), pp. 174–5. See also, ‘Oil industry information room open to all’, London Shell, No. 31 (October 1957). One such history, relating to the early history of BP, was Laurence Lockhart’s The Record of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (1938), an internal publication covering the period 1901–1918; the author made use of the archival documents stored in the company’s General Department, the bringing together of which had been instigated in 1926: letter from Ruth Cammies, BP Archives (23 January 2002).

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implemented in the Bank of England, to which our attention is now turned in a brief case study of the office management developments here discussed. From Quill Pen to Computerisation: Information and Knowledge Management in the Bank of England Traces of the first office management revolution can be seen in the history and archives of numerous British companies and organisations, among them that very essence of Britishness, the Bank of England. For over two centuries after its inception in 1694, administrative practices at the Bank of England (a private enterprise until its nationalisation in 1946) barely changed. Indeed, such was the reverence for custom and tradition at the Bank that as late as the 1970s the minutes of its Court of Directors were still being recorded in manuscript. However, clerical modernisation at the Bank had in truth occurred a long time before this, in response to the great increase in work and the expense this incurred in employing additional clerical labour.15 Typed correspondence began to appear at the turn of the twentieth century, in parallel with the office management revolution of the time (the quill pen ceased to be used in the bank as late as 1907) (Orbell, 1991, p. 62). For example, an examination of volumes of correspondence produced by the Bank’s ‘Branch Bank Office’ and currently preserved in the Bank’s archives reveals that the first typed correspondence from this department was dated 26 May 1904. Typing allowed for the wider use of spreadsheets in the Bank.16 As the twentieth century progressed, the mechanisation of office work intensified, investment being made in addressograph, accounting, adding, duplicating, dictaphone (wax cylinder and later magnetic tape) and punched-card machines, and eventually in computers of course. By the late 1950s the Bank had around a thousand typewriters and a rolling programme of renewal was in place to keep machines up to date.17 Around this time it was being anticipated that correspondence could soon be dictated over the telephone directly onto recording equipment; although, interestingly, the possibility of a machine that could directly type the spoken word, a facility incorporated into word processing in the late-twentieth century, was being dismissed.18 During the Second World War it was realised that some kind of integrated strategy for, and management of, office mechanisation was required. Three essentials for the development of mechanisation were identified. The first was the appointment of a chief officer for mechanisation, who would supervise and coordinate mechanisation throughout the Bank. The second essential was the 15

16

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18

Edye (Branch Banks Office) to the Governor of the Bank (31 January 1898), Bank of England Archives, G15/39. E.g., ‘Tabular statement of restrictions on export, import, melting, sale, etc., of gold & silver, August 1914 – August 1921’, in Vol. 2 of an internal report entitled ‘The Bank of England 1914–21’, Bank of England Archives, ADM2/2. ‘Replacement of typewriters’ (11 November 1958, and 6 November 1962), both in Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. ‘Development of the typewriter’ (17 May 1950), and ‘Dictation machines’ (22 May 1950), both in Bank of England Archives, ADM15/17.

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establishment of a Central Machine Office, under the leadership of the chief officer. The Office would be comprised of two elements: a Machine Section and a Training Typing and Duplication Section. The Machine Section would offer a central service to offices and departments by providing a repository for all permanent records relating to mechanisation (e.g. regarding rentals, maintenance work etc.), by serving as a medium of communication with all external companies, and by acting as a liaison between the various parts of the Bank. This section’s overall aim was to reduce duplication of effort and processes. The second element of the Machine Office, a Training Typing and Duplication Section, would oversee training throughout the Bank not only for work on typewriters but also keyboarding work on accounting, adding and punched-card machines (although it should be noted that training was also given externally, at Hollerith (for punchedcard) and Burroughs (for accounting) Machine Schools.19 The third essential for the development of mechanisation was the continued existence of ‘experts’ in charge of mechanical aids in offices and departments. Despite the appointment of a chief officer and the establishment of a Central Machine Office, it was deemed necessary to retain technological expertise ‘at the coal face’, as it were, and not simply concentrate it in a central resource.20 That central resource, a Central Mechanisation Office, was eventually established in 1945, its purpose encompassing, in addition to the functions envisaged above, research and experimental work and the provision of a central reserve machine store.21 Centralisation was imposed on all photocopying and duplicating work. Even though this meant staff, to cover unforeseen circumstances, often ordered more copies of documents than they generally needed, a central unit was seen as essential at a time when photocopying machines were unreliable and significant expertise and training was needed to operate them.22 Centralisation was seen as particularly beneficial in respect of the use of punched-card machines. Advantages were seen in bringing together all such machines in one location.23 The pooling of machines made possible the full exploitation of the capacity of the Bank’s stock of machines at times of extra pressure of work: ‘Pooling machines means maximum working hours per machine per day and therefore a [purchase and maintenance] of a minimum number of machines. Continued mechanisation by separate offices is likely to give the opposite result’.24 The use of punched-card machines – as in the case of the payment of dividends – resulted in significant efficiency gains: ‘Our own experience is that Hollerith

19 20

21 22

23 24

Training on a Hollerith punched-card machine took approximately 2–4 weeks. Memo to Holland-Martin (2 May 1940), and ‘[Memo on] mechanization’ (8 May 1940), both in Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. ‘Central Mechanisation Office’ (June 1948), Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. ‘The organization and work of the duplicating and photostat sections’ (31 August 1951), and ‘Photocopying’ (21 December 1964), both in Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. Various methods of copying were employed at the time: thermo-fax, transfer diffusion, photostat and Ektalith. Xerox machines were introduced experimentally into the Bank in 1961. Laverack to Bernard (21 September 1943), Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. Laverack to Ellis (11 April 1944), Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11.

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mechanical [punched-card] sorting shows a great economy over hand-sorting’.25 However, by the late 1950s a new data-processing technology, the computer, was at hand. Thus, in 1957 the Central Mechanisation Office’s chief officer was able to proudly announce that: The main details of a new system of preparing dividends – by means of punched cards, a small computer, an electronic calculating unit and a high speed printer – have now been finalised and the machines for a trial or pilot installation costing £85,000 have been ordered.26

Developments in the Bank’s information management were not just a matter of technological innovation, however; they also included ‘soft’ techniques which today might be defined as knowledge management, certainly in terms of the transmission of explicit knowledge. For example, already by the twentieth century the Bank’s branches were being furnished with general instructions from headquarters, as well as circulars which updated these. Circulars carried information on various banking subjects, matters affecting staff and warnings of forgeries.27 One such circular, in 1874, informed branches of the expiry of East India Company stock, the company having ceased to exist as a legal entity the previous year (more about the East India Company below and in Chapter 5).28 By the twentieth century the publication of printed ‘conduct’ protocols – termed ‘Rules and Orders’ – for the various staff groups in the Bank was an established practice.29 In the 1920s, in an effort to strengthen the Bank’s corporate memory, an exhaustive typewritten report (in four volumes and authored by several officers) was produced on the operations of the Bank in the period 1914–21, years of change and upheaval that needed to be documented for the purpose of future strategic and operational planning (a similar exercise was conducted at the time in the British security service, MI5, as discussed below).30 The Bank’s corporate memory – and the accumulated knowledge therein – was further enhanced by the construction of efficient registries in the Bank’s various departments. Access to documents was provided through the portal of detailed card catalogues. Index cards were introduced into the Bank as early as 1852 (J. Brown, 1912, p. 183). By the early twentieth century cards had reached a high degree of sophistication. For example, one card entry in the registry of the Establishment Department,31 typical

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26

27 28 29

30

31

Memo from Principal of the Preparation Office to the Chief Accountant (25 July 1947), Bank of England Archives, AC13/456. ‘Central Mechanisation Office: Report for the Year 1st November 1956 to 31st October 1957’, Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. ‘Branch Banks Office: general paragraphs’, Bank of England Archives, C64. Branch Banks Office, Bank of England Archives, C64/1, p. 325. E.g., ‘Rules and orders to be observed by the clerks’ (1950 and 1932) and ‘Rules and orders to be observed by the porters’ (1908). These and other staff handbooks can be found in Bank of England Archives, E22. ‘The Bank of England 1914–21 [internal report]’, Bank of England Archives, ADM2/1– 4. Sample card from Establishment Department Registry, Bank of England Archives, E42. File E42 contains multiple cards from various registries covering the period 1921–1964.

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of its kind, contained the following data describing a stored document and giving its location: [HEADING] – Wages (Scales): Maintenance and Engineering Staff: Engineering Staff [DATE OF DOCUMENT] – 19.12.45 [SUMMARY OF DOCUMENT CONTENT] – Costing clerk W. I. King: details of wages while working at Whitchurch branch and while working in London [LOCATION/CLASSIFICATION OF DOCUMENT]: 106.62

The efficient management of records was one means by which knowledge of organisational matters was retained and disseminated. Other, less technical, means of managing knowledge – in evidence certainly by the 1940s – were systematic programmes of training (in keyboarding, for example, as related above) and staff induction and development lectures, with subjects ranging from the origins and purpose of the Bank, to technical issues and specialist studies such as economics and statistics.32 To complement this learning, staff had access, from the early 1920s, to a well-stocked reference library (see Chapter 5). By the 1970s the Bank’s managers appeared ready to consider more authentic, people-to-people forms of knowledge management. This was to be achieved by better communication between management and staff and, more importantly, between staff members themselves. Both of these paths of communication were conceptualised as forming part of ‘downward communication’. The traditional ‘downward communication’ was the ‘notice to staff’, in essence directives, protocols and explanations of policy. The less formal method was termed ‘serial transmission’ downwards through the hierarchy. It was believed that this method afforded opportunities for discussion. However, doubts were expressed concerning this method of creating and spreading knowledge. Management was not convinced that discussions would take place ‘with equal thoroughness at each level’. It was believed possible that discussion of ideas set in motion by managers ‘was susceptible to distortion as the material is passed from one mouth to another’.33 By and large, managers questioned if any improvements in efficiency could be gained from widening discussion and allowing staff to comment on ideas; in fact, there was a possibility that such a strategy would reduce efficiency: There is a temptation with the launching of new management techniques to assume that free and continuing consultation between top management and the staff at all levels improves efficiency. Over-enthusiasm in this direction can be counterproductive if it cuts across an established system of delegation (which is a desirable aim stressed by another branch of management science)34

These views concerning communication in the Bank ran contrary to ideas about flat structures and about the interchange of information to create knowledge in 32 33

34

Laverack to Ellis (11 April 1944), Bank of England Archives, ADM15/11. ‘Meeting on aspects of communication’ (29 December 1970), Bank of England Archives, OV21/9. ‘Meeting … on aspects of communication’ (8 January 1971), Bank of England Archives, OV21/9.

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individuals and in the organisation which knowledge management theorists embraced a generation later. However, the fact that they were discussed, allied to the existence of more customary methods of knowledge transfer – such as training programmes, meetings, lectures, protocols, manuals, reference books and registry and filing systems – is illustrative of an embedded culture of knowledge management, of a kind, in the Bank which in fact stretched back into the nineteenth century, and which was complemented by a fairly rapid mechanisation of office procedures over the same period. The information and knowledge management technologies and techniques which emerged around the turn of the twentieth century and which can be identified as operating in the Bank of England during the period under consideration were also to be found, naturally, in all types of organisation, whether it be the civil services or agencies of the state, private enterprise or public sphere institutions like libraries. The State: the Post Office and the Security Service (MI5) Although in the popular imagination the nineteenth century is seen as an age of negligible interference by the state in the economy and society (Sigsworth, 1988; Walvin, 1987) – this in stark contrast to the strong interventionism of the twentieth century, hastened by two world wars and the construction of a welfare state – the growth of government, both central and local, in the Victorian age was not only marked, but also increasingly systematic and rationally planned. As E.L. Woodward noted in 1938 (p. 426), in describing the middle decades of the nineteenth century as an ‘age of reform’: The change from a haphazard to a scientific administration in town and country was as essential to the mechanism of a complicated industrial society as the provision of new methods of transport.

Higgs (2004) and Lyon (2001), for example, have noted the intensification of the state’s surveillance role as the nineteenth century progressed. Naturally, the emergence of a ‘scientific’ state, run according to a process of investigation, legislation, inspection and report (Dandeker, 1990, p. 121) generated an unprecedented amount of documentation which required new systems of organisation and control. Agar (2003b) has traced the roots and subsequent history of information management in the civil service, in terms of the growth of mechanisation; culminating in the exploitation of computer technology. He argues that the growth of government was, in fact, in itself an important contributory factor in the invention of the electronic computer, the computer being the ‘materialisation of bureaucratic action’. The civil service and the computer, he posits, are similar in that both are machines – the former governed by a code made up of rule books and protocols, the latter operated by a code in the form of a binary programme (p. 391). Despite the fact that the causes of mechanisation in the civil service were inevitably multifarious – including the need to cut labour costs and undermine the

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power of civil service labour and its unions35 – the proposition that computer technology and state bureaucracy were/are meant for each other, that the logical and systematic operation of the computer maps precisely onto the ordered and information-rich nature of government, is persuasive. It is certainly the case that prior to, and irrespective of the effects of, the computer, the work of government required, and continues to require, a machinelike attention to the management of information. This was readily recognised at the end of the nineteenth century by the pioneering documentalist Paul Otlet, whose project to build a world index of recorded knowledge through the work of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) established in 1895 (see Chapter 1, pp. 50–51) included a consideration of the problem of mushrooming state documentation, of both the internal and external kind. Otlet noted the tendency for greatly increased use of documents in administration and the provision by government offices of more and more information. He believed that the IIB’s methods were ‘extremely appropriate for the control and organization of these documents, especially the work it had done on dossiers’ (Rayward, 1975, p. 160). IIB had a dossier scheme (a Universal Documentary Repertory) arranged by UDC, in addition to its bank of index cards. The name ‘dossier’ was given ‘to the whole of the pieces gathered into packets or bundles in the same folder and on the same subject’ – ‘pieces included letters, reports, newspaper cuttings, photographs, notes, prospectuses, circulars, printed menus etc.’. By 1912 the Universal Documentary Repertory contained nearly a quarter of a million pieces (quoted in Rayward, 1975, p. 154).36 The Post Office The importance of information management in state departments, even in the earlynineteenth century, is reflected in the micro-administrative procedures concerning the logging, tracking and archiving of papers implemented in the Post Office. Although records management of a kind had existed in the Post Office since its inception in the seventeenth century, organised under the auspices of the Secretary’s Office, it was not until 1837 that a planned system for the registration of documents was instituted. One of the main aims of the system was the tracking of documents through the organisation, so that at any one time the location of a document could be ascertained and its return secured. The idea was to establish a:

35

36

See review of Agar (2003) by Edward Higgs, English Historical Review, Vol. CXIX, No. 484 (November 2004), pp. 1443–4. See Paul Otlet, ‘La Documentation en metière administrative [Documents in Administrative Work]’, IIB [International Institute of Bibliography] Bulletin (1908), 342–348; and ‘Les Répertoires à Dossiers’, IIB [International Institute of Bibliography] Bulletin, Vol. XII (1907).

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The idea of a registry in the Post Office was prompted partly by knowledge of a registry system at the War Office, which found ‘full employment for five or six Clerks’ and where ‘the Books [ledgers] amount to between two and three hundred very large and most expensive volumes’.38 The Post Office believed it could develop a more efficient system than that in operation in the War Office, and a protocol was drawn up detailing the new record-keeping procedures, this being supplemented by occasional instructions communicated by memoranda.39 Until 1837 not all documents sent to the Post Office were recorded – for example, letters from the public and routine internal reports. Only documents meant for the personal attention of the Post Master General were officially registered. The post-1837 process of registering (all) papers was as follows: each document was stamped with a number which, along with a note on the subject matter of the document, were recorded in alphabetical and numerical registers (alphabetical registers gave reference to the volume of minutes into which the paper was copied). Subsequent movements of documents were then recorded in ‘charge’ and ‘discharge’ (transit) books. Papers were copied into a ‘minute book’. This was crucial in a dispersed organisation like the Post Office, where large numbers of documents had to be dealt with not at headquarters but sent to all corners of the country, meaning that the retention of a copy of the original was crucial. To undertake the new work, the ‘clerks in waiting’ attached to the Secretary’s Office were supplemented by the appointment of a Register Clerk, supported by a ‘messenger’ clerk from the Inland Revenue. The new system proved to be a great success; and its benefits became clear when the number of official papers increased at a rapid pace following the introduction of the uniform ‘Penny Postage’ system in 1840. In 1846 it became necessary to provide additional shelves in the ‘Registry Room’. By this time the Register Clerk was being assisted by two ‘messengers’ from the Inland Office. In 1857 the post of Principle Paper Keeper (to which the title of ‘Registrar’ was added in 1869) was created, supported by three assistants. In 1875 an Assistant Registrar was added to the establishment along with an expansion of the registry workforce to 23 assistants of various grades.40 By the late-nineteenth century, therefore, centralised information management had become a systematic and important aspect of bureaucracy in the Post Office. This was reflected in the establishment in 1890 of a parliamentary enquiry into the 37

38 39

40

‘Methods of treatment and record: work performed by Clerk in Waiting and Register Clerk, Memorandum from Charles Johnson’ (5 May 1837), Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72. Ibid. Ibid. See also ‘Rules for paperkeepers on opening of correspondence’ (c. 1840), Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72; and ‘Stamping of Registry papers’ (31 December 1839), Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72. ‘The evolution of the registry [an information sheet]’ (1969), Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72.

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working and constitution of the Registry, demonstrating that information management was deemed to be a significant activity in the organisation.41 In the early-twentieth century information management in the Post Office was strengthened further. In 1937, in celebrating the centenary of the establishment of the Registry (that same year the Post Office also celebrated the centenary of the telegraph), the Post Office Magazine attempted to underscore the increasing importance and efficiency of the department when it proclaimed that: Work in the Registry is not conducted now in quite so leisurely a manner as it was a century ago. All correspondence received by the morning post must be sent to the Branch concerned at the earliest possible moment, a clear despatch must be made every evening and the first and last hours of the day are strenuous times for all concerned. After papers have left Headquarters the interest of the Registry in them does not cease, a watchful eye being kept to see that they are returned in due course. When the papers are finished with, they are sent to the Registry to be recorded afresh, if of sufficient importance, in the permanent records and to be filed away for periods varying from four to thirty or forty years or even longer.42

By the 1940s a system of decentralised registries, for each branch of the organisation, was beginning to replace the work of the Central Registry. The main feature of the new decentralised registries was the attention paid to the classification and indexing of documents – the recording of documents according to their subject content – as opposed to the simple system of accessioning and mere noting of subject matter (that is to say, only broadly and without the help of a detailed control language) that had been in operation since the 1830s. It was explained that in the decentralised registries: Subject headings taken from a Master List are combined to form a series which adequately describes the subject matter of the papers. A number is given to the series for subject files and is preceded by the Branch Code letters and followed by a number which indicates the file in the series, e.g. RB/163/01; the cypher 0 always precedes the file number to prevent confusion between the file and subject numbers.43

In true ‘knowledge management’ fashion, the procedures of both the central and decentralised registries, working in parallel for a number of years while the latter became bedded down, were set out in some detail in a ‘Registry Booklet’.44 A protocol for the central registry was also set out in a spreadsheet, detailing the work of its seven divisions. The work was subjected to a minute division of labour, reflecting a ‘scientific management’ approach to the organisation of records. As if to anticipate a post-Fordist future, however, the protocol spreadsheet carried the

41

42 43

44

This body reported four years later: Report of the Committee on the Registry of the Secretary’s Office of the Post Office (London: HMSO, 1894). The Committee had also issued a report in 1890, containing minutes of evidence. ‘Headquarters Registry: another century’, Post Office Magazine (1937), p. 538. ‘The Registry Booklet’ (1949), Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72. Ibid.

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qualification that: ‘Due to fluctuations in the load of work the staff numbers of any duty [Registry Division] must be regarded as fluid’.45

45

‘HQ Registry organization as at December 1953’ and ‘Synopsis of duties: Headquarters Registry Service, Second Report (Planned Review)’ (March 1955), both in Royal Mail Archives, Secretary’s Office Registry, POST 72.

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The Security Service (MI5) Another example of the operation of information management in a state agency of critical national importance was the early-twentieth-century development – though sometimes a very uneven one – of information systems in the Security Service, or MI5. Information in the form of intelligence about the enemy had always played a part in war and defence, but the preparations for, and the onset of, ‘total’ war in 1914 placed a high premium on military intelligence.46 MI5 was founded in 1909 to combat sabotage, espionage and subversion in Britain and its empire. The history of MI5, from its inception until the dawn of the computer age at the end of the Second World War, reflected a growing sophistication in the design and deployment of manual and mechanical, pre-digital administrative systems (although this history is also a story of the dangers of taking one’s eye off the ‘information management’ ball). The key element in the embryonic MI5’s information structure was the role played by ‘H’ Branch (created in October 1913) to render the information that the organisation gathered useable. The nerve centre of ‘H’ Branch was its Registry < to which all MI5’s branches and personnel referred for information and documents. In this respect, MI5 was paralleling contemporary developments in the wider world of commerce, where the registry had recently become an indispensable feature of information management in the modern corporation (although, as we have seen, the Post Office had evolved an efficient registry long before this). Data held in the MI5 Registry included regular reports sent by chief constables on alien (i.e. foreigner) ‘arrivals’ and ‘departures’, as well as details of certain groups of aliens resident in the country. By July 1913, over 29,000 aliens (11,000 of them German or Austrian) had been documented. Storage, organisation and analysis of documentation on this scale called for serious consideration of information management techniques and principles so that: whenever practicable, action should be based on a knowledge of all the available facts, a knowledge which is to be obtained by consulting all relevant documents in the Bureau’s possession.47

To be retrieved, documents had first to be organized scientifically. It was necessary, therefore: not only that every document received should be serially numbered, recorded and filed in such a manner as to be easily found, but also that all Names, Places, and

46

47

Of course, information in terms of ‘information management’ had long been a feature of military affairs and was formally recognised as such by the Navy in 1800: see ‘Admiralty Office: internal economy of the office’, National Archives, ADM12/86; also, see indexes in ADM12/55–1735. A fairly systematic process of record keeping is evident in documents kept in ADM1–3. ‘Notes on records, methods of filing, indexing and registration’, National Archives, KV1/53, Annexure 8.

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The Early Information Society Subjects mentioned in the documents should be minutely indexed in order to enable new information to be readily linked up with that already recorded.’48

Investigations often depended on ‘the tracing of a connection between isolated scraps of information’, often ‘meagre and of doubtful authenticity’.49 The flow of huge amounts of information into MI5 resulted in the development of systematic storage and auxiliary indexes, to provide access to materials alternative to the principal physical filing order. The information gathered was focused principally on suspect aliens organised into a series of linked files: personal, official, subject and so on. These were supported by a number of card indexes based on the organisation principle that a single file was opened for an individual and that all relevant papers along with extracts of others located in other files would be held in it: ‘The rule ... [was] that papers … [were] filed whenever possible in a Personal file …’50 ‘The records were so arranged that particulars regarding the association of any of the names with other given names, places or subjects could be quickly traced when required.’51 Stress was laid on the need to establish a ‘corporate memory’ (although this precise term was not used), which would outlive the staff of MI5 and their methods of operation. Consequently a series of summaries and reports on the organisation’s administrative arrangements were commissioned and written shortly after the war. Officers were charged with writing card summaries of the more bulky and complicated files and with the weeding out of documents ‘that had yielded worthless results’.52 The history of the various branches of MI5 from its foundation were written, a task said to have been made easier by the organisation’s possession of its own press. It is possible that the aim of compiling these historical reports was to help enhance the organisation’s reputation and deflect criticism which might lead to loss of status and resources. On the other hand the exercise plainly offered the opportunity for an objective assessment of information management performance to date. This certainly appears to have been the case in respect of ‘H’ Branch and its Registry, the activities of which were assessed in detail in the form of ‘notes and lessons’. Recommendations for future action matched closely contemporary information management practice in large firms. Firstly, it was advised that the practice of recording and reporting on administrative developments be continued. Secondly, in order to facilitate flows of information through the organisation it was advised that memoranda should be circulated as regularly as possible showing lists of personnel, composition of branches and any re-organisation in administrative structure, and that a staff magazine, or ‘office gazette’, be produced monthly. Thirdly, it was urged that in the event of a future war every effort be made to appoint an adequate staff to manage informational tasks and to avoid the overworking, or the ‘breaking down’, of ‘important 48

49 50 51

52

‘Notes on the general organisation of Counter Espionage Bureau’, National Archives, KV1/53, Annexure 1. National Archives, KV1/53, Annexure 8. National Archives, KV1/53, Annexure 8. ‘H Branch report summary: the organisation and administration of MI5’, National Archives, KV1/63. National Archives, KV1/63, Section 13.

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personages on the staff’. The warning was given that: ‘The first few months after mobilisation, when the work expands in an unprecedented degree, are very liable to lead to disorganisation and chaos.’53 However, despite these laudable and immediate post-war information management innovations, fairly soon after the war MI5’s information management machine began to go into reverse. Between the wars there was a substantial reduction in the (largely female) clerical and secretarial establishment – a pool of labour that in today’s ‘information society’ vocabulary would be uncompromisingly termed ‘information workers’. Also, opportunities to invest in new and increasingly powerful technologies for information handling were neglected. For example, punched-card systems – which by 1924 could handle alphabetic as well as numerical data – were clearly of potential benefit to MI5 but were not exploited by the organisation until the Second World War; whereas in some more mundane ‘industries’ (for example, electricity distribution companies, the Bank of England and the Treasury) they were readily adopted.54 On the outbreak of war in 1939 deficiencies in MI5’s information system were first revealed by the need to handle large numbers of references in connection with travel permits as part of the general scheme for counter intelligence and the prevention of sabotage. The demand overwhelmed the existing resources. Files withdrawn by officers were often not used or were not returned to central storage in an efficient manner. It was reported after the war that by June 1940 ‘the organisation of the service had all but broken down’.55 The near collapse of the Registry in the early days of the war may well be attributed to the practice that had become common between the wars of diminishing the numbers of the individual files and the use of subject files in their place. This combination of circumstances led one source to describe the situation as one of ‘utter hopelessness’.56 The approach to managing information in place at the start of the war was unsuited to the needs of the time which, transparently, called for the development of an effective bureaucratic corporate memory, rather than charismatic leadership and officer-based knowledge. It was reported after the war that the Central Index ‘had been allowed to lapse into a lamentable state’, a degeneration which was listed in detail: ‘a) cards were misplaced; b) there were practically no guide cards; c) the cabinets were overfull; d) there was duplication of cards; e) unnecessary carding abounded; and f) new cards were not filed at once’.57 It was further found that: The basic system of filing was inefficient and inelastic. While a diminishing number of individual files were made, the records of those individuals on which interest centred (Aliens, Right and Left Wingers) were filed on a subject basis (i.e. Communists in Northumberland). The effect was that to obtain complete information regarding an individual several files were needed, many of which were 53

54

55 56 57

‘Suggested memo on subject index [by Capt. Holroyd]’, National Archives, KV1/53, Annexure 11; National Archives, KV1/63, Sections 15 and 16. ‘Stationery Office: Adoption of punching, sorting, and tabulating machines made by Powers Accounting Machine Co. for clerical work’, National Archives, T1/11800. National Archives, KV4/3, pp. 370–72. National Archives, KV4/3, p. 372. National Archives, KV4/3, p. 371.

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The Early Information Society required by other officers for other individuals. So few obtained the files they needed and officers’ rooms were stacked with unanswered correspondence and with files all awaiting other files which could not be obtained. Personal files were classified in series, this being a quite unnecessary complication in the process of file making.58

Crucially, it was discovered that there had been no control of the transit of files. The fact that officers held on to files and deprived others of their use, indicates the complete failure of the transit card index. In July 1940 Reginald Horrocks, a specialist in business methods and organisation, was recruited from Roneo as deputy director of MI5, his main task being the restoration of the Registry’s fluency and authority. Increased staffing was complemented (for much of the work remained labour-intensive) by the introduction of punched-card sorting technology (West, 1982, p. 18).59 Technological adroitness was also displayed by the decision in the summer of 1940 to microfilm the central index, only a few months before part of the Registry was destroyed by enemy action in September. Using equipment developed by Kodak, micronegative copies were made of one-and-a-half million cards in less than three days. In addition photostat copying became ‘an integral part of the reproduction of documents (e.g. for Registry copying, extracting etc.)’.60 These changes reduced reliance on the accumulation of specialised knowledge by individual officers and instituted greater control of procedures by the Registry.61 This is not to say that the establishment itself was not considered to be a prime asset, as the extreme precautions taken in May 1944 to protect Bureau staff from the feared obliteration of London by V1 rockets showed: staff were either despatched to the country office at Blenheim Palace, sent on temporary leave or housed in a deep shelter in Chancery Lane.62 Such protection of human resources might be described in ‘information society’ discourse as part of a ‘knowledge management’ strategy. Less fancifully, the same might be said of the investment in ‘knowledge workers’ made in the war in terms of the Bureau’s recruitment of various professionals, most notably lawyers, from outside the military. A further ‘knowledge management’ perspective can be formed with regard to the accommodation of staff in Wormwood Scrubs prison, to which the Bureau moved in August 1940. It was reported that the prison proved particularly unsuitable for an office: ‘The separate cells, each holding one, or at the most two, encouraged a “celular” outlook, and militated against functional organisation and coordination’.63 ‘Knowledge management’ theory would assess such arrangements as militating against the construction of an effective ‘learning organisation’. The history of information systems in MI5 between 1909 and 1945 thus reinforces the argument that the formal recognition of the value of information 58 59

60 61

62 63

Ibid. Mention of punched-card technology is made in, for instance, National Archives, KV4/3, minute 27 on Curry History, by Sir David Petrie (13 April 1946). See National Archives, KV4/19. As indicated by the introduction of a process based operation, National Archives, KV4/2, p. 272. National Archives, KV4/19. National Archives, KV4/19.

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management in organisations occurred well before the onset of the computer age. Over the course of its first decade MI5 developed a relatively efficient, labourintensive information management infrastructure. By contrast, the inter-war period witnessed a deterioration of information management in MI5 and a reluctance to look outside the organisation to contemporary practice in business and, indeed, libraries; leading to the virtual collapse of the organisation’s information system at the start of the Second World War. However, this crisis offered opportunities for renewal along more mechanised and systematic lines. By 1945 MI5’s information management capability had recovered considerably. Private Enterprise: Company Magazines and Written Protocols The Company Magazine For over a century one of the main methods of communicating information in organisations, and sometimes externally indeed, has been the in-house staff magazine. In large and even medium-size companies such publications were commonplace, certainly by the middle of the twentieth century. For example, a survey conducted by the Office Management Association in 1952 (p. 29) found that out of 323 firms questioned, 136 (or 42%) produced a house magazine for staff. During the period under consideration here, company magazines were deemed to be effective vehicles for transmitting to the workforce, including managers, a company’s culture; this being its system of shared values and its strategic direction. Whether a company’s orientation was paternalistic or bureaucratic, in-house journalism was believed to be a powerful instrument of business leadership and organisational learning, and a key medium for diffusing knowledge to all levels of the company, from boardroom to shop-floor (Griffiths, 1996). A major purpose of the company magazine, throughout its history, has been to spread propaganda. As a historical source company magazines offer a ‘snapshot in time of how the boardroom wished the employee to perceive the organisation’ (Griffiths 1999, p. 29). Griffiths (1999) argues that, generally, management has historically viewed company magazines as a means of moulding staff to fulfil three roles, that of: ambassador (to be courteous in communication with ‘outside’ parties); salesman (to vigorously promote the interests of the company) and activist (employees being asked to become activists in support of wider political, legal and economic issues facing the company – hence leading to content on the economy, labour relations, protection, relevant industrial and commercial legislation etc.). According to Bentley (1953), the purpose of the company magazine was to act as the company’s mouthpiece: to explain and interpret company policy, to inform workers what was expected of them and to promote ‘obedience to rules and regulations by pointing out the reasons why conformity is essential’ (p. 4). Magazines could help make the worker ‘company minded’ (p. 30), build morale and unity, and break down cliques. They could humanise the employer and act as a spur, or ‘spark plug’ (p. 4), to employee efficiency, which was duly recognised in the publicity afforded by the magazine. Promotions and initiatives could be highlighted in a ‘hall of fame’ (p. 35) fashion. Finally, Bentley explained the

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importance of a magazine educating its readers, to enable the reader ‘to look beyond his immediate job’ (p. 81) and learn about wider matters affecting the company’s business. A study of late-twentieth-century company magazines by Spurr (1990) revealed that managers tend to use them as a means of advertising the success and cohesiveness of their organisations, and of motivating the workforce thereby. This was also the case with regard to earlier in-house journalism. For example, the importance of the magazine to organisational morale during the Second World War was highlighted in a conference called by the Industrial Welfare Association in November 1939, which was reported on by Mass Observation under its remit of monitoring popular attitudes to the war.64 One of the aims of the early in-house staff magazine was to disseminate knowledge in a top-down fashion, as a means of underpinning corporate policy and practices. However, it should be emphasised that staff often featured in magazines, especially in respect of the social side of company life. In the 1930s, for example, each issue of the staff magazine of the Shell Oil Company, aptly named The Pipe Line, carried a headline message from the editor requesting contributions – ‘news items, articles, verses, photographs, sketches etc.’ – from members of the staff. Much of the issue of 21 January 1931, for example, was devoted to staff, including: news from the company’s workers in the Dutch East Indies; reports of births of children to company employees; news about personnel changes gathered from installations and divisions of the company around the country; obituaries and news of social activities and clubs. The authentic company magazine underpinned a strategy of communication both up and down the hierarchy as well as horizontally between staff on the same level. An example of one such publication was produced by the Special Libraries Association (USA). In 1952 the Association launched a new ‘experiment in communication’: an ephemeral newsletter designed to help the many members of the organisation’s executive board and advisory committee ‘become better acquainted with some of the problems and activities of SLA’ in the periods between meetings. This was not seen as a top-down exercise, but as a means of encouraging bottom-up thinking in the organisation: ‘you are an active member of the great policy-making body that really runs the SLA. It is in your power to originate policy ideas, to bring them to the attention of the association’s officers, to urge and work for their acceptance’. The newsletter raised and discussed issues informally, and included some cartoons, in the tradition of the ‘democratic’ company staff magazine.65 Most company magazines, however, were exactly that, magazines of the company, funded and edited by the company, and produced in the name of the company, even though material to fill the pages of the publication may have emanated from the staff. Few magazines were edited and produced solely by the workforce. One such ‘authentic’ publication was Costing Comments, an ephemeral magazine produced for a brief period (1930–32) by staff in one of the numerous 64

65

‘Report on works magazines’ (8 March 1940), Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex. The author of this report also examined the contents of 18 different magazines, looking for ways, both ‘sombering and heartening’, as he put it, in which the war was being portrayed. No title. Special Libraries Association Archive, Washington DC.

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departments of the Prudential Assurance Company. Each issue contained a mock, comical monthly diary of events. Some issues contained news cuttings and photographs, accompanied by humorous commentary. The new year resolution of one member of staff was reported as: ‘Never to make eyes at the “fairer sex” nor to go to the pictures less than 52 times this year. Will try to break all previous records’.66 The magazine was not overtly ‘political’ or conflictual, in the ‘industrial relations’ sense, but it did try to subvert ‘establishment’ culture by poking fun at office life and its bureaucratic procedures, not least timekeeping. The Prudential’s official magazine was The Prudential Bulletin, which was first published in May 1920. The company believed that the Bulletin, ‘by supplying timely information on knotty points and general matters as they crop up, will avoid a great deal of correspondence and, to use a hackneyed phrase, “supply a long-felt want”’. The first number of the magazine was said to assume: the character of a composite circular containing useful hints from various Departments upon points that are continually arising in the course of correspondence received from the outdoor staff. Although this will be its chief function, it by no means exhausts its possibilities of usefulness. From time to time it is proposed to publish chatty and helpful articles upon current insurance topics … and to give and receive through its columns a steady stream of mutual assistance.67

The sub-title of the Bulletin revealed its knowledge and information management purpose: ‘A medium for the circulation of official instructions and other matters of interest to staff.’ This purpose was recognised by one of its readers when in its second issue he described the magazine as ‘A Mart and Exchange of Prudential ideas’.68 The Bulletin was also used by management to rally the troops with articles carrying titles like ‘Enthusiasm’ (September 1922), ‘Optimism’ (March 1923) and ‘Survival of the Fittest’ (May 1923). Magazines were also produced in the Prudential at the divisional and district levels. The bulletin of the company’s ‘I’ Division (covering East Anglia), named The Optician, effectively attempted to do the same job as the company’s main magazine, although with a more ephemeral format. An example of the district magazine was The Review: a Record of Our Work in the Ealing District, a primary purpose of which was to publicise, in the form of a league table, business brought in by individual staff (the district’s motto being ‘On Top’). An example of an autonomous staff magazine later transformed into an organ of the company was the publication produced, in the 1930s, by the staff of the construction company Wates, founded in London in 1897. The first issue of the magazine (in 1935), entitled Wates House News, and sub-titled Building for the Future, announced that it was ‘a journal produced by and in the interests of the staff of the House of Wates’. Under the headline ‘Ourselves’, the magazine’s opening editorial explained that: ‘this is a staff magazine in the real sense – written and produced by members of the staff of Wates. Whether it is good or otherwise

66 67 68

Costing Comments, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1931), Prudential Archives. Editorial, The Prudential Bulletin (May 1920). The Prudential Bulletin (June 1920).

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depends entirely on ourselves’.69 The company’s directors provided the means and the facilities to produce the journal. The company’s chairman was in no doubt as to the value of the journal for what is now termed ‘organisational learning’. In a personal message printed in the inaugural issue, he noted a real need for a journal which will help to knit us together and to keep each in touch with the activities of the other … the magazine, which, whilst retaining its light and humorous side, can also do a great deal of good in disseminating some of the vast store of expert knowledge which is available in the firm … I hope that the serious and educational side will receive its due share of attention.70

As the years passed, the knowledge management function of the journal – later renamed Wates News Sheet, and then Wates News – intensified; although it is to be stressed that the softer, motivational side, encompassing direct messages from higher management, did not disappear.71 The typical content of the journal by the late 1940s comprised news about people in the company, including obituaries and sport and leisure activities, but it also contained news about contracts, building technology and the building industry generally, as well as wider issues like the economy and the labour market. The need to share knowledge was emphasised by the operation of a ‘suggestions scheme’ on technical matters, publicised and run by the journal before the war, and resurrected in 1949.72 It was also encapsulated by coverage of the work of the various departments in the company in ‘around the organisation’ type of articles.73 One department featured, in 1953, was the Commercial Department, responsible for the publication of the company journal, the prime purpose of which was said to be the conveying of news ‘about the company to those who find employment in it’.74 The management of knowledge was also to the fore in the minds of those who ran the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, or BP) in the 1920s. Its in-house journal, Naft-i-Iran [Oil in Iran] was inaugurated in 1924 (after the first issue the name was changed to the APOC Magazine [Anglo-Persian Oil Company magazine], and in the 1950s was re-named the BP Magazine). The one and only issue of Naft-i-Iran carried the following foreword from the company’s chairman, Sir Charles Greenway: This is a company of which we can all be proud. Its very immensity, however, and the rapidity with which it has developed, make it that much more difficult for the individual worker to keep in touch with all its activities. The salesman is apt to forget the chemist, the refiner may overlook the work of the engineer, both are perhaps not so much aware as they should be of the officers and crews who conduct 69 70 71

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Wates House News, No. 1 (1935), p. 1, Wates Archives. Ibid., p. 2. E.g., see ‘A message from the Directors’, Wates News Sheet, No. 20 (21 June 1940), and ‘The Directors: new year message’, Wates News Sheet, No. 34 (3 January 1941), Wates Archives. ‘A new suggestion scheme’, Wates News, Vol. 7, No. 4 (April 1949), Wates Archives. E.g., ‘We have to be fast: typing in the Sales Department is a real hustle’, Wates House News, No. 1 (June 1935), p. 7, Wates Archives. ‘Departments at work, 8 – Commercial’, Wates News (February 1953), Wates Archives.

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our tankers over the oceans, and all know little of the geologist who seeks oil for us in every corner of the earth. It is important, therefore, that the members of all these different branches of the Company’s operations should be brought into touch with one another and that everyone should become familiar not only with its own special field of work but with what is being done by others to assist in building up and consolidating the structure of this huge undertaking. This is the purpose and ideal which have led to the publication of a Company magazine. I feel confident that it will be welcomed by the whole of the staff and that they will cooperate to make it interesting, useful in the best sense, and in every way representative. The hope is that it will form an attractive record of our activities and interests, that it will increase our knowledge of our own Company and of the oil industry in general, that it will make everyone better acquainted with the various branches of the organization, and that in doing so it will increase the pleasure we take in our work and heighten our devotion to the great Company to which we are all proud to belong.75

Testimony to the importance of in-house journalism to a company like BP was the fact that by 1956 the circulation of the magazine, which ran to 56 pages in the August issue of that year, was 21,000. It was said that: Liaison is established with the various associated and subsidiary companies from whose [sic] articles and interesting items of news are received from time to time. The aim is to produce a public covering a wide field, covering in fact the complete orbit of the company.76

BP’s core house journal was supplemented by house journals in a number of the countries where the conglomerate operated, including: Belgium (BP Interim); Denmark (BP Nyheder); France (Le Trait d’Union): Germany (BP Kurier): Holland (BP Spiegel); Norway (BP Nytt) and New Zealand (The BP Recorder).77 It was recognised, therefore, that organisational learning in multi-national environment could not be centralised, and that knowledge of the company and its activities could only be managed and created through ‘local’ communication. Efficiency-generating organisational learning was a prime motive in the provision of a series of company magazines in another industrial, and eventually multi-national, giant, the soap manufacturer Lever Brothers. Founded in the 1880s, the centre of Lever Brothers’ operations was the industrial utopia of Port Sunlight on the Wirral, comprising a model factory and village and a range of welfare measures for workers. The company’s paternalistic management style placed a premium on effective communication with the workforce, and the company magazine was an important element in this. The company’s first magazine, the Port Sunlight Monthly Journal, established in 1895, styled itself as ‘an amateur magazine written by and for the employees’.78 The journal was promoted as an instrument for organisational cohesion and was seen as ‘by far the best means of combining the component parts of our varied

75 76 77 78

Quoted in ‘BP house journals’, BP Magazine, Vol. XXXII, No. 4 (August 1956), p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 4–7. Stated on title page of Port Sunlight Monthly Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1896).

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[company] life into a whole’.79 Cohesion through the communication of information and the building of knowledge in the workforce was the stated aim of the successor publication to the Port Sunlight Monthly Journal. In 1899 the company launched Progress, an in-house journal: Printed and Published specially as a means of inter-communication between the HEAD OFFICE and WORKS at PORT SUNLIGHT, the BRANCH OFFICES in the UNITED KINGDOM, and the OFFICES, AGENCIES, OIL MILLS and AFFILIATED COMPANIES Abroad.80

The magazine was ultimately a company project – ‘We want our readers to write it and we shall edit it [my emphasis]’,81 declared the company; and intrinsic to the project was the desire to see the organisation learn more effectively. The magazine was seen as a substitute for the decline in personal communication between management and worker which was a natural consequence of the enlargement of the firm. More than this, however, it was seen as a way of bringing the workforce into contact with each other: ‘the vehicle of inter–communication between all the members of our staff in all parts of the world’.82 By the early 1920s Progress had secured a massive circulation of a quarter of a million worldwide, and was said ‘to appeal to the great Lever Brotherhood in every land’.83 However, as in the case of BP, as time passed and the company became more global it made sense to supplement it with local, ‘satellite’ publications. One such publication was Inspan, the quarterly magazine of the Lever Brothers and Associated companies in South Africa. One of the main functions of Inspan was to assist employees in gaining knowledge about what was happening elsewhere in the company. In the first issue the chairman of the South African group wrote: I think that if ‘Inspan’ takes you round the factories and offices and introduces you to the people in them by words and pictures; if it tells you something about the other fellow’s job; something about the history of the different branches; if it describes to you the part each of you take in the organisation’s work and play – then you will become more intimately associated with the business family to which you belong.84

This philosophy was in the tradition of the ‘on the ground’ organisational learning practiced at Port Sunlight earlier in the century when there operated ‘a system of periodic visits of the foremen and managers of each department through the whole of the rest of the works’ in an effort to further the exchange of ideas.85 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

Ibid., p. 2. Stated on title page of Progress, Vol. 1, No. 13 (October 1900). Progress, Vol. 1, No. 1 (October 1899), p. 2. One magazine produced in the company, however, does appear to have been a publication produced and edited solely by staff. This was The Call to Arms, a monthly journal inaugurated in 1916, the first issue of which carried the following statement of purpose: ‘for the information and entertainment of the brave lads who are serving King and country in the Great War’. Ibid. Port Sunlight News, Vol. 1, No. 1 (November 1922), p. 1. Inspan, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 1949), p. 1. Standardizing Welfare: An Address by Lord Leverhulme to the Students of Sheffield University, September 24th, 1917 (Port Sunlight: Lever Brothers, 1917), p. 6.

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Finally, a later notable example of organisation learning was the ‘ask the management’ columns which appeared in the company’s magazine LBA [Lever Brother’s and Associates] New Deal in the 1960s, where senior members of the company would respond in print to questions posed by the workforce.86 Whether or not such efforts were genuine attempts to communicate with the workforce, by about this time, against the backdrop of ‘combustible days in industrial relations’, some managers, including Peter Parker, Chair of the Rockware Group, were beginning to wonder if the company magazine enhanced the idea that ‘a freer flow of information through multi-channel communications systems can improve management, quite as much as shop floor performance’ (Parker, 1973, pp. 1, 3). The Protocol If the company magazine was an informal way of spreading information and creating knowledge in organisations, the written protocol (formal procedure) was the traditional and bureaucratic method. As early as the late-seventeenth century, some commercial organisations were keen to set down formal procedures for everyday working practices in writing and disseminate these to employees. The Hudson Bay Company, which had its headquarters in London, insisted from the outset of its operations in 1670 on good documentary communication from its officers (known as ‘factors’) who supervised trapping operations in the Canadian wilderness. Officers were required to send back annually letters, reports, journals (with daily entries) and financial accounts. This information was required by the Company in order to determine the benefit of each trapping post (or ‘factory’) relative to cost. In return, officers received written instructions, admonitions and evaluations of past actions. By the late-eighteenth century the Company was requesting a large amount of the information it required in the form of lists organised according to given forms and headings, as opposed to information provided in narrative accounts. However, despite the relatively prescriptive and controlling information management regime operated by the Company, because of the large distance between its headquarters in London and its Canadian outposts, officers were expected to use their judgement and discretion: trust compensated for the unavoidable deficiencies in the information management system (O’Leary, Orlikowski and Yates 2002). Also focusing on the pre-industrial period, Price (1987) has revealed the inner life and procedures of the merchant firm, with a particular emphasis on the organisation of bookkeeping in the counting house of Herries and Co., London. Price makes use of a memorandum on the directing and conduct of the business issued in 1766 in which the daily practices of the clerks are set out in detail. Interestingly, from a knowledge management perspective, clerks were expected to use their spare time to read the firm’s letter and memorandum books in order to familiarise themselves with all aspects of the business (p. 136). The appearance of such protocols before the industrial revolution and the impetus to efficiency and organisation which this gave, might seem surprising. However, they were arguably a reflection of the rational thinking ushered in by the 86

E.g., see Vol. 1, No. 1 (1962), pp. 4–5.

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Enlightenment which brought a change of mentality even at the personal level, as reflected in the proliferation from the late-seventeenth century of conduct books, essentially personal protocols, which laid down expected modes of behaviour in civil society (St. Clair 2002). As companies became larger and their workforces and operations more dispersed, knowledge management, including the deployment of organisational protocols, took on greater importance.87 In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a prime example of the large-scale, dispersed firm was the Prudential Assurance Company.88 During this period, despite the much lower living standards that existed compared to today, thrift was big business and was promoted as a key weapon in the ‘battle for life’.89 Tapping into this culture of saving, by 1891 the Prudential was controlling nine million policies, most of them promising modest payments on death to cover funeral expenses. Premiums were collected weekly, which translated into around 470 million transactions per year, each of which had to be recorded both locally, by the collector, and centrally. Collection work was undertaken by an army of over 11,000 field agents (a number which exceeded that of the first army corps based in Aldershot).90 Work in the field was supported by another army: swathes of clerical workers, in the company’s London head office, which by 1905 numbered 1500 (1200 men and 300 women).91 The company was said to be ‘possessed of an organisation which for accuracy, mastery of detail, and marvellous method of working, is simply unrivalled’; and one contemporary observer commented on ‘the supreme organising spirit which

87

88 89

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91

The focus here is on the medium- and long-term protocol. A very perishable type of protocol, forming part of F.W. Taylor’s theory of scientific management, was the ‘instruction card’, or ‘work ticket’. Issued a day in advance, these documents contained instructions from managers detailing tasks to be accomplished and how they would be carried out. See Braverman (1974, p. 118). For a general history of the Prudential, see Dennett (1998). H. Risborough Sherman, ‘Industrial insurance: the best means of improving the condition of the poor’, Insurance Guardian (March 1890). ‘Prudential Assurance Company’, The Review: An Insurance and Financial Journal (11 March 1891). ‘A romance of business building: head offices of the Prudential Assurance Company Limited’, Aberdeen Daily Journal (27 March 1905). For an account of the female workforce, see Jordan (1996). ‘Army’ is not an idle metaphor in this regard. By the early-twentieth century it might easily have been said that an army marched as much on its protocol as on its stomach. The protocol had long existed in the form (in Queen Victoria’s reign) of The Queen’s Regulations and Orders of the Army. Supplementary protocols were also issued: e.g., Royal Warrant: Revised Schedule of Barrack Furniture (1872) and G.J. Wolseley’s Soldier’s Pocket Book for Field Service (1869 and later editions). Around the turn of the century niche protocols began to proliferate: e.g., W. Gordon’s Battalion Drill Made Easy (1884) and the Field Service Manual series, whose sub-titles included Cavalry Regiment (1907), Infantry Battalion (1907), Army Medical Service (1908) and Royal Engineers – Divisional Telegraph Company (1908). See Raugh (2004, p, 308). My thanks to Miriam Wells and the library of the Halifax Citadel Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for information on these matters, including the gift of a copy of W. Naftel’s, The Guardroom and the Guard (1991), an unpublished typescript containing numerous references to, and examples of, historic army protocols.

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runs through this extraordinary institution’.92 The company boasted that ‘Progress and the Prudential are practically synonymous terms’.93 The operations of the Prudential were, as Campbell-Kelly (1992) has revealed, a miracle of data processing in an age without computers. This was delivered through: a combination of assiduous clerical work; the gradual, organic development of a system ‘as near perfect as human beings can devise’;94 and the ready adoption of new office technologies such as calculating, accounting and punch-card machines. An efficient communications infrastructure was also put in place. This included its own, internal Post Office branch95 and an electrical signalling system between departments (Dennett 1998, note 22). Internal communication was enhanced by a pneumatic-tube messaging system: Rapid communication between the six floors of the building is maintained by means of an elaborate system of pneumatic tubes. From every office a tube leads to a sort of exchange room near the middle of the building. Here thirty-four tubes are constantly delivering documents from all parts of the establishment. Each one bears the number of the department for which it is intended, and the attendant slips it into the proper tube, touches an electric bell, and the next moment the package is delivered at its destination.96

Although the story of data processing in the Prudential has been the subject of expert research (Campbell-Kelly 1992), there has been no focus on the history of the softer side of information management in the company. Being ‘a vast collecting and distributing institution’,97 a main problem facing the company was quality control of a dispersed workforce of agents who constituted what was termed the ‘out-door organisation’.98 Control of agents was centralised in the company’s stateof–the-art London offices at Holborn Bars, which issued directives through, and received information from, a network of district offices, to which field staff were attached. In an internal overview of the organisation in 1928, the whole system was awarded an anatomical metaphor: The function of the Chief Office in relation to the Company’s interests is as the brain to the human body. It controls the limbs and muscles represented by the District Office and the Field Staff.99

92 93 94

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97 98

99

‘Prudential Assurance Company’, op. cit. The Prudential Bulletin (January 1923). ‘A romance of business building: head offices of the Prudential Assurance Company Limited’, Aberdeen Daily Journal (27 March 1905). ‘Prudential Assurance Company’, The Review: An Insurance and Financial Journal (11 March 1891). ‘Big business – XI: all about the Prudential. The biggest insurance business on earth’, from an 1892 issue of Pearson’s Weekley, Prudential Archives. Sir William Schooling, ‘Insurance’, Daily Telegraph (7 March 1927). ‘The Prudential – visit to the office: description of its organisation’, Insurance Guardian (c. 1890), p. 2, Prudential Archives. ‘A few facts about the Prudential Assurance Company Ltd.’ (c. 1928), Prudential Archives.

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Like signals from the brain, a constant stream of information was distributed from the ‘indoor’ to the ‘out-door’ organisation. Although field agents were naturally allowed to use a certain amount of discretion, the control system in the Prudential was comprehensive and was designed ‘primarily to ensure that the administrative procedures laid down were fully and properly carried out’.100 Information flowed both to and from the centre. Data delivered to the centre included agents’ account books, which were copied into duplicate ledgers by head office clerks. Fundamentally more important, however, was the information and protocols sent out to agents. The ‘out-door’ organisation learned by means of distributed handbooks and instructions, as well as the occasional training lecture.101 The provision of detailed instructions to field staff was a characteristic of the Prudential’s operations from the outset, and as the decades passed the information imparted greatly increased. Knowledge was accumulated by staff through the distribution of circular letters, notes, memoranda, handbooks and manuals.102 In addition, spreadsheets were a particularly efficient method of simplifying for staff the complex formulae used to determine settlements: that is to say, what the company would pay out according to size of premium, age, and length of investment.103 Prompted by the boost given to insurance by the National Insurance Act (1911),104 the Prudential produced a full account of the organisational and administrative arrangements – A description of … organisation and working methods – employed by its various departments and employees, including its field operatives.105 This ‘overview’ manual was supplemented by targeted protocols. Also, in 1911, rules for district office operations were distributed. These populated an 18 page booklet, which by 1949 had expanded to 112 pages.106 Instruction booklets for district offices were themselves supplemented by other knowledge tools.107 The protocol was also crucial to the business life of Rowntree and Co. Until 1922 responsibility for factory and office rules, procedures and discipline rested with the factory manager. After this date, responsibility was transferred to an 100

‘Archive note: an outline of the organization of the UK field force of the Prudential Assurance Co. Ltd. 1946–1986 and its administrative control’, Prudential Archives. 101 Sir William Schooling, ‘Insurance’, Daily Telegraph (7 March 1927). 102 These are preserved in several sources in the Prudential Archives: ‘IB memo book’ (1880–1918); ‘IB Department instructions’ (1906–1921); ‘GB Department instructions’ (1951–53); ‘Audit Department memo book’ (1879–90); ‘Circulars’ (volumes covering the 1920s). 103 ‘Special prospectus: for old age endowment combined with life assurance from infancy to age sixty five’, in ‘IB memo book 1880–1918’, Prudential Archives. 104 The Act introduced compulsory state insurance for sickness and unemployment to a selection of skilled trades. 105 The Chief Office of the Prudential Assurance Company Limited, ‘A description of its organization and working methods employed by the various departments in their relations with each other, the outdoor staff and the public’ (June 1911), Prudential Archives. 106 ‘District offices: special instructions’ (1911) and ‘Instructions for District Offices’ (1949), Prudential Archives. 107 E.g., see ‘Manual of District Administration’ (1956) and ‘Manual of Section Administration’ (1956), Prudential Archives.

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Organisational Office, whose job it was to issue protocols in the form of ‘standing orders’ and ‘instructions’. These were essentially handbooks (issued to managers and directors, and sometimes overlookers) which were returned to the Organisational Office at regular intervals for amendment. The Office also issued a weekly Bulletin containing information on: appointments and promotions of directors, managers, section heads and higher grade overlookers; new posts created; departments created, abolished or re-organized; the transfer of responsibilities between departments; changes in procedures, rules and policies relating to wages, overtime, unemployment, pensions, holidays, health, safety, disciplinary matters and hygiene. The Bulletin also served as a ‘works diary’, providing dates and details of general holidays, absences of managers, stocktaking, cleaning and painting, and information about lectures, classes and special events.108 To keep track of protocols the Organisational Office set up its own registry, a master source for the functions and responsibilities of each department.109 Such was the level of bureaucratic rigour in the company that an ‘instruction’ even existed, produced by the company librarian, on how to organise a file of ‘instructions’!110 The protocols described above – whether issued by pre-industrial enterprises like the Hudson Bay Company and Harries and Co., or by giants of the industrial age like the Prudential and Rowntree – were early manifestations of what has now been theorised as information and knowledge management. Complex operations require clear rules of procedure to be laid down in documents; and the more complex organisations become, the greater the need for written protocols. Protocols appeared and proliferated pragmatically, in response to practical organisational needs. However, by the mid-twentieth century they had securely entered management theory, being prescribed as an indispensable aspect of modern business life. What (Trundle 1948, p. 62) termed ‘manuals of standard practice’, or ‘detailed instructions covering all important systematic procedures’, should be written, he advised, In accordance with a prescribed format, each one being positively identified, preferably by title and number, and correctly indexed for ready reference. These manuals should, of course, be continually subject to change because of constant endeavour to improve routine procedures and to increase their effectiveness.

Such management theory was essentially aimed at the commercial sphere, but nowhere was the procedural manual, or protocol, more fundamental to operations than in the non-profit setting of the library and in no occupation was it more celebrated than among professional librarians.

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Documents mentioned here can be found in R/DH/00, Rowntree and Co. Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. See Rowntree and Co. Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York, R/DH/00/10– 13. Part of this registry is extant, in the form of the original annotated cards and files. See Rowntree and Co. Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York, R/DH/00/14/10.

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Libraries The hard-nosed, business-centred concepts of information management and the ‘sweetness and light’, book-centred world of librarianship would appear, at first glance, to have little in common. The main point of departure between the two is the contexts in which the practices have historically operated. Librarianship’s anchorage has largely been in the public sphere, its responsibility being mostly for public domain information. Information management’s anchorage, on the other hand, has essentially been inside the organisation, its central concern being the communication of information, often internally generated. Despite this apparent tension, in recent years librarians have increasingly positioned themselves as information, and even knowledge, managers. One of the reasons they have been able to do this is the fact that for a long time, even before the arrival of the computer, librarians have patently practised information management techniques. There is a considerable amount of overlap between the historic practices of information management and librarianship. In fact, one can even go so far as to argue that they make natural bedfellows. The modern library, dating from the end of the nineteenth century, when professional librarianship emerged (the Library Association of the UK was established in 1877), has operated according to the prime characteristics of modern production, identified by Hales (1982, pp. 182–3) as mechanisation, fragmentation, routinisation and hierarchy. In the period under consideration, library mechanisation took the form of indicator boards to track circulation and punchedcard machines for bibliographic control (the first use of computers in libraries did not occur until the 1960s). Fragmentation was evident in terms of the design of detailed, bounded tasks according to a detailed division of labour. Routinisation was evident in the exact repetition of tasks. The existence of hierarchy was reflected in the strict supervision of staff, either by physical overseeing or by written rules and procedures. Contrary to their image as places of enlightenment, intellectual endeavour and spiritual enrichment, libraries of all kinds have echoed the practical, machine mentality of our industrialised world. The modern bureaucracy which librarians have historically embraced is the organisational equivalent of the machine, for like a machine, bureaucracy operates in a pre-planned, rational and systematic way, the aim being to reduce or eliminate human error. Librarians in the modern era have naturally viewed their institutions as storehouses of knowledge, but they have also conceptualised them as working machines, functioning according to an orderly system. The bureaucratic, information management credentials of librarianship are most clearly visible in the clichéd popular image of the librarian as a rule-bound, recordobsessed gatekeeper. Whereas one should always be wary of stereotypes, there is perhaps more than just a kernel of truth in the librarian-as-bureaucrat image. In 1896 (p. 540) the librarian Basil Anderton warned of the dangers of overinvestment in bureaucratic methods: ‘don’t let the method overrule the work’, he pleaded, citing the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit. Four years later he mapped out in detail the bureaucratic terrain of professional librarianship; his fellow professionals, he explained, had:

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in many cases, to examine and sign all accounts for books, for magazines, for salaries, for binding, for indicators, and for various new fittings ranging from brooms to electric lamps from dirt to sweetness and light ... Next there are the receipts from fines ... on overdue or damaged books, from the sale of catalogues, etc., etc., which must all be checked and certified. Moreover, the librarian must prepare his annual estimates of expenditure, and be ready to discuss and uphold them; he must submit his annual report, his occasional reports (on, say, salaries and hours of staff, increased shelving accommodation, and the like) … Sometimes too a committee may desire comparative statistical tables – tables which take, in the procuring and arranging of the material, considerable time and labour. Add to these things the correspondence, and you have perhaps, apart from the preparation of book-lists and some work in cataloguing, the bulk of the employments in which the librarian must personally spend his time. It will be seen at a glance that a great deal of this work is rather the work of a managing secretary than of a bookman or librarian as such (Anderton, 1900, pp. 634–5, 639).

J.J. Ogle (1897, p. 56) painted a similar picture of the cultured librarian performing the role of the information manager, or ‘bureaucratic policeman’, when he asked that it: be remembered that a librarian has to know the leading provisions of the law relating to libraries; to act as a clerk and adviser to his Committee ... and to control and regulate the service, to be somewhat of an accountant; to devise a variety of special record books for special needs; to draw up rules and regulations ... in short, the librarian is expected to be a good part of a scholar, a greater part of a man of business and a little of a diplomat.

M.S.R. James (1892, p. 313), one of the few female librarians of the period, concurred with the belief that ‘there is no profession the petty details of which are harder to grasp than ours’. Such administrative responsibilities and attention to bureaucratic detail have been the driving force behind modern librarianship. Early-twentieth-century librarians operated according to a new ‘library economy’. Librarians spoke of the ‘external’ and ‘internal’ economy of the library, the former comprising such areas as registration of users, circulation of books, readers’ advice, and design; the latter comprising accession, maintenance, repair, cataloguing, and other back-room duties (Anderton, 1896, p. 539). Librarians sought a systematic approach to their work; and the systems they developed were enshrined in the many library manuals which began to appear from the late-nineteenth century onwards (e.g., J. Brown, 1898; J. Brown, 1903; Doubleday, 1933; E. Edwards, 1859; Enser, 1950; Libraco Ltd., 1909; Manual of Modern Library Method, 1931; Roebuck and Thorne, 1904). Although library manuals date back to the seventeenth century,111 by the twentieth century they had become highly structured, detailed, and authoritative, and were replete with examples of standardised forms and timetables, these being at the heart of the modern, bureaucratic organisation.

111

The first was produced in 1627 by Gabriel Naudé, librarian to Cardinal Mazarin in Paris, entitled Advis Pour Dresser une Biblioteque [Instructions Concerning Erecting a Library]: see Smith (1899).

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Adherence to documented systems reduced the need for physical supervision of library staff. This is not to say physical supervision was not important to library management. Senior library assistants and deputy librarians acted as ‘library foremen’; the foreman serving, historically, an important ‘influence centre’ in the communication system of an organisation (Dunkerley, 1975, p. 24). However, despite the pivotal role played by middle grades in the library hierarchy, librarians sought to by-pass these by instituting tight, and often documented, regimes of work practice, in preference to ‘paternalistic bureaucracy’ (K. Jones, 1984, p. 19). Early librarians embraced ‘system’ by analysing and depicting in detail the various sequences involved in the process of uniting reader with book, sometimes represented graphically in logical, step-by-step flow charts (J. Brown, 1897, p. 77); and they marched in time with contemporary developments in scientific management which, if anything, quickened as the twentieth century progressed (Dougherty and Heinritz, 1966). Librarians were as intensely bureaucratic as the big business organizations researched by Chandler (1977) and Yates (1989), displaying all the paraphernalia of modern organisational information processing and handling: tabulated data; rigid timetables; standardised forms; internal memos; operational manuals; staff magazines; new filing technologies; and detailed accounting. Library management required statistical adroitness (Library Statistics, 1907). Librarians were also at the cutting edge of the new technologies of management. As a young librarian in Croydon, Stanley Jast instituted a number of technological reforms, including the linking of branches by telephone (Croydon Public Libraries, 1907). Few librarians could ignore the usefulness of the typewriter, advertisements for which appeared regularly in the library press. Advocacy of the typewriter by librarians was enthusiastic: in respect of cataloguing, for example, the typewriter was praised for its ‘uniform excellence of production’ (Vine, 1901, p. 117). Librarians believed that they were very much part of the broader revolution in management and information handling in organisations. The logical operational regimes which librarians produced are evidence of this; while the convergence between an ostensibly cultural institution and the business world was further illustrated by the emergence in Britain of Libraco Ltd. (1909), which aimed to supply modern, mechanical information technologies to the library world and beyond.112 In true information management fashion librarians engaged in internal information gathering exercises. Annual reports from the period are rich in statistical and qualitative data on such aspects of library operations as: levels of stock and loans, each classified according to subject; size of membership and its occupational status; use of libraries segmented by gender and age; and breakdowns 112

This also occurred in the United States where Melvil Dewey emphasised the importance of techno-bureaucratic efficiency both in the library systems he managed and in the company he ran supplying the information technologies of the day to the world of business. Of note here is the substantial trade in index card systems Dewey built up among banks, railroads and government departments (Wiegand, 1996, p. 111). Interestingly, in the 1890s the librarian Cedric Chivers was managing a British branch of Dewey’s Library Bureau; and Paul Otlet was frequently writing to him for supplies of index cards and cabinets: correspondence from Boyd Rayward (27 April 2006).

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of income and, more often, expenditure. Librarians and supporting agencies were also active in collecting data on the wider library picture, through various national surveys (e.g., Board of Education Public Libraries Committee, 1927; McColvin, 1942).113 The information management role of librarians was especially evident in their construction of systems for retrieving information. In 1918, the Library Association Record (pp. 119–20) observed that any library is a combination of three factors: books, buildings and brains. Regarding the last of these, ideally what was required in the emergent world of information, said the journal, was a librarian with a sound knowledge of the subject matter to be dealt with, in order to be able to arrange material ‘in the best way and to provide the best catalogue and index keys’. The development of classification schemes and cataloguing methods (Bowman, 2005; Bowman, 2006; Brunt, 2006) were a sophisticated form of information management prosecuted by librarians long before the term was invented, outside the library world, in the late-twentieth century. The In-House Technical Library Early-twentieth-century librarians were adept information managers, even if they failed to realise it. Information management expertise was nowhere more thoroughly displayed by librarians than in the world of the company library, which, as Chapter 5 explores in detail, became a common feature of corporate management from around the First World War onwards. Information management was a prime responsibility in many early company libraries. At the Manchester electrical engineering firm Metropolitan-Vickers, the Intelligence Section, established during the First World War, served as an important junction in the exchange of information between the various companies in the global corporation of which the company was a part; a role reflected by the fact that the department started life as the ‘Intelligence and Interchange [my emphasis] Section’.114 In other companies too in the early-twentieth century, the increasing internationalisation of capital and the emergence of trans-national corporate ownership placed a premium on the company library as an acknowledged and strategic intersection for the flow of information between the various arms of the corporation. In-house libraries contributed to the information management infrastructure of companies and conglomerates. The librarian was a conduit of information in the organisation, a crucial node in its system of knowledge, a person who over time gained knowledge of the organisation by fielding enquires from across it and who, by passing that knowledge on, helped build what in modern parlance is termed the ‘learning organisation’. As an early ASLIB guide noted: ‘His efficiency and usefulness will grow in proportion as his services are called upon and as he acquires knowledge of what every part of the organisation wants to know.’115 Librarians were more aware than most of the need to standardise operations: ‘Co113

114

115

See also, ‘Questionnaire to public libraries’ (1904), Library Association Archives, London University Archives. ‘Research Department report’ (1929) p. 32. Metropolitan-Vickers Archives, Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, 0531/19–24. ‘Draft for proposed Business Information Guide’ (c. 1929), Aslib Archives.

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ordination is lacking … Methods are not unified and work is duplicated’, declared ASLIB.116 There is evidence that libraries acted as repositories of last resort for organisational protocols. In planning the new library for the Post Office in the mid1930s, it was recommended that ‘the Library should contain complete sets of Post Office rules and instructions, and that these should be kept up-to-date by the Library staff’ (although the repository of official and historical documents remained the Records Room).117 As ‘switching centres’ contributing to what is now termed the ‘learning organisation’, company libraries oversaw the distribution of knowledge in the form of surveys of the literature, tailored bibliographies, technical periodicals and bulletins of abstracts. The essence of an industrial library was not in the intrinsic value of the books and periodicals it held, but in their ‘content, availability and immediate link with the current scene specifically as it concerns the firm’s people and products’ (Runton, 1957, p. 12). Once circulated, libraries retained materials for later consultation, appropriately indexed and sometimes ‘guillotined’ into pamphlets (discrete journal articles) or subject files. At a less technical level, some libraries maintained a service by which company employees were notified of forthcoming lectures, conferences and symposia covering subjects in which they were interested.118 Company libraries were primarily concerned with managing externally generated – essentially published < information, but some were also charged with a responsibility for storing and organising internally generated information, as well as external unpublished material such as correspondence. One company librarian’s advice that ‘there should be no room for misunderstanding as to whether, say, correspondence, patents, journals or reports are or are not included in its scope’ (Brightman, 1932, p. 2), illustrated clearly that the broad sweep of information management was, in practice, in some places, a legitimate library responsibility. In the 1940s it was reported that in the library of Mond Nickel Company Ltd.: Much unpublished information is available, and this is certainly being added to, for the department is shown all the correspondence and papers of the firm which can possibly contain anything useful (Roberts, 1949, p. 33).

In 1953 Brian Vickery (p. 5) observed that two types of literature – correspondence and reports – were creeping into special libraries, adding that: Particularly in the field of technology, it is found that every communication received or issued by members of a group may be of value to the group as a whole, and so letters, telegrams and even telephone calls are being brought under the bibliographic control of the library.

116

S.S. Bullock, ‘The organisation of information’, typescript (c. 1930), Aslib Archives. ‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee’ (August 1935), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. 118 GEC Research Laboratories, Readers’ Guide to the Library (London, 1957), p. 13. 117

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In fact, company libraries had long assumed the responsibility for storing and organising non-published documentation. A major role for the library of the East India Company in the first half of the nineteenth century was the reception, recording and storage of correspondence.119 The Kaiser system of indexing that many company libraries adopted in the twentieth century was designed to deal with internal as well as external information (Kaiser, 1908; Kaiser, 1911). Kaiser (1911, paragraphs 7 and 663) wrote that: ‘the indexes of our intelligence department must cover the entire stock of our information, including manuscripts’. Such a department, he added, must: include all reading matter used in a business, whether in manuscript, letter or book form etc, for it is essential that the information it contains, and which is useful from the standpoint of the business, should be dealt with on some uniform plan so that everything on a given subject may be available regardless of its literary form.

When a central library was being planned in ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) in 1928, it was advised that ‘to enable the librarian to be in a position to supply complete information on a given subject, all departmental technical reports, memoranda etc., at present filed in the Central Filing Department, should in future be deposited in the Central Library, or as an alternative, that this particular section of Mr. Barbour’s department [i.e. central filing] should be housed adjacent to the Central Library’.120 By mid-century this practice appears to have become fairly widespread. Madge Exley of the pharmaceutical company Boots reported that: ‘A librarian in a research organisation will almost certainly be responsible for the filing of reports issued by the departments or divisions of the organisation and by the various committees’, and that such items had to be securely housed, meticulously indexed and perhaps microfilmed (Exley, 1951, p. 171). Many documents generated in companies – most obviously technical reports but also memoranda and other communications – contained information on work at an advanced stage; and the best place for such confidential information, whilst leaving it accessible, was deemed to be in the library (Foskett, 1956a, p. 38). At Nobel Explosives in the early 1920s the librarian undertook a daily perusal of letters received the previous day in the Commercial Department. Letters containing useful technical information were selected and indexed, and the letters returned (Barbour, 1921, p. 169). By mid-century an information management role for ICI’s libraries was still visible. In the Dyestuffs Division Library the ‘Records and Reports Section’ had the responsibility for ‘the registration, care and distribution of the technical records and reports of the Division, and also for an increasing number of commercial, historical and miscellaneous reports and other records’, a total of approximately 150,000 different documents (Davidson and Fairbairn 1955, p. 405). Similarly at GEC, although the issuing and initial distribution of laboratory reports was handled by the Correspondence Office, copies were deposited in the library as a resource of last resort.121 119

120 121

‘East India Company Library Daybooks’, The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection, European Manuscripts, F303/1–8. ‘Report of the [ICI] Library Committee’ (1928), ICI Archives, ICI/93/29Y (Box 198). GEC Research Laboratories, Readers’ Guide to the Library (London, 1957), p. 12.

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It is evident, therefore, that from the outset information management, including records management, was an important function of many early-twentieth-century company libraries. In 1930 ASLIB was thus correct in offering the advice that: When the appointment of someone to be responsible for information is contemplated it will be found that there is much of existing administrative work of the business which would fall appropriately under the charge of the information department … In large businesses it is usually the case that parts of the work of all the other departments are better transferred to the new unit in the organisation which is specially expert in keeping records of information. Many businesses possess records of all sorts which might as well be burnt for all the value they are. In the hands of a man trained in the interpretation and presentation of information they would often be of vital importance.122

In the next chapter the functions and purpose of the company library in the first half of the twentieth century are explored further, with a view to establishing this relatively unknown type of library as an important element in the infrastructure of the early information society in Britain.

122

‘Draft for proposed Business Information Guide’ (c. 1930), Aslib Archives.

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Chapter 5

Enterprise and Intelligence: the Early Company Library in Context Alistair Black

The learning, or ‘knowledge/information managed’, organisation, as well as its parent concept of the new learning, or knowledge/information, economy, are key facets of the proposition that western societies have entered a fundamentally new phase of development as a result of rapid advances in digital technology. However, this proposition underplays the historic importance of knowledge, information and organisational learning to economic activity and performance. One example of the past intersection of economic development and of knowledge transfer, information management and organisational ‘intelligence’ is the in-house company library, which, having originated in the nineteenth century, became a feature of British corporate management after 1914, providing a nurturing environment for the emergence of embryonic information professionalism. Paying particular attention to the First World War and inter-war periods, this chapter focuses on the purpose and work of the early company library and on the factors that moulded it. Retrieving the Company Library from History To challenge the myth of the knowledge economy, it is pertinent to examine past points of intersection between knowledge and the economy. One such point was the hidden world of the humble company library and the information functions it performed. In the first half of the twentieth century formal recognition was given to the importance of knowledge as a prime factor of production by firms that pioneered the in-house technical and commercial library. For example, Vincent Garrett (1925, p. 40), technical librarian at the chocolate giant Rowntree and Co. of York, which established one of the earliest in-house libraries, in 1916, confidently declared in justifying his role that ‘the rule-of-thumb era has run its course … The effective operation of business undertakings is becoming increasingly dependent upon organised science’. Early company libraries were not sleepy backwaters, corresponding to the stereotypical image of the library. Rather, they were key components of the increasingly science-based and scientifically managed large-scale enterprises that were forged in the First World War and in the challenging economic climate of the inter-war years. Far from being hidden away in inconspicuous accommodation, company libraries often fulfilled an important role in enhancing corporate image. For example, the library and adjacent conference room established by the General

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Electric Company at its Wembley (North London) laboratories were located close to the entrance and given oak fittings and furniture to a high standard of craftsmanship. The library was part of the tour for guests at the official opening of the research laboratories in 1923 (Clayton and Algar, 1989, pp. 19–21). Company librarians were keen to stress that their habitat was ‘no ivory tower’.1 They acted as envoys of the growing culture of service in early-twentieth-century library work, helping to negate the notion that libraries were simply places for spiritual refreshment, promoting instead their value engines of material advance in which good service produced tangible, ‘worldly’ benefits. Like any input of knowledge or information, the ‘output’ of early company libraries in respect of value added to corporate profits and efficiency could not be determined precisely. This did not concern the enterprises that pioneered company libraries. For them, the high utility of the company library, although not quantifiable, was unquestionable. The argument made in 1928 at Imperial Chemical Industries, that the detailed subject indexing service of the newly established central library would allow potential purchasers of a book around the company to see what was in it without necessarily purchasing it, made obvious economic sense, even if the precise benefits in terms of the avoidance of duplication and waste could not be calculated.2 A fairly extensive literature exists in respect of post-1945 company libraries. As both special librarianship and information work became more important after the Second World War, their practitioners began to publicise them in handbooks and guides and in the library press (Burkett, 1965; Collison, 1949; Exley, 1951; Foskett, 1949; Foskett, 1958; Houghton, 1967). Company libraries and their operations feature prominently in such publications. But much less is known about in-house technical libraries before the middle of the twentieth century. They are a class of library largely hidden from history. To retrieve these lost world of early knowledge economy it is appropriate to excavate and examine the archival records not only of companies that pioneered in-house collections and information services, but also external organisations that were linked to internal libraries. This paper is based on the fairly substantial archival records of early-twentieth-century libraries in five British enterprises. Two are commercial enterprises: the Bank of England and the Post Office (as much a commercial concern, it might be said, as a government department). Three are industrial enterprises: the York confectionery manufacturer Rowntree and Co., Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and the Manchester electrical engineering firm Metropolitan-Vickers. Occasional reference is also made to the archival and other primary source records of libraries run by the East India Company, the General Electric Company (GEC), Shell, British Petroleum (BP) and the catering and confectionery giant J. Lyons and Co; as well as to testimony supplied by individuals who worked in company libraries in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition, evidence is drawn from the archives and annual conference proceedings of ASLIB, established in 1924, and from contemporary monographs, book chapters and articles in professional journals.

1

2

‘This is no ivory tower’, Research Review: House Magazine of the Laboratories of the General Electric Company Limited, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer 1963), pp. 2–5. ‘Report of the [ICI] Library Committee’ (1928), ICI Archives, ICI/93/29Y (Box 198).

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Terminology The subject of this chapter is the ‘company library’. However, in reality this term stands for a range of functions much wider in scope than the provision of a collection of books and periodicals. Company libraries were also ‘information institutions’, their staff engaged in abstracting work, and in the extraction of information from whole documents and its subsequent indexing. The work of the company library can thus be said to have often included the provision of ‘information services’. Moreover, in places they were highly influential in shaping the kind of corporate information infrastructure arrangements we nowadays refer to as ‘information management’. The informational dimension of the company library was explained in the 1920s by Rowntree’s librarian, Vincent Garrett: ‘ninety-five percent of the inquiries handled in my library are not for specific books, but for information … this type of library is not a Book Department but an Information or Intelligence Department’ (Garrett, 1925, p. 39). This message was echoed three decades later by one of Garrett’s successors as Rowntree librarian: ‘As a matter of fact I sometimes wonder whether the name “Library” as far as we are concerned is not a misnomer, for I should like to say that we are 40% Library and 60% Information Service’.3 Company libraries were as much home to the vertical file as the book, as the librarian Edward Green explained in 1944: One of the most important features of the works library is the provision of a vertical file to contain clippings, each enclosed in a standard sized envelope, endorsed with the subject-matter, and readily accessible. When it is remembered the amount of time which may be employed, when no system is in operation in tracing information in back numbers of journals, the value of the always up-to-date vertical file will be realised.

The informational identity of the company library was derived from the need and desire to segment, isolate and index knowledge recorded in whole items. It was also based on the fact that the word ‘information’ had a practical connotation apposite to the world of business. Even in departments that did not employ ‘information’ in their titles, information work was a core function. For example, in 1957 the Bank of England Reference Library (established in 1922) was fielding around 60 specific enquiries each week: ranging from requests for information on the dissolution of the Cyprus Government Savings Bank (in 1930) and on the Brazil-UK Trade and Payments Agreement (1955), to the details and date of formation of the Swedish Banking Inspectorate and the date of the first issue of bank notes in Chile.4 Similarly, the library of the research laboratories of GEC was strongly informational in its work, the major part of staff time being taken up by circulating, retrieving, abstracting and indexing periodicals and reports.5 3

4

5

‘Talk given at York Public Library on 20 September 1951 to the Reference and Special Libraries Section (Yorkshire Group) of the Library Association’, Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York, R/DH/TL/9. ‘A selection of [library] enquiries during one month’ (30 May 1957), Bank of England Archives, E16/6. GEC Research Laboratories, Readers’ Guide to the Library (London: GEC, 1957), p. 12.

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The complexities of embryonic library and information provision in enterprises, and hence the problems of nomenclature which this gives rise to, is illustrated by the structure of the information service established by Metropolitan-Vickers, as part of its research department, in 1916. The blueprint for an Information and Intelligence Section identified four functions: Economic Survey (the production of market reports for other departments in the company and for some outside bodies); Westinghouse Liaison (the exchange of technical information with the firm’s American parent company, Westinghouse); Pure Scientific Liaison (the exchange of information with individual experts and scientific bodies); Intelligence and Library Service (including a reference library, an abstracting service, a periodical circulation service and a service for translating foreign-language technical literature).6 The library was named here as a separate function. However, in reality all four functions of the section were inter-woven. Early company libraries were labelled in a variety of ways: the works library, reference library or technical library; the information unit, information service, information branch, information centre or information bureau; the research department; the intelligence service, intelligence section or intelligence department. Headicar (1935) simply uses the term ‘Business Libraries’ as a chapter title in his Manual of Library Organization. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the late1940s the libraries of British Paints, the soap manufacturer Thomas Headley and the heavy engineering firm Vickers-Armstrong were referred to, respectively, as ‘The Central Technical File’, The Manufacturing, Development and Research Library’ and ‘The Technical Information Bureau and Central Technical Library’ (A. Wallace, 1950, p. 25). Company libraries did not conform to a uniform pattern; they were, in short, characterised by a wide divergence of condition, a ‘strenuous individualism’ (Piggot, 1958, p. 75). This made cooperation between libraries in different firms a key and traditional feature of company library work. Company libraries invariably held useful and, in some cases, extensive collections of commercial material. Commercial information was continually required in respect of foreign legislation, tariffs, transport systems, market conditions and imports and exports (Pearce, 1921, p. 367). Rowntree’s librarian announced in 1951 that ‘we are 35% scientific and 65% commercial and economic’.7 Also prominent were collections of printed matter in management theory and in the area of what the American librarian John Cotton Dana termed ‘other-worldly information’, relating to social questions thrown up by modern industrialism: industrial psychology, social justice, poverty and industrial relations.8 ‘Civics’ (including information on central and local government and on public utilities) was a recognisable element in the collections of many company libraries and was advertised by ASLIB as a key knowledge asset for any business.9 6

7

8 9

‘Report of the Research Department’ (8 October 1924), Metropolitan-Vickers Archives, Manchester Museum of Science and Technology, 0531/1. For later coverage of this company library, see Dent and Paton (1946). ‘Talk given at York Public Library on 20 September 1951 to the Reference and Special Libraries Section (Yorkshire Group) of the Library Association’, Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York, R/DH/TL/9 J.C. Dana, Special Libraries, Vol. 5 (1914), p. 72. ‘The business man’s directory’, draft document (c. 1930), Aslib Archives.

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Some libraries also contained collections of general non-fiction. Such libraries, it should be stressed, were distinct from the social and recreational libraries which some firms established on a philanthropic basis and which have been discussed elsewhere (A. Black, 2004a; M. Marshall, 1968, pp. 82–4). Company Library Foundations and Activity before 1914 Before the First World War, British business was relatively slow to develop inhouse information resources and services. In 1907 the librarian James Duff Brown (p. 47) offered the opinion that: the average man of business … must be written down, along with the publican and the coster, as among those to whom the printed records of learning, wisdom, and scientific dexterity make but little appeal, those superior persons – the average business man – who are continually parading their great commercial acumen before the humbler folks who only rank as customers, seem to be singularly short-sighted in regard to the aid which literature can, and does, lend to business.

In workshops and factories in particular, Brown continued: all kinds of processes are accomplished by rule-of-thumb, in the good old way sanctioned by the traditions of a long series of venerated great-great-grandfathers … Some workshops of the largest kind do possess valuable and full-equipped reference libraries of technical books, but they are very often locked up in the office for the sole benefit of the manager and the foreman. In most factories, very little in the way of technical books will be found, save a few volumes of patterns or trade catalogues; and it must be confessed that from libraries in hotels and shops to those in lighthouses and battleships, fully-stocked and up-to-date technical collections of books, capable of being used in aid of the special trades or professions, are very seldom in evidence.

In light of these observations it is not surprising that evidence of pre-1914 company libraries is thinly scattered in the historical record. However, some notable activity and foundations can be traced. In 1801 the East India Company inaugurated a library (in London) of wide-ranging documents relating to the economy, culture and climate of the Indian sub-continent.10 Materials included maps, surveys, reports, parliamentary papers, books and vernacular manuscripts. Something of the contents of the library can be gleaned from the 1931 report of the librarian of the India Office (inheritor of the collection on the demise of the East India Company in 1858) which listed the contents of the library as follows: 48,000 general European books; 3000 dictionaries and grammars; 114,000 Oriental books;

10

The library’s records are held in The British Library’s Oriental and India Office (European Manuscripts) Collection, F303/1–456.

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15,000 vernacular (including Sanskrit) manuscripts; and 1800 manuscripts on palm leaves.11 Levinstein Ltd, which eventually became part of ICI’s Dyestuff Division, opened a library in the 1870s. Other progenitors of ICI also developed libraries. Brunner Mond, had a library by the 1890s and in 1909 the Nobel Explosives Company organised a collection at its factory in Ardeer, Scotland. In 1899 the Birmingham chemical firm of Albright and Wilson assembled a library of 5000 volumes attached to the research department. The Halifax carpet manufacturer John Crossley and Son had a design library from the 1880s (M. Marshall, 1968, pp. 93–8, 129). In contrast to private enterprise – and as evidence of the benchmark company library provision failed to reach – government departments were generally ahead of private enterprise in establishing libraries. The Board of Trade established a fairly substantial library as early as 1834 (Foreman, 1986, pp. 8, 15). A library was established in the Post Office in 1858, providing mostly works of fiction for loan, but also some reference and scientific material, as well as maps and [government] blue books.12,13 In 1912, it was suggested that the library be transformed into a fully fledged technical library focusing on the practical sciences of telegraphy and telephony.14 Certainly by 1935, this library was operating under the title ‘Reading Room and Reference Library’,15 contributing significantly to the performance of what was to all intents and purposes a commercial enterprise, albeit government owned.

11

12

13

14

15

‘Memorandum by G.H. Baker on his career at, and history of, the India Office Library, 1883–1931’ (1931), Oriental and India Office Collection, European Manuscripts, The British Library, F303/62. ‘Report of meeting to establish a Post Office Library and Literary Association, held on November 6th 1858’ (1858), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. Manners (1885) reported the existence of another circulating library for Post Office employees, in East London. ‘Post Office Permanent Library and Literary Association, Committee of Revision Report’ (June 1912), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. ‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee’ (August 1935), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72.

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The Scale and Nature of Company Library Expansion after 1914 It was not until the First World War that company libraries began to appear in Britain in anything approaching significant numbers. A number of reasons can be offered to explain the lack of corporate interest in company libraries before 1914.16 Firstly, libraries were seen as expensive and, given the historic success of British industry and commerce without them, they were also viewed as unnecessary alternatives to the tacit knowledge of employees and informal – including the ‘old boy’ – information networks. Secondly, both individuals and separate departments within firms tended to guard jealously, from colleagues and other departments, the informal collections of literature they may have assembled. Thirdly, the sharing of information in the form of a central library resource could endanger company secrets: library staff would be in the privileged position of having access to a wide variety of information on the activities of the organisation. As these attitudes began to be eroded during and after the First World War, company library activity grew. It is difficult to gauge the precise level of this activity, but evidence can be marshalled that points to an abrupt increase in interest after 1914. In 1924, four of the original standing committee of ASLIB – William Barbour (Nobel Explosives), Vincent Garrett (Rowntree), J.G. Pearce (formerly of Metropolitan-Vickers) and Sinclair Wood (Lever Brothers) – ran, or had recently run, industrial company libraries.17 In 1927, of the 343 members of ASLIB, some 95 (around 25%) were industrial and commercial concerns (see Table 5.1). This total increased to 202 (around 20%) in 1948, and to 965 (around 35%) in 1963 (Burkett 1965, p. 219).18 The on-going strengthening of the industrial and commercial presence is also seen in the fact that 75 (or 35%) of the 213 delegates to ASLIB’s 1949 annual conference were from business.19 By the middle of the twentieth century, all manner of businesses had invested in in-house library services. For example, J. Lyons and Co., famous for its pioneering investment in business computing (Bird 1994), also saw profit in the printed word. Lists of acquisitions, including texts on office methods, industrial organisation, economics and technical matters pertinent to the business, were printed in the company’s monthly journal.20

16 17

18

19

20

Including those offered by M. Marshall (1968, pp. 24–31). ‘Members of the Standing Committee of the First Conference on Special Libraries and Bureaux of Information’ (1 October 1924), Aslib Archives. In the late 1950s, an Aslib survey of information and library units found there to be 486 of them, although it must be stressed that the list was confined to those units led by someone described as a ‘librarian’ or ‘information officer’: see Aslib (1960, pp. 3–4). ‘List of delegates and visitors to the twenty-third annual conference’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1949), pp. 79–82. See The Lyons Journal, issues for January, July and December 1952, London Corporation Archives, ACC/3527/311.

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Table 5.1 Industrial and commercial enterprise membership of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux up to October 28th, 1927 Allen and Hanbury’s Ltd. Anglo-Persian Oil Co. Ltd. (Information Branch) Bailliere, Tindall, and Cox Bell (G.) & Sons Ltd. Blue Peter Publishing Co. Ltd. Boots Pure Drug Co. Ltd. Braithwaite’s British Business Service British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd. British Empire Producers’ Organization British Insulated Cables Ltd. British Metal Corporation Ltd. British Thomson-Houston Co. Ltd. British Xylonite Co. Ltd. Bureau tot Bevordering van het Kinine-Gebruik Callender’s Cable and Construction Co. Ltd. Chapman and Hall Ltd. Chemical Engineering and Chemical Catalogue Chiswick Polish Co. Ltd. Chloride Electrical Storage Co. Ltd. Clarendon Press Clothworkers’ Company Country Gentlemen’s Association Ltd. Daily Telegraph Dennison Manufacturing Co. Ltd. Eccles and Co. Edison Swan Electric Co. Ltd. Elbourn’s Marketing Intelligence Index Engineer Ltd. Engineering Ltd. Federation of British Industries Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association Ltd. Foyle (W. and G.) Ltd. French Potash Mines Agricultural Information Bureau General Electric Co. Ltd. (Research Laboratories) German Information Bureau Graham (Alfred) and Co. Ltd. Hadfields, Ltd. (Research Department) Harrap (George) and Co. Ltd. Harrods, Ltd. (Circulating Library) Helbert, Wagg and Co. Ltd. Hollins (William) & Co. Ltd. Hugon & Co. Ltd. Illustrated London News & Sketch Ltd. Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.

The Early Company Library

Federated Associations of Boot & Shoe Manufacturers Incorporated Society of British Advertisers Ltd. Indian Information Bureau Ltd. Industrial Newspapers Ltd. Industriforeningens Bibliotek, Copenhagen Institute of Commercial Research Ltd. International Standard Electric Corporation Lazard Brothers and Co. Ltd. Lever Brothers Ltd. Lewis (H. K.) and Co. Ltd. Lithuanian Telegraph Agency ‘Elta’ London Press Exchange Ltd. Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd. Lund (Percy) Humphries and Co. Ltd Lyons (J.) and Co. Ltd. Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Magneta Time Co. Ltd. Mather and Crowther May and Baker Ltd. Metropolitan–Vickers Electrical Co. Ltd. Mitsui and Co. Ltd. Mond Nickel Co. Ltd. National Federation of Iron and Steel Manufacturers Nitram Ltd. Nobel’s Explosives Co. Ltd. Nottingham Guardian Trade Intelligence Bureau Oxford University Press Pascall (James) Ltd. Philip (George) and Son Ltd. Photostat Ltd. Prudential Assurance Co. Ltd. Rio Tinto Co. Ltd. Rowntree and Co. Ltd. Samson Clark and Co. Ltd. Shields Ice and Cold Storage Co. Ltd. Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders Ltd. Spon (E. & F. N.) Ltd. Stevens (B. F.) & Brown Ltd. Temple Press Ltd. Times of India Transport and General Workers Union Underground Group of Companies Venesta Ltd. Walker (J. M.) & Co. (Advertising) Ltd. Western Viscose Silk Mills Ltd. Westminster Gazette Ltd. Wilson (H. W.) Company Woodall-Duckham Vertical Retort & Oven Construction Co. (1920) Ltd.

157

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Source: ‘Membership of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux up to 28 October 1927’, Aslib Archives.

However, despite a marked increase in activity from the First World War onwards, it should be emphasised that company library provision in the period up to the 1950s remained extremely patchy. A survey of 122 firms by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in 1952 revealed that whereas twothirds had a collection of technical literature, only 20% of these had over 50 books (M. Marshall 1968, p. 26). Another survey, by the Manchester Joint Research Council in 1954, found that out of the 225 local firms investigated, 96 (or 43%) reported the existence of a library of one kind or another. However, only 17 of these had trained librarians or equivalently qualified full-time staff, over half the libraries were run by part-time staff and 21 had no staff at all. Only around 25% of firms abstracted periodicals; and an equally small proportion made use of the information services provided by external libraries, whether in the public or private sector. Libraries were more likely to be found in larger firms (Manchester Joint Research Council, 1954, p. 177). Reporting to the DSIR, the Council expressed surprise that a firm could operate without feeling the need to consider new developments based on the general advancement of science and technology; also that very little use appeared to be made of local reference libraries. It noted that ‘a major weakness of industry is the haphazard way in which a watch is kept for serviceable information by most firms’.21 As late as 1952 ASLIB was lamenting the fact that: ‘Few small industrial undertakings are as yet prepared to establish information departments’.22 In 1953, Jason Farradane, future founder of the Institute of Information Scientists, confidently observed that: ‘The majority of industrial concerns … remain ignorant of the full possibilities of an information service, or perhaps even of the need for information’ (p. 327); and the following year estimated that just 2% of industrial firms maintained an information service (Farradane, 1954, p. 299). This said, by the early 1950s it was reckoned that between 1200 and 1500 British firms had established libraries or information departments, facilitating the observation that ‘industrial libraries now exist in sufficient numbers to be accepted as integral parts of a large [my emphasis] concern’ (Piggot, 1958, p. 75).

Some Case Studies The Post Office By the early-twentieth century the Post Office had become a giant commercial (yet state controlled) enterprise, with responsibility not just for the mail, but also the 21

22

‘Report to the Steering Committee by the investigators of the Manchester Joint Research Council’, National Archives, DSIR 45/4. ‘Aslib Executive and Finance Service, [Report on] Consultant Service’ (12 December 1952), Aslib Archives.

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long established telegraph system, nationalised in 1870, and the evolving telephone network, nationalised in 1912 (Perry, 1992). In 1912 it was proposed that the existing library (largely, although by no means entirely, a circulating library) be transformed into a scientific and technical library, with recreational reading taking a back seat. It was reported that ‘the Department’s work, which has for some time been identified with the practical sciences of telegraphy, telephony etc., has … undergone a considerable extension in this direction, and the need of a thoroughly well-equipped, properly supervised and upto-date Scientific and Technical Library … is now almost indispensable’.23 The belief underpinning the proposal was that ‘centralisation should be in the interests of general convenience and could not fail to be beneficial to the Staff generally, as well as, doubtless, permitting of economies in the existing expenditure [by individual departments] for scientific and technical text-books, periodicals etc., and ensuring the proper care, supervision etc., of such books and periodicals’.24 A central company library along these lines and based in London, containing the ‘widest possible range of technical and other literature of interest to the Post Office’,25 did not in fact emerge until 1937.26 Until this date a number of unofficial departmental libraries (essentially small collections of books) operated in isolation: for example, 70 books in the Public Relations Department; 50 books in the Stores Department; and, recorded in its own catalogue, 3000 textbooks, statutes and law reports in the Solicitors Department. In addition, the library of the Engineers’ Department (an outlying library at the Research Station, Dollis Hill) contained a large number of scientific periodicals, as well as 1500 books and 1750 bound volumes of research reports.27 The creation of a central company library did not lead to the complete dissolution of these satellite libraries. The library of the Engineers’ Department, although its contents were included in the central library catalogue, retained its independence.28 However, it is likely that the collections of general reference material dotted about the organisation in various departments were, in effect, rendered redundant by what was a fairly conspicuous and well-used new central library. Imperial Chemical Industries ICI was formed in 1927 from an amalgamation of a large number of companies, including the four largest companies in the British chemical industry: Brunner Mond (Britain’s leading alkali manufacturer); United Alkali; British Dyestuffs; and Nobel Industries, the British arm of the international explosives business (Kennedy, 1993; Reader, 1970). Initially the company was highly centralised, control from headquarters in London being exercised over finance, capital 23

24 25

26 27

28

‘Post Office Permanent Library and Literary Association, Committee of Revision Report’ (June 1912), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. Ibid. ‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee’ (August 1935), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. ‘The Post Office Library’, The Post Office Magazine (1938), p. 20. ‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee (August 1935)’, Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. The Post Office Library Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (December 1937), p. 5.

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expenditure, purchasing and statistical work. Centralisation brought lower costs, but the weaknesses of central decision making soon became apparent. Between 1928 and 1931, therefore, ICI was decentralised into a federation of 8 semiindependent firms, or divisions, each with a chairman, local board and a liaison officer from headquarters (Hannah, 1976, pp. 93–4). Library provision in the early years of ICI mirrored these developments. In 1928 the company set out to establish, from the nucleus of the collection based at Nobel House, ‘a really first class Central Library’ at its new London headquarters.29 It was foreseen that, although some duplication between the central library and libraries in the provinces was inevitable, only ‘a minimum amount of information’ needed to be available locally, more expensive items being held and loaned centrally.30 It was advocated that the card index system be replaced by a new centrally controlled system of classification and subject indexing covering all collections around the country. Minute subject indexing would allow potential purchasers around the company to see what was in a book before purchasing it, and perhaps to borrow it instead from the central collection or elsewhere in the company, thereby cutting down on wasteful expenditure.31 In addition, as noted above, it was envisaged that the central library could also act as a core repository for all departmental technical reports. Regarding headquarters, it was stated that ‘there should be no sectional collections of books in the new building, but that all publications should be located in the Central Library’, although some elasticity in the system was to be allowed: thus, the Legal Department could keep its collection of law books and, as long as requisitioning occurred through the central library, departments could maintain their own collections of basic reference books, such as almanacs and dictionaries, with more expensive texts being retained on a ‘reference only’ basis in the central library.32 This apparent tendency towards the centralisation of library services in ICI flew in the face of the long library traditions of many of the company’s constituent parts. Outside of head office, there were a number of other substantial collections of real importance: at Winnington (Brunner Mond); at Billingham (Synthetic Amonia and Nitrates); at Blackley, Manchester (British Dyestuffs); and at Ardeer, Scotland (Nobel Explosives). In addition, a large number of smaller holdings had been formed over the years – for example, at Magadi Soda; Brunner Mond (Overseas Office); United Alkali (books in many different plants); and British Copper Manufacturers.33 The idea that outlying libraries would abandon their longstanding collections in favour of central provision, even if this was ever seriously envisaged, would appear to have been flawed from the start. The Bank of England

29 30

31 32 33

‘Report of the Library Committee’ (1928), ICI Archives, ICI/93/29Y (Box 198). ‘Memorandum in regard to the remit of the Library Committee’ (5 July 1928), ICI Archives, ICI/93/29Y (Box 198). ‘Report of the Library Committee’ (1928), ICI Archives, ICI/93/29Y (Box 198). Ibid. Ibid.

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The Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom, was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1694, largely as a result of the government’s need to raise money for the prosecution of its foreign wars. In 1844 it became the central noteissuing authority and the guardian of the nation’s gold reserves. It remained privately owned until it was nationalised in 1946. For most of its history it has employed staff in large numbers. By 1914 the workforce had expanded to a shade over one thousand, a figure which had quadrupled by 1939 (Hennessy, 1992, pp. 1, 42, 328).34 However, by comparison with the numbers employed by ICI and the Post Office, the Bank of England cannot be described as a ‘large’ employer, rather a company of medium size. From its inception in the late-seventeenth century the Bank ran some kind of library service, however limited. A Directors’ Library was established early in the Bank’s history, although it was essentially only accessible to senior officials. A Clerk’ Library was established in 1850, but this was mostly a recreational library with only a limited stock of titles relevant to the technical side of the business.35 A fully-fledged Reference Library was not established until 1922. In 1930 new accommodation was found for the library, which that same year absorbed the Director’s Library into its collection (or at least into its catalogue).36 The Reference Library’s stock increased from 3600 volumes at the outset, to 8000 volumes in 1936, and 14,000 volumes in 1950, at which time over 8800 books and periodicals were being issued each year, over 80 readers were making use of the library daily and an average of 60 enquiries were being fielded by library staff each week.37 The library’s ‘valuable core of relevant standard works augmented by the best current books on Economics, Banking Law, Foreign Relations and up-to-date periodicals, pamphlets and directories’ was said, in the 1940s, to be making an important contribution to the efficiency of the Bank.38 The provision of a good reference service was seen as beneficial to employees’ ‘studies on world banking conditions and, to a lesser degree, on commerce and economics’.39 The Reference Library of the Bank of England retained, to a large degree, a traditional, book-based service. However, this is not to say that it did not provide an ‘information service’ also, as was common in other banks of the period.40 34 35

36

37

38

39

40

See Sayers (1944) for a standard history of the Bank. Catalogue of the Bank of England Library and Literary Association (printed at the Bank of England, 1851). ‘Reference Library’ (5 January 1931), Bank of England Archives, E16/6. G.O. Randle to J.A Giuseppi (19 May 1949), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘Bank of England: [Library] accommodation in new building’ (16 January 1924), Bank of England Archives, E16/6. ‘Reference Library’ (31 December 1936), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘[Reference Library] Report for the Bank Year 1950’ (17 May 1951), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. G.O. Randle, ‘[Memo on] Reference Library’ (March 1950), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘Post-war reconstruction of the library’ (29 October 1943), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘Chief Cashier’s Office, Reference Library’ (13 March 1930), Bank of England Archives, E16/6. P.A. Green (1929) described how some banks opened their information service to their clients, although his experience in this regard was mostly in a Canadian context.

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One of the aims of the reference library was to act as a highly centralised resource, eliminating or reducing the ephemeral, unofficial collections scattered about the company. A high degree of centralisation appears to have been achieved, but central control was by no means achieved in full. In 1934 it was reported that documents ‘for current use over long periods’ were kept by the Economics and Statistics Department.41 At any one time a large number of library books could also be found in the Overseas Department.42 Although the Directors’ Library was absorbed by the Reference Library in 1930, some books remained in various office bookcases away from the central collection, and a special register (the ‘D’ register) had to be established to keep track of these.43 The habit of advisers, senior officers and the governor of the Bank of keeping books in their ‘parlours’, as they referred to them, has been confirmed by one former employee of the library whose job it was to regularly check against agreed lists of ‘out-housed’ items.44 The practice, moreover, appeared to a taken-for-granted aspect of library usage. As one senior officer wrote: ‘I have a fine bookcase in my room which is at present almost entirely devoid of books. Its emptiness is discretely hidden behind pleated green curtains. If you should have any suitable books which require houseroom I should be only too glad to give them accommodation’.45 The tendency in some parts of the Bank to retain books in offices for an extensive ‘overdue’ period, or as semi–permanent collections, created difficulties in terms of library administration. Checking lists of informal satellite collections and overdue items was described as ‘an arduous but very necessary routine duty which takes the library assistant out of the library for some time during the year’.46 * * * In analysing these and other company libraries, no common pattern emerges regarding centralisation or dispersal of library operations. However, the generalisation can be made that, depending on the structure of the organisation, the tendency was for economies to be made and efficiency sought in the bringing together of satellite collections and operations. This can be seen in the way Shell ran its library and information services in the mid-1950s. The company’s headquarters in London provided a ‘Library Centre’ (under the jurisdiction of the Trade Relations Department) as well as several specialist departmental libraries. This allowed for bulk ordering, the non-duplication of books and of periodical subscriptions (and hence their centrally organised circulation) and the use of a single member of staff to request and fetch urgently needed books and periodicals from local suppliers.47 41

42 43 44

45 46

47

‘Reference Library Statistical Statement’ (16 July 1943), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘[Memo on Reference Library]’ (6 May 1938), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. G.O. Randle to J.A. Giuseppi (18 May 1949), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. Correspondence from M.B. King (11 May 2002), a former employee of the library, relating the memories of a close colleague. Mr. Parsons to J.A. Guiseppi (5 April 1954), Bank of England Archives, E16/6. ‘[Reference Library] Report for Bank Year 1949’ (1950), Bank of England Archives, E16/1. ‘Mine of information’, London Shell, No. 5 (August 1955).

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The Causes and Contexts of Expansion after 1914 Notwithstanding the uneven and relatively limited spread of company libraries in the first half of the twentieth century, the decades after 1914 were a watershed in their development, especially in large- and medium-scale enterprises. What were the circumstances which nurtured development? What were the causes and the contexts of the sudden expansion of company libraries after 1914, and, in particular, between the two world wars? American Influences The company library originated in the late-nineteenth century in the United States, where, before 1914, a small but select group of large corporations < including General Electric, Price Waterhouse (Accountants), the Prudential Insurance Company, the National Cash Register Company, Arthur D. Little (Consultants), the National City Bank of New York, Stone and Webster (Engineering) and The American, Telegraph and Telephone Company < succeeded in assembling fairly extensive research and reference collections (Jackson, 1986, p. 586; Kruzas, 1965). By 1914, the idea of the company library had become embedded in much of America’s large-scale business enterprise, with the practice having been exported to a number of other countries, including Britain and, for example, Sweden, as discussed by Barnard (1949, p. 51). A survey commissioned by Rowntree and Co. in 1916 revealed the existence of around 100 company libraries in American manufacturing concerns (no doubt there were many more). The greatest level of library activity was reported to be occurring in the insurance, banking and telephone sectors. Included in the report was evidence on internal library provision submitted by 25 companies – from the Harley-Davidson Motor Company in Milwaukee and the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Akro, Ohio and the People’s Gas Light and Coke Company in Chicago.48 Many of the British companies which in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries opted to commence a library service no doubt did so having become aware of developments elsewhere. This was certainly the case in respect of Rowntree and Co. Others may have received direct encouragement from their foreign parent companies, as in the case of the Clayton Analine Company in 1911 (owned by the Swiss company CIBA, previously Gesellschaft Fur Chemische Industrie, Basel). Librarians and information professionals travelled to the United States to research the library activities of leading companies. In 1923 J.G. Pearce (former librarian of Metropolitan-Vickers) attended the Special Libraries Association Conference in Atlanta (Pearce, 1925, p. 14). Between the wars R.S. Hutton (a leading figure in ASLIB and Chairman of its Council between 1930 and 1935) studied technical libraries during several visits to the United States (Hutton, 1945, p. 6). In fact, 48

J.B. Morrell, ‘[Internal report on] business libraries’ (26 July 1916), RowntreeMackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York.

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throughout the inter-war years and beyond, the United States remained the home of company library development and the place where people came to learn about new techniques and services.49 The Inadequacy of Public Provision It might be argued that had public provision of technical and commercial information been more generous and advanced, then private enterprises may not have been forced to commence and develop their own information services. Public business libraries in Britain lagged behind their American counterparts in terms of both numbers and size. In the United States, in addition to self-organised libraries, business was served from around the turn of the twentieth century by a public provision of technical and commercial information. A public ‘Industrial Library’ was established in Providence in 1900, and this was quickly followed by the emergence of ‘Useful Arts’ departments in public libraries in Cincinnati, Detroit and Cleveland (Mutchler, 1969, p. 5). By the 1930s, there were a number of outstanding business departments operating in American public libraries, including: The Business Branch, Carnegie Library, Pittsburg; The Business Branch, Newark Public Library; The Business Department, Hertford Public Library; The Business Information Bureau, Cleveland Public Library; The Business and Municipal Branch, Minneapolis Public Library; and The Kirstein Business Branch, Boston Public Library.50 49

50

Such was the depth of the corporation library tradition in the USA that by 1965 General Motors could boast twenty-two library facilities staffed by seventy-eight people. The ‘capstone’ of this library system was the library at the corporation’s research laboratories at Warren, Michigan, which was inaugurated in 1917, commenced an interlibrary loan system for all General Motors’ libraries in 1927 and began preparing a current awareness bulletin in 1933. See Jackson (1966, p. 353). ‘Public Business Librarians Group’ (March 1938), Special Libraries Association Archives, Washington DC. The strong tradition of public business libraries in the United States was reflected in the inception, in 1934, of the Public Business Librarians Group of the Special Libraries Association (in 1911 the Association had resolved to establish an Industrial Group, but it never got off the ground). In 1935 the Group’s Business Information Study Committee, chaired by Marian Manley, head of the Newark Public Library’s Business Branch, began an investigation of the use of books and information by businessmen. This investigation encompassed contacts with trade association executives, a study of the inclusion of business courses in college curricula and correspondence with representatives of leading industrial corporations. Manley herself started a series of public meetings with the business community, stressing the importance of information to business and promoting the business libraries service. At the same time a questionnaire was distributed to businesses, the results of which revealed ‘a great increase in the need for information on economic problems and for information relating to government legislation affecting business interests’. An industrial and manufacturing directory was compiled, and was published by the Association in 1938 as Directories for the Business Man. The Group was instrumental in the publication of another guide by the Association in 1940: Business and the Public Library, edited by Marian Manley. In 1947 the Group changed its name to the Business Group, which became the Business Division in 1953. The new Group/Division aimed to attract greater interest from libraries in corporations. One of its main activities in the

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In Britain, although reference collections in large public libraries had long contained materials relevant to local economic activity – for example, literature on mining in Wigan Public Library and on watch-making in London’s Clerkenwell Public Library – distinct technical and commercial libraries did not emerge until the First World War and its immediate aftermath: in Birmingham (1915); Glasgow (1916); Liverpool (1917); Leeds (1918); Manchester (1919); and Newcastle (1920). At the time considerable interest was shown by leading librarians and the Library Association in the issue of public business libraries (Abbot, 1917; Hulme, 1917; Savage, 1918a).51 In 1918 Ernest Savage (1918a, p. 219) wrote that ‘the needs of the war have brought home to technical men the desirability of obtaining information rapidly’. He and others anticipated that the public library had a significant, if not dominant, role to play in satisfying the information needs of business. But these were grand ambitions that ultimately remained unfulfilled as large companies came to realise the benefits of supplying their own information resources. During and immediately after the war the business communities in towns like Leeds, Bradford and Manchester were active, often in association with the local Chamber of Commerce, in promoting business information bureaux in public libraries (A. Black, 2000, pp. 36–9). But these efforts seemed to be aimed largely at improving access for small- and medium-sized companies, as opposed to the large corporations which had the means, and increasingly the will, to set up their own services tailored to their specific needs. Between the wars some public library business libraries underwent notable enlargement as new (as in Manchester and Sheffield) or refurbished central libraries came on stream (Lamb, 1955, pp. 52–3).52 However, the services they offered were clearly not an alternative to independent provision in large firms which continued to develop their own company libraries, this despite librarians’ penchant for ‘talking up’ the value of public provision to industry (Rates, 1955, p. 81). Nor, it would seem, was a truly effective alternative offered by the public money spent on the libraries of the industrial sector research associations inaugurated by the DSIR after 1918. By mid-century, the use of municipal libraries by firms – with the exception of firms in areas like Sheffield where strong cooperative schemes existed – was extremely limited. A government survey of 1949 found that most firms satisfied their information needs through their own resources, or those of organisations like the Science Library, ASLIB, trade associations, the research associations and

51

52

1950s was the sponsoring of the Wilson Company’s Business Periodicals Index, the replacement for the Industrial Arts Index. These activities mirrored closely the type of work undertaken by ASLIB in the UK. In 1938, the SLA was in contact with ASLIB in connection with how it could contribute to the latter’s annual conferences for that year. See E.B. Allen, ‘History of the Business Division’ (1959), Minutes of the Special Libraries Association meeting (27 September 1911) and Executive Board Minutes (12 March 1938; 7 June 1938), Special Libraries Association Archives, Washington DC. See also, the Library Association’s, Interim Report of the Council on the Provision of Commercial and Technical Libraries (1917). For a general statement of their work at this time, see Doubleday (1933, pp. 178–86). E. Green (1929) was upbeat about the new public library information services appearing at the time, describing in detail their value and operations.

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scientific societies, than through the public library. Most firms surveyed ‘seemed anxious that their local library facilities should be improved’.53 New Industries There was a high correlation between company library activity and the development of new sectors in the economy. In the nineteenth century the British economy had become dependent on the ‘old staple’ industries of coal, shipbuilding, textiles, mechanical engineering, iron and steel and the railways. In the early-twentieth century, as these traditional sectors of production began to decay, a range of new, science-based industries < potentially high-productivity and high-yield < began to flourish: chemicals, synthetic dyestuffs, artificial silk (rayon), precision instruments, oil, aluminium, rubber, plastics, aircraft, motor vehicles, canned foodstuffs, electrical engineering, generation and supply, electrical and radio equipment and a wide variety of household, confectionery and consumer goods. Rising real incomes for those in work increased demand for ‘new industry’ goods. For example, annual expenditure on electric consumer durables trebled between 1930 and 1938 (Glynn and Oxborrow, 1976, pp. 86–115). Thus was generated a ‘developmental block’ in the economy formed from a combination of technological advance and rising consumer spending power (Alford, 1981, p. 315). It was in these growth industries, where scientific knowledge and research and development were at a premium, that technical libraries took root. Hence, it is no surprise to see pioneering libraries established in the decades after 1914 by enterprises like General Electric (1919), Metropolitan-Vickers (also electrical engineering, 1916); Rowntree and Co. (confectionery, 1916); the rubber manufacturer Dunlop (which had established a library certainly by 1921); and the food canning firm the Metal Box Company (which was at the forefront of technology for the manufacture of cans and which established a library in 1937). In his study of industrial libraries, Burkett (1965, p. 202) was therefore correct in observing that ‘where firms are successfully engaged in industries with a rapidly changing technology and with keen competition both at home and overseas to be faced, reliance is placed on research and development (and market intelligence) and on the information services which are an integral part of them’. War, Economic Depression and Organised Science

53

‘Report of Study Group on Municipal Libraries’ (24 May 1949), Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/45. R.S. Hutton, ‘Technical and commercial libraries in provincial industrial centres’ (21 December 1949), Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/45, while praising public technical library provision, nonetheless noted the paucity of collections of periodicals compared to those of public libraries in the United States, as well as the relatively low supply of periodical from rival industrial countries. The situation was ameliorated to a degree, he thought, by the operation of cooperative schemes.

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The growth of company libraries paralleled the rise of organised science, which was galvanised by the First World War. The poor progress of British forces in the war led to accusations that science had been neglected (Sherrington 1981, p. 53). The requirements of technological, total war enhanced the systematic and scientific approach to the development of technology. In the early industrial revolution technological innovation rarely resulted from the formal application of science. Most innovations were the products of brilliant artisans or inspired amateurs. This tradition remained dominant in British manufacturing certainly until the midnineteenth century. Even thereafter, the planned application of science in industry was the exception rather than the rule. The employment of scientists by industry in a research capacity was rare. The practical value of book knowledge was widely questioned in industry. Skilled workers often looked with suspicion on those who studied the ‘manufacturing arts’. Even when industry became much more science based, practical experience was often valued more highly than theoretical knowledge. The value of research was recognised relatively late by British companies. A national crisis in this respect materialised at the start of the First World War when it was found that Britain was almost entirely dependent on imports from Germany of such goods as dynamos for motor vehicle engines and dyestuffs for fabrics, including military uniforms – a deficiency that was hardly surprising given that in 1913 Germany’s university student population outnumbered Britain’s by six to one (Crouzet, 1982, p. 420; Mathias, 1983, pp. 124–5). A chief legacy of war was increased emphasis on research into industrial processes and marketing. British companies benefited from the knowledge that when research departments and laboratories had been established in the United States they had proved highly effective.54 Significant research efforts were only visible in large firms (those employing over a thousand, say) and were more likely to occur in newer, science-based industries (more about these later). By 1927 the General Electric Company (GEC) was employing over 200 research staff; while ICI was spending £1 million and £1.4 million a year on R&D in 1930 and 1939, respectively. Patent applications from companies (as opposed to individuals) increased from 15% in 1914 to 58% in 1938, thereby explaining the assertion made in 1926 by the Chairman of Nobel Explosives, Harry McGowan, that ‘organized research lies at the root of our prosperity (Hannah, 1976, pp. 128–9).55 Continuing faith in the need to apply science to industry was assured by the malign economic environment of the interwar years. The loss of foreign markets during the First World War and, following a short post-war inflationary boom, an economic depression which lasted for two decades after 1921 (and which was especially severe between 1929 and 1933) led to anxieties concerning the ability of 54

55

Braverman (1974, pp. 163–4) describes how corporate research laboratories in America were part and parcel of the onset of monopoly capitalism. Large companies establishing laboratories included Eastman Kodak (1893), General Electric (1900), Bell Telephone (1904) and Westinghouse (1917). By 1920 there were around 300 corporate laboratories in America, rising to over 2200 in 1940. Regarding the later period, note that expenditure by British industry on R&D increased from £5 million in 1939, to £30 million in 1951 and to £400 in 1962; as noted by Burkett (1965, p. 216).

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British commerce and industry to compete on a world stage. Faced with stiff postwar international competition, companies increasingly came to realise the importance of commercial and technical intelligence. ‘Gone are the old rule-ofthumb systems with their risky characteristics’, asserted the Manchester Guardian in 1920 in relation to business information.56 The future stiffness of international competition was acknowledged by ASLIB: ‘Business is the means by which a nation makes its livelihood, and not even the most optimistic would claim that that is going to be an easier matter during the lifetime of the present generation.’ Hence it was important to invest in information: ‘Other things being equal the enterprise to succeed will be the one equipped to find out quickly and with the minimum of effort whatever it may want to know’.57 ASLIB also made a direct connection between Britain’s struggling economy and the need for better information services: ‘Industry and commerce in England today are facing the difficult problem of restoring their lost prosperity. A consideration of the many factors which will contribute to that restoration brings out the vital necessity for accurate and up-to-date information on technical, scientific and economic matters’.58 Leading librarians and the library establishment vigorously promoted libraries as laboratories and workshops of technological and material advance. In 1918 the Library Association Record declared that ‘arsenals of scientific and technical information will become, nay have become, as necessary as arsenals of war-like materials, and if steps are not taken promptly we shall be as little prepared for peace as we were for war’.59 Observing that business was ‘more and more an opportunity for science’, special librarians re-asserted the contention that ‘the library remains the great essential to discovery’ (Ogilvie, 1925, p. 26). In 1921 J.G. Pearce (p. 365) wrote confidently that ‘in Great Britain the handicap arising from the belated application of science to industry can be eliminated through documentation’. 60 At Rowntree and Co. it was declared that ‘the knowledge of science … [is] likely to be applied more extensively than in the past to productive processes’.61 Indeed, the firm developed a strong Chemistry Department, whose scientists and technicians became the heaviest users of the company library. The growth of organised science received a further boost during the Second World War and acceptance of the importance of information widened accordingly. As ASLIB’s Deputy–Chairman of Council pointed out in 1951, ‘on all sides there is pressure for more productivity and a growing realisation that it can only be obtained by greater and greater use of recorded knowledge’.62 Consequently, company library activity increased significantly after 1945, as they became conceptualised as important ‘advance scouts for research’ (Lewton, 1946). By the 56 57 58

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Manchester Guardian (18 November 1920). ‘Draft for proposed Business Information Guide’ (c. 1929), Aslib Archives. J.C. Withers and B.M. Dent to members of the Aslib Lancashire and Cheshire Branch (30 November 1931), Aslib Archives. Library Association Record (1918), p. 110. Pearce (1921, p. 365). ‘Personal efficiency’, Cocoa Works Magazine (June 1919). V.E. Parke (Aslib Deputy-Chairman of Council) to H. Hyams (Shell Oil) (December 1951), Aslib Archives.

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1950s the library at GEC’s research laboratories was supported on the grounds that ‘the received wisdom was that research was very important to the company in the race to stay ahead of its rivals … The services provided by the library enabled the research staff to keep ahead in terms of knowledge of what was happening elsewhere; therefore the library was a good investment’.63 The Rationalisation Movement Company library activity was boosted by changes that occurred in the scale and ownership of enterprises. In response to intensifying competition, businesses between the wars developed a philosophy of rationalisation, which in practice meant increased concentration of ownership – the essential ingredient of what the British business historian Leslie Hannah (1976) called the ‘rise of the corporate economy’, the development of which took a giant leap forward in the 1920s and 1930s. Wartime industrial developments included larger-scale enterprises, new industries standardisation, mass production and merger. Between the wars firms continued to grow in size, and industrial concentration (or rationalisation) intensified. The new, growth industries in particular displayed a marked shift towards oligopoly. For example, the number of motor vehicle manufactures fell from 96 in 1922 to 20 in 1939 (Glynn and Oxborrow, 1976, p. 106). The rayon industry came to be dominated by Courtaulds (which commenced a technical library in the 1930s). ICI was the result of the largest merger in manufacturing (by market value) between the wars. Overall, the number of firms disappearing by merger increased from 1409 in the first two decades of the century to 3289 in the 1920s and 1930s – an increase in activity of around 230%. Business invested heavily, both philosophically and materially, in the rationalisation movement. Following a short inflationary post-war boom, recession struck in 1921. Thereafter, average unemployment in Britain remained above 10% each year (except in 1927) until the Second World War re-invigorated output. In these circumstances the traditional market mechanism of free competition between a large number of players appeared to be a luxury, delivering as it did overproduction and underconsumption. Amalgamation was seen to offer security: larger enterprises with accompanying economies of scale, the argument went, might be better equipped to ride out economic storms. Rationalisation was crucial to the growth of company libraries. Those responsible for promoting company libraries appeared to recognise this at the time. S.S. Bullock, General Secretary of ASLIB, believed that ‘organisation, coordination and, more lately, rationalisation’ [my emphasis] were ‘indispensable’ words for explaining what was going on in the interwar economy.64 Rationalisation, entailing growth in company size and often diversification, placed a premium on improved organisational management. To manage ever more complex and larger operations a greater reliance was placed on information management, including the role that the company library could play in this regard (more about information management below). Increasing size meant technical library provision could be afforded. The increasing scale of production, combined 63 64

Correspondence (July 2002) from Antonia Bunch, library assistant at GEC 1954–7. S.S. Bullock, ‘The organisation of information’ (c. 1930), Aslib Archives.

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with competition for market control between an increasingly fewer number of big players, raised the stakes in terms of corporate success and encouraged firms to invest in information and intelligence. During the First World War, Ernest Savage (1918b, p. 151) argued that large companies clearly enjoyed ‘advantages over isolated firms and small industries in being able lavishly, yet at a trivial cost compared with their immense business, to equip and maintain research laboratories and bureaux of information’. This contention was confirmed at an historical distance by Astall (1966, p. 22), who half a century later in an examination guide for special and industrial librarianship observed that ‘many of the better and most comprehensive library and information services and facilities have grown up through the amalgamation of smaller firms into industrial groups’. Technical Education An inconspicuous, although in reality a significant, function of the company library was the provision of technical education. As repositories of technical knowledge, company libraries offered the potential to support the technical education of employees at a variety of levels. Information services were urged in engineering companies to ‘improve the minds’ of the engineers they employed (Simons, 1933, p. 130). Douglas Foskett, librarian and information officer at the Metal Box Company from 1948 to 1957, was convinced that his library played ‘an important part in improving the general educational level of the workers at all levels’ (Foskett, 1956b, p. 4). Before 1914 progress in technical education provision in Britain had been poor. It was James Duff Brown’s opinion that in respect of technical education ‘other nations are pushing ahead and injuring the old British reputation for quality and accuracy in every kind of manufacture and machine’ (J. Brown, 1907, p. 51). At the higher level, university departments of engineering, metallurgy and chemistry had developed slowly relative to counterparts in Germany and the United States. The tendency in manufacturing was to value ‘learning by doing’ over the formation of a scientific and professionally trained managerial class (More, 1997, p. 146). As late as the 1940s, the residue of this attitude could still be detected in the form of criticism of the company library as an irrelevant tool for engineers whose pioneering ancestors were seen to have succeeded without being bookish (C. Marshall, 1946). At the lower level, reliance on apprenticeship entrenched traditional ‘rule of thumb’ practices where imitation took priority over creativity and discretion. Most managers opposed technical education, meaning that supervisors were often self-taught. As a reaction to such conservative attitudes, technical education provision began to grow from the 1890s onwards. For example, by 1897 over a quarter of a million students were taking examinations in craft and technical subjects offered by the City and Guilds of London Institute (Floud, 1997, p. 74). Interest in technical education was given fresh impetus by the First World War and by the increasingly competitive and technological economic environment of the inter-war period. Even if trade fluctuations restricted the flow of resources that could be directed towards technical education, the importance of investment in ‘human capital’ was increasingly recognised. Anticipating the knowledge and learning economy discourses of the late-twentieth century, the Times declared in 1930 that ‘the prosperity of the State … depends more perhaps than upon anything

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else on the ability of British industry and commerce to hold their own in the fierce struggle of world competition. That can only be done by maintaining and raising the knowledge and intelligence of its personnel’.65 Technical education via the company library reflected these changing attitudes to human capital formation. The company library’s contribution to technical education was often in the tradition of the ‘middle way’ that characterised technical education in Britain from the 1890s onwards. Unlike the mass, formal technical education schemes of Germany and the mostly ‘on the job’ learning of the American system of production, the British approach was one of informal education in technical subjects, complemented by practical work experience. This approach was enshrined in the emergence of evening classes, at that stage a peculiarly British phenomenon that became the envy of the rest of the world (Floud, 1997, p. 74). British workers took advantage of both non-vocational and vocational classes. Non-vocational classes (pre-dating the vocational in their origin) provided transferable skills of reasoning and literacy. British technical education was traditionally not confined to training in specific skills relevant to a particular job. It also admitted an element of general learning, especially in the tradition of the educated artisan, conducive to the production of ‘rounded’ workers (Floud, 1982). Vocational classes, on the other hand, provided directly pertinent knowledge. Company libraries satisfied this informal, mixed, middle-way formula for technical education in two ways. Firstly, some company libraries provided not just technical materials, but also serious literature of a general nature. The library at BP’s Britannic House headquarters housed not just scientific and technical materials but also books of a general nature. The company believed this gave a beneficial and rounded outlook to its higher level staff: History, literature, general criticism and even art have their repercussions and influences, near or remote, direct or indirect, on the work of even a purely industrial organisation. It is good that the chemist, the engineer, the administrator, or the distributor, as such, should now and again be tempted to get outside his own allocated sphere and to touch knowledge at unusual points. In these days of high specialisation, one should sometimes catch a glimpse of what the other man knows and does on the other side of the partitioning wall.66

Similarly, the Post Office’s central reference library was designed not only ‘to assist in the solution of the many problems that arise in the course of official work’ but also ‘to aid the staff in the special study of subjects of Post Office interest’.67 The committee planning the new library believed it important that the Library should not be confined to such works as interest only the specialist and [the] investigators. The Library cannot be expected to provide, of course, elementary textbooks for examination purposes, but it should contain works of the widest 65

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‘Intensive business training’, The Times (29 April 1930), news cutting in Aslib Archives. ‘Britannic House Library’, Naft APOC Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 4 (September 1931), p. 24. ‘The Post Office Library’, The Post Office Magazine (1938) p. 20.

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It was intended, therefore, that the library would not simply ‘enhance the efficiency of this great public service’, but also ‘be of benefit to individual officers’.69 At first confined to higher technical, managerial and supervisory staff, what was envisaged for library use was ‘the ultimate inclusion of the whole of the Post Office’.70 This was a potential readership of 31,000, some 2000 of whom were already readers, many of them consulting the reference collection and borrowing books through the post as students.71 Secondly, for those who had access to them, company libraries offered opportunities for workers (and, indeed, supervisors and managers) to complement any technical and scientific education they had received or were receiving. As a resource pertinent to their work, company collections were often extremely useful, and generally much more useful and accessible than the reference collections of most public libraries. At Rowntree the library was seen as integral to the firm’s educational scheme,72 which, like the company’s welfare provision (medical care, sporting and social facilities and subsidised housing), owed much to the Quaker philosophy of its founding family. Initially, use of the library was for a select few, but a year later access was widened to large parts of the workforce, followed shortly after by a relocation of the library to a more popular position close to the factory gates. By 1924 clerks were said to be busy borrowing ‘literature pertinent to their work’.73 A good example of a library that combined support for the development of a generally better educated workforce with more specific technical education was the reference department established in the Bank of England in 1922. Traditionally, those applying for clerkships in the Bank had to sit a basic examination in geography, as well as one in mathematics.74 General knowledge of this kind was deemed crucial to the technical work specific to the job. As such, the Bank’s reference library proved to be a valuable asset for those seeking to meet the requirement that Bank workers improve their intelligence and adaptability, while at the same time providing technical data pertinent to the organisation’s prime business. A similarly broad perspective on technical training was evident in the purpose of technical library provision in ICI which in the 1950s endeavoured to 68

69 70 71 72

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‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee’ (August 1935), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. The Post Office Library Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (December 1937), p. 1. The Post Office Library Review, Vol. 1, No. 4 (September 1938), p. 57. The Post Office Library Review, Vol. 1, No. 5 (December 1938), p. 77. ‘[Rowntree] General library’, memo from H.V. Garret to W. Wallace (12 November 1923), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. ‘[Rowntree] Technical Library report’ (31 December 1924), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. An examination of candidates for clerkship in the Bank, The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street: Staff Magazine of the Bank of England Library (December 2000), pp. 151–3.

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inculcate a ‘liberal outlook’ among its apprentices and managerial trainees, for ‘although a firm’s library will have technical training and information as its raison d’etre, a stock of some volumes covering the history and wider background should supply younger employees with broader spheres of reading and establish for them a meeting place and a centre that has some cultural basis’ (Runton 1957, p. 12). Here, as in many other companies, the interpretation of ‘technical education’, at least for some sets of employees, was a broad one.

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Scientific Management Company libraries helped to underwrite the development of the scientific management regimes which Taylorist teachings and Fordist organisation had popularised. In mass-production enterprises (whether industrial or commercial), with a detailed division of labour and intense specialisation, good supervision and personnel management were critical. Library holdings reflected the new science of management. Literature on management and supervision of operations often featured (Pearce, 1921, p. 366). (However, management literature was not to be found in all large companies and was certainly absent from GEC’s collection in the 1950s.)75 Rowntree’s librarian believed it was important to make available books on administration and [industrial] psychology.76 ‘The secret of high wages and high profits is Management’, he advised.77 In companies with good welfare schemes (a complement, in many respects, to aggressive scientific management) material supporting this aspect of corporate responsibility could also be found – ‘literature upon such subjects as fatigue study, business psychology, employment management, hygiene and housing’ (E. Clarke, 1921, p. 373). Scientific management’s marketing dimension was also accommodated. A cross-section of enquiries received by the library at Rowntree in 1920 reveals an understandable interest in scientific information, but also a surprisingly strong interest in marketing data (for example, particulars of the walnut trade; statistics on German trade; population statistics), as well as in information on the ‘human factor in industry’ and on industrial organisation.78 In 1918 Ernest Savage advised that in motor manufacturing, any decent library should have books on what he called ‘collateral subjects’ – like industrial organisation, advertising, wage systems, the labour question and scientific management. He advised that libraries be used to study the ideas and aspirations of the labour movement so that companies would not taken by surprise by workers’ demands (Savage, 1918b, p. 151). In some cases the nature of collections reflected the desire of management to contain labour through new management philosophy and practices. If made widely accessible in the organisation, company libraries could be employed as an antidote to the monotony created by the mass-production and minute division of labour that characterised Fordism. It was argued that library use could help restore ‘mental equilibrium’ by combatting ‘acute specialisation’ (Pearce, 1921, p. 365). Use of the Post Office library, it was said, would ‘enable each individual officer both to appreciate the relation in which the work of his branch or department stands to that of other parts of the Post Office, and to acquire a knowledge of conditions, developments and practice outside the service’.79 Some 75 76

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Correspondence (July 2002) from Antonia Bunch, library assistant at GEC, 1954–7. Rowntree Central Works Council Minutes (11 May 1925), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. ‘[Rowntree] Technical Library, First Half-Yearly Report’ (10 September 1917), Appendix Three. ‘Suggested material for the … [Rowntree Technical Library] report (1920)’, RowntreeMackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. The Post Office Library Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (December 1937), p. 1.

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libraries were promoted as bridges to achieving promotion, serving the interests of the worker and, at the same time, assuaging negative attitudes borne of monotony and specialisation by the promise of higher wages and, perhaps, more control over one’s job. Specialisation in economic life needed to be complemented by specialisation in knowledge production, through the work of niche agencies like company libraries. ASLIB recognised the role which specialised knowledge agencies could play: What it amounts to is that every man has his own subject, about which, loosely speaking, he must know everything. About many other subjects he must know a little or know how to inform himself about them when occasion demands. The amount of knowledge involved in these comparatively limited requirements is far too great to be borne in one human mind. Whilst we have to know a great deal more than did our great-grandfathers, we have not been provided with bigger brains to contain our knowledge. The way out of this difficulty is provided by specialisation. Just as specialisation in activity has made possible the modern mass production of goods required by the vastly increased populations of the world, specialisation in knowledge makes possible the management of every sort of great complicated enterprise.80

Company libraries promised gains in productivity and profits. A central intelligence service, said J.G. Pearce, ‘meant economy and efficiency’ (Pearce, 1921, p. 366). Those who recognised the tangible value of the company library were frustrated whenever their views were not shared by businesses enterprises – which was fairly frequently. In 1926 ASLIB’s Honorary Secretary complained that: ‘The snag is the large proportion of the industry who do not appear to have the faintest notion that we could provide them with anything able to be translated in their works into £.s.d. [pounds, shillings and pence].’81 Enthusiasts were at pains to point out that ‘a service of information is not costly … Perhaps knowledge is undervalued just because it is so cheap … Or perhaps knowledge is not assessed at its worth because the results of lacking it are not immediate, direct, and obvious’.82 They also pushed the argument that information assisted in avoiding the ‘capitalisation’ of new machinery and processes before they had been proven. The fact that more and more enterprises inaugurated company libraries illustrates a growing realisation in business circles of the important role information could play in delivering corporate success. Generally, companies which invested in a company library accepted them as a valuable asset. Less than two years after the establishment of the library at Rowntree a company director estimated that ‘the cost of the library has already been saved two or three times by improvements in the works effected as a result’.83 The company librarian concurred with the economic benefit his department had brought: ‘the value of up-to-date information, if made accessible, properly interpreted and turned to account, is very 80 81

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‘Draft for proposed Business Information Guide’ (c. 1929), Aslib Archives. A.F. Ridley (Hon. Secretary of Aslib) to H.G. Lyall (London Research and Information Bureaux) (5 March 1926), Aslib Archives. ‘Draft for proposed Business Information Guide’ (c. 1929), Aslib Archives. [Rowntree] Directors’ Committee Minutes (16 December 1918), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York.

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real’.84 Referring to the ‘intelligence bureau’, J.G. Pearce (1925, p. 12) was emphatic in his belief that ‘unquestionably, these agencies have an economic value’. Douglas Foskett was once told by a Metal Box factory manager that a technical report he had tracked down for him had saved the company £10,000 per annum.85 In order to prove their worth, in true scientific management style some company libraries performed a detailed cost analysis of their operations. At ICI Dyestuffs in 1932, the librarian explained that: we are able … to show the exact cost of each of our various services – the card index, the Library publication, including a weekly summary of journal and patent literature and a weekly list of all literature (internal and external) received in the Library, the handling of reports, enquiries, and the like … Accurate analysis is an invaluable aid in securing the necessary sanction which may be required to meet any increased expenditure necessitated by expanding demands and services’ (Brightman, 1932, p. 3).

This strategy reflected company librarians’ acceptance of the new management realities and their understanding that ‘the value of the department will be judged solely by the results obtained’ (E. Clarke, 1921, p. 377). Finally, the way company libraries were run was in close keeping with the teachings of the scientific management movement, as was the case in regard to other office and clerical environments (Duffy, 1980). Principles of scientific management developed in industry were applied visibly to the organisation of the clerical workforce of company libraries. Minute attention to detail and production line methods were key to such activities as abstracting, indexing, preparation of cuttings files and periodical ordering and circulation. Some of these bureaucratic practices were, of course, shared with general librarianship, but in the company library environment they were vigorously conducted, as befitted a commercial environment where new management theories were being deployed. The Emergence of Information Work Company library growth in the first half of the twentieth century was in part driven by, and was a reflection of, an emergent information role in librarianship and the development of a separate professional sphere of information work. Those who pioneered company library services were the progenitors of today’s information professionals and information scientists. Their chief concern was to provide access to specific information, often extracted from larger documents. As Rowntree’s first technical librarian wrote in 1919: ‘for business purposes we tend to disassociate information from literature; we do not want books, we want information’.86 In the first half of the twentieth century company libraries were the laboratories where the 84

‘[Rowntree] Technical Library Report’ (1924), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. 85 Interview (December 2002) with Douglas Foskett, librarian and information officer at the Metal Box Company, 1948–1957. 86 H.V. Garrett, ‘Library bulletins and card index’ (16 May 1919), Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York, R/D/TL/9.

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principles and practice of information work in Britain – not only minute subject indexing but also the pre-emption of user demands, experimentation in new technologies and formats, the winnowing of information from whole items, and detailed abstracting – were formulated and refined. This new approach established a tension with those who clung to a traditional ‘library’ image and approach, which, among other things, professed the greater importance of a grounding in the principles and practices of librarianship than of knowledge of the subject of the materials being organised and disseminated. When first established, company libraries often merely fulfilled a traditional collection and storage role. Thereafter, an information role emerged as literature was scanned and material extracted, packaged and communicated to researchers and managers in advance of demand. In the United States the changing face of the business library was readily recognised. In 1919 Louise Krause, librarian of H.M. Byllesby and Co., explained that twenty-five years previously the [in–house] business library: could be accurately defined as a collection of books on a series of shelves, and although this old definition still partially describes its present form, the true interpretation of what a business library really is, can be stated best by saying that it is a genuine service department, whose chief business is to give information to the members of a firm on subjects of vital importance in the conduct of their business. The business library is not limited to a collection of books, but contains information in any form, namely, periodicals, pamphlets, trade catalogs [sic], photographs, lantern slides, and also manuscript notes which are accumulated in connection with the specific work of an organization. The business library even goes so far in its service as to supply information which is obtained by ‘word of mouth’ in advance of its appearance on the printed page (p. 307).

The new role of the library was based on the need to organise the literature to bring out its ‘subject’ value and the need to keep readers continuously informed of developments in their field, often by anticipating demand for information (Foskett, 1958, p. 11). The ‘information service’ aspect of company library work aimed to provide packaged, hewn information, not just whole items – and to do so without necessarily waiting for to be asked for it. Few of the early company libraries were controlled by qualified librarians (Exley, 1951, p. 159). Instead, they were for the most part placed ‘in the care of people without any previous experience or training in librarianship’.87 For example, in the chemical industry and in industries which required a heavy chemical technology input ‘the tendency was for a firm to engage first of all a works chemist, who usually brought his own books with him’ (Foskett, 1958, p. 10). Such libraries, recalled Piggot in 1958, were ‘once regarded as an offshoot of the chief chemist’s department’ (p. 76). As long as merely record keeping tasks were required, relatively unskilled staff could undertake the job of librarian. But once an information dissemination, and perhaps analysis, role appeared then more qualified personnel were needed. Scientists already working in the company were prime candidates for the expanded role. Vincent Garrett became Rowntree’s first librarian having come up 87

S. Bennett, letter to Library Association Record (1952), p. 28.

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through the scientific side of the company. Brian Vickery, one of Britain’s foremost post-1945 information scientists, read chemistry at Oxford before joining the library of one of ICI’s research laboratories in 1946 (Vickery, 2004, p. 7). At Metropolitan-Vickers, J.G. Pearce was assigned to the directorship of the library and intelligence section in 1917 having cut his teeth as a company secretary, although later the company did in fact appoint a librarian. However, a background in science or company administration was by no means a pre-requisite. In the late 1940s Douglas Foskett became librarian at the canning company Metal Box, having gained a library qualification and, prior to that, a degree in English.88 In commercial, as opposed to manufacturing, enterprises a more traditional path was followed. A qualified librarian (Kenneth W. Cotton) was appointed by the Bank of England in 1925, three years after the opening of the reference library; an assistant (Miss G.F. Little), also with librarianship qualifications, was appointed in 1931 and succeeded Cotton as librarian after his death in 1942.89 At the Post Office in 1935 it was advised that a full-time librarian, at least of ‘staff officer’ rank, should be appointed, one who should ‘possess the distinctive [librarianship] qualifications needed for the post’.90 Libraries in commercial enterprises conformed more closely to the model of the reference collection, with less of an emphasis placed on information work than in manufacturing company libraries.91 However, information work was to a greater or lesser degree carried out in the libraries of commercial enterprises and, like their counterparts in industry, after 1924 they found support for this aspect of their work in the form of ASLIB, which, although spanning a wide array of ‘library types’, including the ‘traditional’, none the less promoted the forms of professional practice that later came to be known as documentation, information science and information management. It should be noted, however, that as an organisation essentially of institutional, rather than individual, members, ASLIB was slow to provide educational and training support. This was largely left to the Library Association which, although it offered professional qualifications, paid relatively little attention to preparation for work in company libraries. For example, on only three occasions between 1930 and 1950 did the Association’s exam paper on special library administration, which formed part of the final qualification phase, carry a question on professional work in company libraries.92 This left the Association open to forceful criticism that it was not preparing people for industrial and commercial library work (Farradane, 1953; Kay, 1954). Tellingly, a special interest industrial group was not formed in the Association until 1970 (Palmer, 1991).

88 89 90

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He later became librarian of London University’s Institute of Education. Bank of England Archives, E16/6. ‘[Post Office] Headquarters Library, Report of the Committee’ (August 1935), Royal Mail Archives, POST 72. At the Bank of England, as late as 1960, it was reported that the indexing of periodicals hardly existed. A central index of references to articles contained in UK financial and economic publications was thus suggested. See ‘Reference Library and the Central Banking Information Department’ (30 September 1960), Bank of England Archives, OV21/22. Library Association Year Book (1934, p. 164), (1942, p. 96) and (1949, p. 164).

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While the Library Association was slow to recognise the training needs of the business sector, the School of Librarianship at University College (London) claimed from its early days that it prepared people for work in any type of library, including the company library: ‘the fundamental principles of librarianship are the same, whatever the library may be’, declared the School’s director, Ernest Baker (1925, p. 95). In addition, in the 1920s the School was offering lectures on running commercial and technical libraries. However, neither ‘abstracting’ nor ‘advanced indexing’ – skills essential to company library work – were taught. Provided instead, at a lower level, was a ‘kind of drilling that might be given to clerks and others who are beginning their work in … bureaux of information and in … special libraries’ (Baker, 1925, p. 97). This broad brush approach was underscored by the belief that subject specialisation was probably not necessary until after joining the organisation, at which point she or he would begin to take on board appropriate contextual knowledge. Others disagreed, arguing that ‘specific scientific and technical training was indispensable (Baker, 1925, p. 97). After 1945 the company library became a battleground of competing professional interests: between those of librarians and those of documentalists, later labelled ‘information scientists’. ‘The conflict between librarians and documentalists has become bitter’, wrote Piggot in 1958 (p. 80) in reviewing the industrial library field. ‘There appears’, he observed, ‘to be an attitude of indifference and lack of co–operation with the actions taking place in documentation circles’ (p. 78), as well as a ‘lack of ability of the more conservative librarians to appreciate the requirements of the new situation’ (p. 75). In the late 1940s and in the 1950s the ancestor of the documentalist, and the progenitor of the information scientist, came to be termed the ‘information officer’. These years witnessed a running debate as to the definition and legitimacy of the ‘information officer’, and the nature and exclusivity of his or her professional practices.93 In the wake of the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference a government panel on Technical Information Services, under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Industrial Productivity, was established.94 Part of its wide ranging workload, centred on the status of, and need for, information officers (and those it termed special librarians) in industry. The Panel regretted that some of the work of the information officer required ‘a high degree of knowledge of the subject and its 93

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Examples of the debate, which was at times conducted outside the library and information press, include: ‘Training in special librarianship’, Aslib Information, No. 67 (April 1946); ‘Information officers’, Aslib Information, No. 68 (July 1946); S. Bennett, letter to Library Association Record (1952), p. 28; L. Wilson, letter to Library Association Record (1952), p. 98; R.D. Rates, letter to Library Association Record (1952), p. 179; L. Wilson, letter to Library Association Record (1952), pp. 242–3; Farradane (1953); A.J. Walford, Editorial, Library Association Record (November 1953); J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1953), pp. 411–12; B. Vickery, letter to Library Association Record (1954), pp. 103–4; J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1954), pp. 136–8; W. Pearson, letter to Library Association Record (1954), p. 273; J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1954), pp. 409–10; Kay (1954); Slade (1959); H.D. Barry, letter to Engineering (13 November 1959), p. 463; W. Sontag, letter to Engineering (4 December 1959), p. 568. Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/44.

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application. It demands the exercise of judgement and selection to determine what knowledge will be useful and to whose attention new items should be brought’.95 The 1948 Conference had concluded that information officers (and special librarians) should be regarded as equal in standing to fellow scientists; but that there was ‘an important distinction’ between the two: each should have his/her ‘own field of activity and special qualification’; and each should possess a scientific qualification, which was not something that the Library Association required or advocated of course.96 Some sought to calm the stormy waters by emphasising the similarities they perceived between the opposing groups. Foskett (1958, p. 1) lamented the ‘futility of the years of discussion, often acrimonious, that have taken place’, and argued (p. 11) that ‘all information services are ultimately based on library methods and materials’. In 1953, A.J. Walford, editor of the Library Association Record, declared that ‘it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine where librarianship leaves off and information work begins. In general terms we may say that behind the information officer stands the librarian; in a number of special libraries, indeed, the two functions are in fact identical’.97 Replying in agreement a few months later, one writer to the Record invoked the word of the recently deceased S.C. Bradford: ‘Documentation is no more than one aspect of the larger art of librarianship.’98 Similarly, Vickery observed that ‘in so far as the information officer is concerned with locating, organising and disseminating recorded data, he is using library techniques’.99 The most outspoken advocate of the new domain of ‘information work’ was Jason Farradane, scientific information officer at the research laboratories of the sugar giant Tate and Lyle, co-founder of the Institute of Information Scientists in 1958 and the architect of Britain’s first course in information work in 1961 (at the Northampton College of Advanced Technology, later City University, London). Farradane sought a strict separation between the librarian and the information officer. In 1954 he denied attempting to give birth to a new profession – in fact ‘the healthy youngster is already in existence’, he quipped.100 He was convinced ‘that the interests of librarians and information officers diverge, and will continue to diverge more as the information officer profession develops … the information officer lays little or no claim to the techniques of librarianship’.101 He was 95

96

97 98 99 100

101

‘Grading and status of information officers’ (9 April 1949), Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/45. ‘Royal Society Scientific Information Conference 1948: recommendations concerning special librarians and information officers’ (February 1949), Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/46. A.J. Walford, Editorial, Library Association Record (November 1953). W. Pearson, letter to Library Association Record (1954), p. 273. B. Vickery, letter to Library Association Record (1954), p. 104. J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1954), p. 137. Farradane (1954. p. 299) located the origins of the designation ‘information officer’ in the 1930s. J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1953), pp. 411–12. In this letter Farradane refers to a strident article by Mortimer Taube (1953) which documents a similar tension between librarians and documentalists in the United States. Documentary techniques practised across the Atlantic were at this time considered to be advanced, as evident in: ‘Visit to the United and Canada … by J.E. Holstrom’ (21 May 1948),

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supported in his fight to secure a discrete status for information work by a healthy number of professionals working in the information services and libraries of private enterprises and research establishments. ‘When will a minority of librarians eventually realise’, asked one of these supporters rhetorically, ‘that something new and different has come up with the information officer’.102 Librarians resisted the ‘information officer’ discourse by dismissing it as a fad, arguing that in truth the term referred to a press, or public relations, officer.103 Others took an aggressive line. R.L. Collison, Reference Librarian of Westminster, wrote in 1949 (p. i): For several years I have sought to discover the meaning of the word ‘documentation’, to ascertain what exactly was done by documentalists, documentators and documentationalists … I have heard them defined as ‘amateur librarians’ … All the nonsense about information officers and documentators, and what not, must often arise only from one cause – that people who are incapable of doing the job of librarianship, or who are unwilling to learn to do it properly, want to justify their inefficiency as librarians by calling themselves something which cannot be assessed, as can librarianship, in the light of accepted standards of professional experience and training. So it will be a good thing for everyone concerned if we revert to the old phrases of ‘special libraries’ and ‘special librarianship’.

To summarise, when ‘information work’, undertaken by a new breed of selfstyled ‘information officers’, began to be promoted in the 1940s and 1950s its enthusiasts sought to distinguish it from general librarianship in a number of ways: It was said that the information worker, or officer: • Dealt with information extracted from whole documents, the organisation of the latter being essentially the responsibility of the librarian. It was said that in the research library or company information centre the professional was less concerned ‘with the backs of books than with the fronts of filing-cabinets’ (Currie, 1958, p. 12); for it was ‘not merely the document as whole that is of interest, but frequently quite specific detailed information contained in the document, which may even be a complete sideline to the main subject’ (Kay, 1954, p. 130). Taube (1952, p. 206) defined documentation as ‘the communication of specialized information’, by which he meant documents that corresponded to ‘the old vertical file material that wasn’t worth the type of organization usually accorded to books and periodicals’ (p. 208).104

102 103

104

Committee on Industrial Productivity, Panel on Technical Information Services, National Archives, CAB 132/44. See also Taube (1952) and Bowles (1999). W. Sontag, letter to Engineering (4 December 1959), p. 568. ‘Information officers’, Aslib Information, No. 68 (July 1946). During the Second World War, of course, ‘information officers’ formed part of the government’s propaganda machine: see Grant (1999). In 1913 the SLA established a special committee to investigate methods for the handling and filing of newsclippings: see entry on ‘Special Libraries Association’, in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Vol. 4, 2nd edn. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2003), p. 2726.

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• Sought to anticipate demand, unlike the librarian who was more ‘reactive’ in this regard. Information workers were expected to have the ability to anticipate demand more keenly and satisfy requests more speedily than their counterparts in a general library (Exley, 1951, pp. 159–160). Miss I.M. Slade (1959, p. 374), information officer at the British Iron and Steel Research Association, explained how it was the duty of the information officer to watch and sift the stream of incoming information and extract for closer examination items of interest to people in the organisation; to do this she or he had ‘to go about the works and talk to people on the job, [and] see the process and their products’. This approach was echoed by Vickery (2004, p. 8), who recalled that at ICI one of his and the information staff’s key tasks was to make ‘ourselves familiar with the work of the laboratories’. Anticipation of demand was important in order to save technical and research staff valuable time: ‘scientists are more profitably occupied at the bench than in the library’, remarked Foskett (1958, p. 9). Services could obviously be provided on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, but the information officer was intent on a much fuller publicising of collections and information among potential users (F.R. Taylor, 1966, p. 306). His or her prime function was ‘active’ reference service and dissemination. Thus we see the widespread provision of abstracting and bulletin services designed to satisfy the expressed interests of individuals and groups. In 1926 Stanley Jast (p. 26) claimed that ‘in a general library the books count for more than the staff; in a special library the staff may count for more than the books’. As one of the rare librarians who recognised the growing importance of information work, Jast was well aware of the ‘pro-active’ posture of this emerging professional area. • Vigorously exploited new technological opportunities and was comfortable with a multiplicity of formats; the librarian, by contrast, certainly stereotypically, was a technological laggard, concerned essentially with books. A key characteristic of early information work was an appreciation of the possibilities brought by such technologies as the vertical file, peephole information retrieval, the photostat, photocopying, microphotography and photography generally, punched–card technologies and, eventually of course, the computer.105 The early-twentieth century witnessed an explosion of reports, circulars, patents, photographs, film (including microfilm), announcements and a variety of ephemeral materials; what Kruzas (1965, p. 113) termed ‘a flood of heterogeneous materials’. Information workers were receptive to new information storage formats and worked imaginatively to develop ways of accommodating and organising them. • Was mostly anchored in ‘practical’, ‘relevant’ and ‘productive’ environments, such as the industrial or commercial enterprise, unlike librarians who mostly displayed a predilection for the ‘cultural’. Those who identified strong similarities between librarians and information workers sometimes stressed the 105

It should be pointed out, however, that librarians were no laggards in the exploitation of computing technology, firstly for circulation and later for catalogues. See A. Black (2000, pp. 123–4 ) and Becker (1964).

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context in which they operated to be the distinguishing feature: ‘Librarians and information officers, I suspect, are like vertebrates distinguished by differences in selected environment’, observed Currie (1958, p. 81). • Ideally displayed knowledge of the subject areas – whether chemistry or banking, engineering or insurance < with which her/his information service was concerned; whereas the librarian dealt with general collections and therefore endeavoured to develop a broad and rounded familiarity recorded knowledge as opposed to a subject specialism. Addressing ASLIB’s annual meeting in 1929, Arthur Ridley, librarian of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, classed as ‘indispensable’ a ‘knowledge of the subject or subjects covered by the field which the special library services’ (p. 104). In the debate that followed, however, B.M. Headicar (p. 111) pointed out that Ridley has himself been appointed to his present post with no knowledge of metallurgy (Ridley, 1929, p. 111)! Exley (1951, pp. 159–160) stated that in information work a scientific degree was deemed useful, but not essential; ‘the most important qualification is basic library training and a thorough knowledge of the literature of the subjects covered by the library’. In 1944 E.R. McColvin (p. 66), chair of ASLIB’s education committee, declared that ‘to a large number of our [ASLIB] members some specialist knowledge is desirable in all our senior professional personnel’. Such was the importance of the subject content of information work that at the library of the Mond Nickel Company in the 1940s all enquiries received were handled by the subject specialist as well as the information service staff (Roberts, 1949, p. 33). Subject knowledge was crucial, of course, for good in-house abstracting and for detailed ‘local’ classification. The lack of subject knowledge clearly hampered growth in the number of qualified librarians in company libraries, with qualified scientists or other specialists often doing the job instead.106 Understandably, such personnel identified less with the terms ‘library’ or ‘librarian’. • Claimed a higher professional status. Information workers, many of whom began their careers as scientists, believed they could justifiably command the esteem commanded by the science profession. ‘The library staff are an essential part of the research team’, noted Exley (1951, p. 159). Farradane (1954, p. 301) was of the opinion that most information officers ‘are science graduates without library qualification’. In 1932, in idealising the information worker as someone who could command respect in the corporate hierarchy, Brightman (p. 2) wrote that ‘experience suggests that even a small technical library is best directed by a senior officer of some standing who is able to resist the undue pressure that may sometimes be exerted on an information department’. In planning the establishment of a technical library at Rowntree in 1916, it was anticipated that ‘a good company library should be an investigation bureau and, as such, needed

106

In the United States the Special Libraries Association noted views ‘indicating the scarcity of librarians fitted for chemical organizations’: see Executive Board Minutes (7 June 1938), Special Libraries Association Archive, Washington DC.

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to be led by a person of the same professional standing as the company chief engineer or chemist’.107 • Emphasised customisation in classification and indexing, and was less concerned with traditional bibliography. Piggot (1958, p. 78) noted that: ‘The emergence and increasing importance of research reports and materials not published in the normal way has led to the reconsideration of techniques. Because these reports are not amenable to traditional methods of bibliographical description and demand an intensive subject analysis, a whole new discipline has been built up around them.’ In the environment of the industrial library or information unit a premium was placed on the development of customised subject indexing: ‘the classification or subject indexing of finely detailed subjects poses quite new problems’, stated Farradane.108 Information officers believed a new approach to classification was needed, specifically schemes based on Ranganathan’s faceted, colon procedure. Subject indexing grew in importance, one of the effects of the 1948 Royal Society Scientific Information Conference being the establishment working party on classification which later evolved into the Classification Research Group. • Demonstrated greater depth of analysis of materials, and could be found involved in translation (or the provision of a translating service), editing, technical writing, abstracting, bulletin preparation and indexing; while Farradane observed that ‘there are information officers (especially in the economic and commercial fields) who may never enter a library, and who deal in statistics and advice on commercial policy’.109 * * * Early company library activity in Britain, in the same way as Kruzas (1965, p. 112) has noted in regard to early company libraries in the United States, was marked by ‘efforts to adapt, modify, extend, and occasionally discard’ – one might add ‘displace’ – the conventional approaches to organising knowledge favoured by librarians. Just as information work did not constitute a wholesale rejection of librarianship (how could it?), librarianship at times acknowledged and drew on the growing field of information work. Whether undertaken by individuals who called themselves librarians or information officers, the emergent area of information work, in terms of both its practical and conceptual development, was a key factor in the founding and growth of company libraries in the first half of the twentieth century. These company libraries, in their turn, contributed significantly to the strengthening of the information infrastructure of the enterprises in which they were situated – an information infrastructure that pre-dates the recent concepts of the learning organisation, information management and knowledge management by decades, if not by a century or more. 107

J.B. Morrell, ‘[Internal Report on] business libraries’ (26 July 1916), RowntreeMackintosh Archives, Borthwick Institute, University of York. 108 J. Farradane, letter to Library Association Record (1953), p. 412. 109 Ibid.

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PART IV THE INFORMATION WORKFORCE

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Chapter 6

Education for the Early Information Professions in Britain, c. 1918–1961 Helen Plant

Introduction In January 1961, eight students embarked on a new course of evening lectures entitled ‘Collecting and Communicating Scientific Knowledge’ at the Northampton College of Advanced Technology in London. The course was a collaborative venture between the college and the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) which had been founded three years earlier, and aimed to prepare students for the Institute’s certification examination. Such was its success that two years later the college offered a full-time postgraduate diploma, this time in the stated discipline of ‘information science’ (Rennie, 1986). This flurry of initiatives established the first dedicated programmes of advanced vocational training and qualification in information work in Britain, and confirmed the status of information science as a subject in its own right which merited the formal professional panoply of association and accreditation. But these were contentious steps. Scientific information work had emerged in the decades after the First World War as a wide sphere of practice which spanned the established occupations of librarianship and scientific research. Identified by a range of job titles including special, technical or research librarian, documentalist, information or intelligence officer, and, latterly, information scientist, scientific information workers were drawn from a variety of educational and employment backgrounds to form a small but growing presence on the staff of many industrial and commercial firms, research associations, learned societies, government departments and similar bodies. Almost from the first, the question of what education and training best prepared prospective recruits for this work provoked debate. As a hybrid, variegated field which had developed primarily in a piecemeal way, scientific information work invited numerous, even conflicting, responses from interested parties seeking to map out its requirements in terms of knowledge and skills. Matters were complicated further by the different, shifting, and sometimes disputed meanings which contemporaries attached to occupational terminology. Prior to the Second World War, special librarianship was widely used as an umbrella term for all aspects of scientific information work, and early attempts to provide appropriate training were made within the evolving framework of education for librarianship. However, these efforts met with only partial success because an alternative body of opinion consistently denied that scientific information work was, in fact if not in name, a subset of librarianship and stressed instead its relationship to science and the

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overwhelming need for practitioners to possess specialist subject knowledge. In the post-war period, as pressure for a formal system of training increased, some remained committed to locating scientific information work fully within the compass of librarianship. Others, though, began to draw clear distinctions between its different branches and argued that it actually consisted of two separate professions: special librarianship and information science. The IIS and its subsequent educational undertakings represented the determination by one group of scientific information specialists to lay claim to a professional identity that was quite separate from that of librarians. This chapter explores the debates and developments around the questions of education and qualification for scientific information work in Britain during the period between the First World War and the 1960s. Focusing on these formative decades not only sheds light on the ways in which the information professions emerged in response to the demands of industrial society, but also promises to illuminate the largely unexplored evolution of information as a distinct field of professional expertise. Scholarship to date on the history of education for the information professions in Britain has located the subject primarily as a subsidiary plot in the unfolding narrative of post-war education for librarianship (Bramley, 1981, pp. 134–4; Munford, 1976, pp. 279–80; Muddiman, 2006). Perhaps inevitably, this approach has tended to obscure the extent to which occupational discourses outside of librarianship, and particularly those linked to scientific research, also informed educational ideas and practices. In addition, it has meant that the relationship between the established library profession and this new scientific information field has not been subjected to close investigation. Two studies which address the early development of the information professions in the United States offer some indications of how research might proceed, whilst also providing a warning against potential pitfalls. Robert Williams describes special librarianship and documentation in America between 1910 and 1960 as ‘splintering movements’ which evolved to serve the information needs of scientists in the face of ‘the inability and reluctance of the larger library profession to welcome non-traditional materials, new technologies and subject-based personnel and approaches to the field’. Meanwhile, Mark Bowles characterises the history of the information professions during the second half of the twentieth century in terms of ‘information wars’, with librarians and documentalists battling for control of the scientific information field across the gulf of mutual incomprehension dividing literary humanists and scientists. Central to this conflict, Bowles argues, was the failure of librarians to embrace the new technologies that promised a solution to the information retrieval problems caused by spiralling output in scientific literature (Williams, 1996; Bowles, 1999). Both these studies adopt a promising analytical framework, widening the sphere of enquiry from librarianship to information and so bringing to light the alternative discourses that shaped developments in the field. Nevertheless, they also contain much that is problematic. First, it is far from clear that the voices contributing to the education debates in Britain can be neatly divided into opposing camps labelled scientist-documentalists and literary humanist-librarians; and anyway, it is debatable just how helpful or appropriate it is to interpret historical problems using a model as seductively tidy as that of ‘two cultures’. While evidence can certainly be found of such alignments, it was also the case, as we shall see, that these were

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cut across by far more flexible, fluid and ambiguous allegiances. Moreover, to apply the notion of ‘information wars’ to the British context would be wilfully to disregard the remarkable extent to which the search for cooperative solutions underpinned relations between the traditional library profession and the new scientific information experts on the education question throughout our period. Secondly, both narratives adopt a disturbingly whiggish tone in which librarianship is cast as a reactionary force that failed to respond in a suitably dynamic fashion to the rapidly changing information demands of science and industry, and so precipitated the splintering of the information professions. Yet such an interpretation seems to overlook not only the persistent presence within the scientific information movement of a group that did not identify their work with librarianship in any but the most tangential way, but also the quite legitimate determination among librarians to safeguard the fragile professional integrity of their own sphere. Thirdly, there is little evidence that the application of new technology was a source of contention, at least in the period before the 1960s with which this study is concerned. Rather, debate centred chiefly on the relative importance of technical library training and specialist subject knowledge, and on the best means of securing an appropriate breadth and balance of skills and expertise in the scientific information workforce. The quest to develop appropriate educational provision for the early information professions in Britain may perhaps be characterised best as a process of negotiation, and by paying attention to the range of perspectives that were expressed, this chapter hopes to capture its complexities and confusions. The Interwar Years: the Growth of Special Librarianship The development of an occupational field devoted to the handling of scientific information took place within the wider context of responses, evident from the Victorian period onwards, to the need for more effective systems with which to manage the mounting volume of information confronting science, industry and commerce. During the nineteenth century, the professionalisation of scientific research fuelled rapid expansion in the output of periodical literature that has continued unabated ever since. Bibliographical methods that had been developed to organise books in traditional libraries did not appear to offer an appropriate way of managing this rising tide of serials, reports and so on. Early British attempts at a solution included such initiatives as the Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers published between 1867 and 1902. Meanwhile, the industrial sector displayed growing appreciation of the potential business advantages of more sophisticated information management, stimulated by growing awareness of the benefits of harnessing scientific knowledge in the service of industry. The First World War gave a spur to more decisive action. The full extent of British industry’s reliance on overseas (especially German) scientific acumen became starkly apparent, and, against a longer-term backdrop of increasingly fierce trade competition, did much to convince interested parties of the critical role of information as a bedrock of successful performance in research and development and innovation (Hutton, 1945; Ditmas, 1948a; Sanderson, 1972, pp. 214–42; Foreman-Peck, 1994).

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A range of measures were adopted by industry in an attempt to improve information awareness, and it was these practices that were chiefly responsible for the growth in numbers of staff employed in scientific information work. As Alistair Black describes elsewhere in this volume, the company technical library was an American initiative tried out by only a handful of British organisations prior to the First World War. However, wartime exigencies prompted comprehensive restructuring in many larger enterprises, one aspect of which was often the establishment of an in-house research department complete with its own information handling function. These information departments were known by a variety of (not necessarily synonymous) names including technical or research libraries, intelligence sections and information bureaux. Equally significant were the activities of the industrial research associations that were set up from 1918 onwards under the auspices of the new Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Under pressure from such influential bodies as the Royal Society, the government proposed the research association scheme as a way of fostering cooperative industrial research. Grants were made available to encourage firms operating in the same industry to join together to support research of common benefit, and by 1947 there were thirty-five research associations sponsored by some ten thousand individual companies. From the outset, one of the conditions attached to government funding was that the associations provide their members with ‘a regular service of summarised technical information which would keep the firm abreast of technical developments in the industry at home and abroad’. Information management was thus a central concern, and the associations’ special libraries and information bureaux became an integral part of their operations. In the late 1920s, each of the associations received a grant from the Carnegie UK Trust towards library acquisitions, and over the years many accumulated extensive collections of reference books, periodicals, reports, patents and other materials pertaining to their particular field (R. Edwards, 1950, pp. 32–9 and 194–7; Melville, 1962, pp. 386–414). How organisations structured their technical information services was, of course, very much an individual matter, based on a host of factors such as the size of the constituency to be served, the kinds of material to be handled and the level of funding that it was prepared to commit to the undertaking. Similarly, a range of practices were adopted in relation to staffing, depending on the status, roles and requirements of each appointment. Scientific information work often demanded a fair assortment of knowledge and skills, including scientific and technical subject knowledge, the ability to translate foreign language material and organisational aptitude. On the one hand, therefore, this was an area in which there was considerable scope for specialisation and division of expertise within large information departments; on the other hand, there were many organisations which actually employed only one or two dedicated scientific information staff and so expected a high level of adaptability. It is a point which cannot be too forcibly stressed at this stage that there was no single type of scientific information worker because there was no single type of scientific information post. Understanding this diversity is crucial, because it helps to explain why personnel were recruited who came from a range of educational backgrounds, and indeed why the issue of appropriate training and qualification became so contentious.

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In the first instance, however, it is evident that many employers regarded some degree of specialist subject knowledge of the kind likely to be acquired through study at school or, as was often the case, at university, as an essential qualification for most scientific information work. Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (Metrovick) of Manchester, for example, was to the forefront of the inter-war development of company scientific information services in Britain and placed responsibility for running these overwhelmingly with university educated scientists. A long-mooted research department was established at its Trafford Park site in 1917, when the care of the small library came within the remit of J.G. Pearce. Pearce, who was something of a bell-wether figure in the special libraries movement, made the library the centre of a new technical intelligence service. For a period during the 1920s the library was placed under the direction of a member of staff without advanced scientific education, Miss L. Stubbs. In a lecture on the workings of industrial special libraries, Stubbs stated that they should be staffed by a librarian, ‘who understands “special library” economy but who do[es] not understand science or engineering …’, with the help of a number of technical assistants, and it may reasonably be assumed that she was drawing on her own experience (Dummelow, 1949, p 58; Stubbs, 1925). But in 1929, the technical intelligence section was substantially reorganised and expanded, and placed under the directorship of J.B.P. Paton, a science graduate and member of both the Royal Institute of Chemistry and the Institute of Electrical Engineers. Meanwhile, the post of librarian was taken up by Beryl Dent, a Masters graduate in physics who occupied the position until 1946. Personnel records indicate that by 1938 the section employed a full-time staff of six, including another science graduate alongside Paton and Dent and two specialist translators.1 A similar stress on scientific knowledge was evident at the British Rubber Manufacturers’ Research Association which supported a large technical library and information bureau. The work there consisted chiefly of abstracting, classifying, indexing and circulating technical literature, and was performed by science graduates, possessing ‘a flair for accurate, systematic work and a knowledge of foreign languages’.2 Organisations operating on a smaller scale might demand a similar package of knowledge and expertise. The Woodhall-Duckhams Company advertised in 1923 for a ‘Lady with scientific training and good knowledge of French and German to extract Technical literature and to have charge of a library’.3 And even for what were apparently quite routine positions some background technical knowledge was often required, as for example when a Manchester-based manufacturing company sought ‘a Man with experience of filing and card indexing of scientific and technical information under subject headings’ to work in its library and information bureau.4 Clearly, the prevailing view within the scientific and industrial sector was that education for scientific information work was essentially academic, and any particular vocational skills that were required would be gained through experience 1

2

3 4

‘Register of scientific research units and laboratories, 1938’, Metropolitan-Vickers Archives, Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. ‘The Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers,’ Journal of Careers, No. 177 (1937), pp. 505–7. Chemistry and Industry, Vol. 42, No. 42 (1923). Chemistry and Industry Vol. 42, No. 15 (1923).

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in the workplace. No specific training was available for this kind of work, and to speak of scientific information work in the 1920s in terms of occupational, much less professional, fields is evidently premature. In a handful of instances, technical library posts were filled by individuals with backgrounds in traditional librarianship who possessed professional qualifications in that sphere but did not have a scientific or technical education. For example, Arthur Ridley was librarian at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association from its creation in 1920 until 1945. He was a Fellow of the Library Association and formerly on the staff of Greenwich Public Library, and acquired his knowledge of the literature of But while notable, such cases were not typical, metallurgy ‘on the job’.5 especially in this early period. Although scientific information workers were now commonly titled special or technical librarians, and worked in departments known as libraries, they rarely had professional library training. Indeed, as a group, they had no shared or recognisable marks of expertise which set them apart from the rest of an organisation’s scientific and technical workforce. From the mid-1920s, however, it is possible to trace the beginnings of efforts on the part of some to construct a distinctive professional identity for scientific information workers under the appellation of ‘special librarianship’. In 1924, industry’s commitment to the development of information services was formally embodied in the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB), which was established, ‘To facilitate the co-ordination and systematic use of sources of information in science, industry, commerce, public affairs, etc.’.6 Through annual conferences, bulletins and the informal networks that it encouraged, ASLIB provided a vital forum for discussion and experimentation on questions relating to all aspects theory and practice in the developing sphere of special libraries and information bureaux. The driving forces behind ASLIB’s foundation were R.S. Hutton and J.G. Pearce, directors respectively of the British Non-Ferrous Metals and British Cast Iron Research Associations, and it was intended primarily to serve the developing information demands of industry.7 Nevertheless, despite this industrial orientation ASLIB was never purely an industrial, nor even scientific, association. It admitted members from across the spectrum of private, public, academic and voluntary organisations. As we shall see, this mixed membership was to create considerable difficulties for those who wished to see ASLIB pursuing the interests of industrial employers; but it also opened up important channels of communication between those who were pioneering the new scientific information services and the bodies that oversaw the professional development of traditional librarianship, namely the School of Librarianship at University College London (UCL) and the Library Association (LA). Together, these groups began to explore the ways in which the education offered by these institutions of librarianship might be tailored to equip students for employment in scientific information services. In the discussions and initiatives that arose from these early exchanges, we can see hints of the complexities and

5 6

7

Munford (1987). ‘Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux: objects’ (1926), Aslib Archives. ‘List of members’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1950), pp. 295–329.

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problems which were to make education for information work such a vexed issue in the decades that followed. Britain’s first school of librarianship had been established at UCL in 1919. Initially, it offered a full or part-time diploma course to students of matriculation standard (and to ex-servicemen for the first two years) designed to impart technical training and professional knowledge, and was widely championed as a means by which the status and pay of senior staff in public libraries would receive a much needed boost. With financial support from the Carnegie Trust and an intake of ninety-eight students in the first session, the school made an auspicious start.8 In 1921, an alternative one year diploma route was opened to Arts graduates.9 However, the early encouragement that the school had enjoyed from the public library sector waned rapidly amid growing suspicion that its courses were developing along unwelcome and inappropriate lines. Gerald Bramley demonstrates that, while the school continued to thrive, it did so on the periphery of the library mainstream: ‘diplomates from the school did not gravitate in any large numbers to the municipal libraries, but rather towards the academic and learned society libraries and to the newly founded rural library services’ (Bramley, 1981, pp. 78–82). Considering the school’s orientation towards the training of academically inclined recruits for work in the more specialised branches of librarianship, it was not surprising that it sought early on to make common cause with the emerging special libraries movement. And for the same reason, the school could seem like a promising place for pioneers of the new scientific information services to seek to develop some form of dedicated vocational training. The 1920s accordingly witnessed a number of attempts from both quarters to forge fruitful links. A course of lectures was delivered at the school’s 1923 summer school by B.M. Headicar, librarian at the LSE, on the organisation of commercial libraries,10 while from 1924 the energetic J.G. Pearce contributed public lectures under the title ‘The work of special libraries and intelligence bureaux in industry’.11 Pearce’s relationship with the school almost certainly explains the invitation extended to its director, Ernest Baker, to speak on the subject of training for information work at ASLIB’s inaugural conference. There, Baker insisted that although the school had been established with the needs of public libraries in mind, ‘the fundamental principles of librarianship are the same, whatever the library may be – the same for general libraries and the same for special libraries’.12 Cataloguing, indexing, classification systems, bibliography, library organisation, library routine and other technical skills as taught at the school were, he argued, all eminently suitable for those 8

9

10

11

12

‘University College Committee signed minutes’, Vol. V (1918–20), pp. 39–86, University College London Archives; Bramley (1981, pp. 65–76). ‘University College Committee signed minutes’, Volume VI (1920–22), p. 79, University College London Archives. ‘School of Librarianship Director’s report, 1922–3’, in Report of the College Committee, 1923–24 (London, 1924), p. 98, University College Special Collections. ‘School of Librarianship Director’s report, 1923–4’ in Report of the College Committee, 1924–25 (London, 1925), p. 90, University College Special Collections. ‘Training of men and women for work in bureaux of information’, in Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, Report of the Proceedings of the First Conference (London, 1925), pp. 95–8.

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aspiring to work in special libraries and information bureaux. To lend support to this claim, he cited a recent request made to the school from ‘the head of a research department in a very large firm (employing 30 chemists)’, for a librarian ‘who had a thorough library training with a knowledge of languages but was not a specialist.’ In return: ‘I sent to him a girl of 20 who had no scientific or technical knowledge whatever’.13 Baker was keen too to stress the school’s flexibility and readiness to innovate, inviting delegates to suggest how its programme might be further extended or adapted to meet their needs.14 His address is important because it marked the first explicit conceptualisation of scientific information work as part of the profession of librarianship, and so indicated the thinking which was to underpin the attitude adopted by library professionals in the education debates of subsequent decades. ASLIB’s formal response to Baker was favourable, and the following years saw a number of attempts to encourage the school to broaden both its entrance requirements and its syllabus to appeal to those with ambitions in the direction of scientific and technical librarianship. Baker returned from the 1924 conference with a request to introduce a part-time course in advanced abstracting, indexing and classification aimed chiefly at staff working in industrial libraries, and classes commenced in the following session.15 However, in what can now be recognised as an early portent of the dismissive attitude shared by many of ASLIB’s industrial members towards the school, the course was abandoned during its second term for want of interest.16 Chastened by this unexpected flop, the school’s governing committee showed considerably less indulgence towards Baker’s next, and indeed much more radical, plan to widen the scope of the institution in the direction of scientific and technical librarianship. In 1927, at the behest of ASLIB and supported by the findings of his own recent visit to the United States to observe library education there, Baker proposed that science graduates be admitted to the diploma who had qualifications in two modern European languages, including German, rather than the combination of modern and classical languages usually required. Some on the committee clearly believed that, by dispensing with the classical bedrock of the profession, both the school’s reputation in the upper echelons of the library world and its hopes to raise the status of librarianship would be compromised, and after considerable debate the proposal was rejected.17 Although the committee agreed to keep open the questions of whether and how a certificate in librarianship for science graduates might be developed, Baker was unable to garner enough support from would-be entrants to such a course to press

13 14 15

16

17

Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 97. ‘School of Librarianship Director’s report, 1924–5’, in Report of the College Committee, 1925–26 (London, 1926), pp. 93–4, University College Special Collections. ‘School of Librarianship Director’s report, 1925–6’, in Report of the College Committee, 1926–27 (London, 1927), p. 94 , University College Special Collections. ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’ (28 March 1927), in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 28 March 1927 to 8 December 1933’, University College London Archives.

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the point. Disappointed in his early hopes to bring the embryonic field of industrial librarianship into the purview of the school, he let the matter drop.18 Having lain dormant for several years, the question was revived at the 1929 ASLIB conference. At the request of the association’s governing council, Arthur Ridley of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association drew up and circulated a paper which set out in some detail how a programme of education for general librarianship like that offered at UCL might be modified to embrace subjects more relevant to librarians working in science and industry. While Ridley was careful to acknowledge that ‘many special libraries and information bureaux [are] at present producing good results without the help of trained librarianship’, he insisted that this was only because they ‘are not yet aware of the increased power which such co-operation will give them’.19 In the unusually long and at times heated discussion stimulated by the paper, Ridley further elaborated his plan for the development of a programme of training in special librarianship, arguing that particular attention should be paid to the development of two new branches of study: good practice in special libraries and the organisation of information services.20 Other contributors were largely supportive of Ridley’s aims, but, rather ironically in light of Ridley’s own background, they seemed less concerned with the details of what a programme of special library training might include than with stressing that it should be no more than a supplement to the very necessary scientific subject grounding which special librarians needed. D.A. Gordon, for instance, insisted that ‘technical and scientific training was all–important’, because without it a special library worker could not carry out tasks like classification.21 A lone dissenting voice was raised by Headicar, who denounced as an ‘absolute fallacy’ the notion that specialist scientific knowledge was an absolute requirement: ‘It was not necessary for the librarian to have an intimate knowledge of the science, but to know the sources of the literature of the subject and how to use them, and to know the best methods for filing information and making it available to those who were to use it.’22 Yet even he was forced to concede the essential point that under ideal circumstances the special librarian would possess both scientific knowledge and training in librarianship. A resolution was finally passed to ask the school of librarianship to consider ‘the possibility of admitting graduates in faculties other than arts on the same terms as holders of arts degrees’, and to give ‘special attention…to the provision of one years’ intensive course in training for special librarians on the lines of the scheme suggested in Mr Ridley’s paper’. Similar representation was also to be made to the council of the Library Association.23 Armed with this evidence of the support that a course in special librarianship could expect to receive, Baker returned to UCL to press the case. Clearly 18

19 20 21 22 23

‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’ (28 November 1927), in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 28 March 1927 to 8 December 1933’, University College London Archives. Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., pp. 107–10. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 112.

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impressed, the school committee approved the establishment of a new diploma in librarianship for graduates in faculties other than arts to begin in the 1930–31 session. Much of the proposed syllabus was identical to that for the existing diploma, but with new alternative papers in special library services, library economy and the history of science. Moreover, in something of a coup, the classics test was dropped and students were instead permitted to show proficiency in any two approved languages other than English.24 But all did not go smoothly. The start of the new course was delayed for a year amid disagreement over whether it was prudent to engage specialist lecturers before any students had been formally enrolled, and it was only under pressure from ASLIB to make a definite statement of intent that the school finally persuaded the college committee to make £100 available to hire the necessary staff. Five experts were recruited to deliver between four and six lectures each on the special library services paper, including Arthur Ridley, Theodore Besterman and A.F.C. Pollard, Professor of Optical Engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology and President of the British Society for International Bibliography.25 Heavily trailed in ASLIB’s publications and entitled ‘University and Special Library Service’, the alternative course began with four students in the autumn of 1931.26 It was not a great success. Despite the optimistic fanfares that had heralded its inauguration, and although audiences at the lectures were boosted by interested students from the course in general librarianship, no more than a handful of students signed up for the new diploma in each session. In 1935, Ernest Baker retired as director of the school to be replaced by John Crowley who set in train a comprehensive and lengthy review of the entire librarianship syllabus.27 The University and Special Libraries diploma came up for discussion in 1938. Only two students had enrolled that year, both of whom were employed at the DSIR, underlining how far it had failed to achieve its anticipated status as the qualification of choice for scientific information staff and their employers. Seeking to explain the apparent lack of interest Crowley suggested that, ‘It was generally agreed that the opportunities of more lucrative employment for Science graduates were at the present time so numerous that they were not likely to be attracted to Library Service.’28 It is difficult not to see this as a deliberately obfuscatory assessment, when the truth of the matter was that many science graduates were 24

25

26

27

28

‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’ (18 February 1930), in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 28 March 1927 to 8 December 1933’, University College London Archives. ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’ (13 February 1930, 10 December 1931 and 22 June 1931) in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 28 March 1927 to 8 December 1933’, University College London Archives. Aslib Information, No. 8 (June 1931); ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’ (17 November 1931), in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 28 March 1927 to 8 December 1933’, University College London Archives. ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’, 15/3/1935 in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 3 December 1937 to 28 June 1939’, University College London Archives. ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’, 11/2/1938 in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 3 December 1937 to 28 June 1939’, University College London Archives.

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indeed working in scientific and industrial libraries, but they were not seeking diploma status and the organisations that employed them did not widely regard such training as a necessary yardstick of competence. The diploma was substantially overhauled and replaced with a course that was not specifically aimed at science graduates but designed rather to train for work in any learned library. J. H. Pafford of the National Central Library was appointed lecturer in university and special library administration, while Arthur Ridley taught special library routine and optional advanced lecture courses were offered by A.F.C. Pollard, and W. Glass of the Patent Office.29 This new scheme showed little more evidence of appeal than its predecessor, and Pollard’s lectures were pulled even before they began when too few students enrolled.30 The Second World War brought a break to the school’s activities, and Cowley’s death in action in 1944 prompted a comprehensive review of the curriculum in the changed light of post-war conditions. The interwar period also witnessed steps by the Library Association to amend its curriculum to answer the training needs of men and women working in scientific information services. Since the 1880s, the Library Association had operated a system of examination, certification and, later, instruction in librarianship as part of its drive to enhance the professional education and status of librarians. Attention focused chiefly on the growing ranks of workers in the new public libraries sector, and the emphasis was very much on the development of knowledge and skills suitable for general librarianship (Bramley, 1981, ch. 1; Munford, 1976). That is not to say, however, that the LA was unmoved by the rising demand for solutions to the awareness and retrieval problems surrounding scientific and technical literature, and it was keen to explore how public libraries might respond (Hume and Kinzbrunner, 1913). From the end of the nineteenth century, the development of dedicated commercial and technical deaprtments in the municipal libraries of Britain’s main industrial and commercial cities became a subject of considerable interest and exertion for some in the public library world.31 Moreover, in some cities, notably Sheffield and Manchester, schemes were devised to foster co-operation between public and private libraries to facilitate access to scientific and technical literature. While the evolution of these public technical and commercial libraries within the framework of general librarianship made them different in many ways from the bespoke libraries established by firms and other specialist organisations, it meant that the LA could claim a degree of expertise and authority on the subject of scientific and technical library provision. Within the LA, there was a mixed response to the formation of ASLIB, and it was viewed by many in a favourable light. The latter association was intended to represent the interests of special libraries and their users and, for the time being at least, revealed

29

30

31

John D. Crowley, ‘New facilities for special library training’, Aslib Information (September 1938). ‘Minutes of the School of Librarianship Committee’, 2/12/1938 in folder marked ‘School of Librarianship Committee 3 December 1937 to 28 June 1939’, University College London Archives. See, for example, ‘Scientific books in public libraries’, The Library, Vol. 6 (1894), pp. 80–1; Jast (1903); Jast (1917).

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no pretensions to be a rival professional body (Munford, 1976).32 Faced with this user-initiated drive to improve special library services, some in the LA saw a prime opportunity to extend the compass of the aspiring but troubled library profession into this new sphere of activity. The inter-war period was a particularly difficult time for the LA: economic recession thwarted hopes for further extension of public library services, adversely affecting staff recruitment and staff promotion and casting a shadow over the status ambitions that the LA was trying to express through its professional education programme. Against this troubled background, the LA’s education committee undertook a full-scale syllabus review in the late 1920s. When the revised syllabus was unveiled in 1930, among the changes it proposed was the introduction of a new optional paper on advanced library administration in university and special libraries for students sitting the final examination (Bramley, 1981, pp. 86–91). The new syllabus came into operation in 1933. Examiners for the university and special libraries paper were drawn from the university sector, although the ubiquitous J.G. Pearce was appointed as external moderator.33 As I have suggested, there had always been a small minority of individuals with LA qualifications employed in scientific information services so there was evidently a sense in some circles that a general grounding in librarianship could be useful. However, it does not seem that this latest initiative by the LA did a great deal to persuade the majority of industrial librarians or their employers that such qualifications were of essential value. In May 1837, for example, the university and special libraries examiners remarked that it was difficult for them to write a satisfactory report because the numbers entering for that paper were so small.34 On a purely practical level, even if many of those working in industrial libraries had wished to sit for this paper, they were hampered by the requirement that final examination candidates possess three years’ full time service in a library or libraries approved by the LA. Some pioneering industrial libraries were readily granted approved status, for instance that of the British Cast Iron Research Association which was approved in 1934, perhaps having been prompted to apply in light of the revised syllabus;35 but such cases were, in this period, exceptional. Clearly, however, the dearth of special library candidates was down to more than just this. Despite enthusiastic backing from some within ASLIB who were keen to establish a formal way for employers to gauge scientific information expertise, the qualifications in special librarianship offered by both the school of librarianship and the LA were simply not what most employers, or indeed staff, in science and industry wanted. Yet the conspicuous lack of interest which greeted these initatives should not lead us to dismiss their significance in the broader narrative of the emerging 32

33

34

35

E.g., see ‘Association of Special Libraries’, Library Association Record, Vol. 3 (1925), p. 120. ‘Minutes of Education Committee, 1930–36’, pp. 161–2, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives. ‘Minutes of Education Committee, 1936–52’, p. 12, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives. ‘Minutes of Education Committee, 1930–36’, p. 94, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives.

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information professions. In the quest to devise suitable programmes of education and qualification, scientific information work was conceptualised as a new subdiscipline, special librarianship. It ceased simply to be a rather ill-defined job and instead began to achieve recognition as a coherent occupational field. Contemporary careers advice literature lends strong support to this view. Articles describing scientific information work began to appear in these publications after the 1930 decision by the UCL School of Librarianship to offer its alternative diploma for science graduates. The authors of such articles – often themselves industrial librarians – stressed the desirability of a degree in science, engineering or economics and proficiency in foreign languages, but also warmly recommended the London diploma; indeed, it was trumpeted by one writer as the world’s first adequate scheme of training for industrial librarians and ‘intelligence officers’ (Garrett, 1930; Thomerson, 1938).36 However low the actual number of enrolments, tailored programmes of professional training and qualification implied the need for knowledge of specific theory and practice, helping to establish technical library and information work as a new area of expertise. Much of the debate that arose around the education question in subsequent decades reflected increasingly elaborate and divergent notions about the extent to which it was in fact appropriate to treat technical library and information work as a single occupational sphere, and about the relationship between its various branches and the other professional fields of science and librarianship. Moreover, it is possible to see some of the lines that defined the debates of the post-war years being sketched out during this earlier period. Witness, for example, the competing views on the relative importance of scientific and library training that were aired during the discussion following Ridley’s paper at the 1929 ASLIB conference outlined above. By the late 1940s and early 1950s these arguments became both more sophisticated and more heated as scientific information moved to a position of even greater importance on the national and international agenda; but it is important to recognise that these arguments were rooted in tensions which had been present within the scientific information movement from the start. The Second World War to the 1960s: the Emergence of Information Science In the disruption and upheaval of the Second World War, maintaining access to and controlling the flow of information quickly became national priorities. As ASLIB’s director at the time, Edith Ditmas, recalled, the organisation was desperately under-funded and understaffed; nevertheless, as the established hub of efforts towards cooperation in scientific information, it was uniquely positioned to become the focus of wartime information initiatives. In 1940, for example, ASLIB began publishing its series War-time guides to British sources of specialised information with subject coverage including fuel, general and electrical engineering, telecommunications, agriculture, and Soviet scientific and technical periodicals. The following year, with government backing and financial support from the Royal Society and the Rockerfeller Foundation, the ASLIB Microfilm 36

‘Special libraries and information officers: work for men and women science graduates’, Journal of Careers, No. 14 (1935), pp. 619–20.

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Service (AMS) was established to copy newspapers and periodicals for circulation to selected British and US government departments (Hutton, 1945, pp. 12–16; Maholy, 1946; P. Richards, 1988). On the question of professional education, the suspension of classes at the UCL School of Librarianship meant that there were no facilities for training special librarians at precisely the time when the critical importance of developing effective special library and information services was becoming even more widely acknowledged, and when military service deprived many organisations of their experienced staff. Pressure and requests from various quarters encouraged ASLIB to institute a twelve-week training course in special librarianship in London in March 1943. Fees were five guineas, and the programme covered a combination of general and specialist themes including the use of reference books; cataloguing; abstracting and indexing; basic library routine, classification systems, information services, patent specifications and channels of information. For the duration of the war, the course was repeated at half-yearly intervals.37 ASLIB was careful to stress that it was nothing more than an emergency wartime measure undertaken in the absence of more formal programmes, and insisted that it did not offer an adequate substitute for more thorough and systematic study.38 Yet despite these humble intentions this was a critical development, and one which was to have considerable repercussions in the direction which debates over education for special library and information work took in the post war period. From its inception, ASLIB was essentially an employers’ organisation and with a few exceptions membership was on an institutional basis. Although this state of affairs did not necessarily preclude the possibility of providing staff training, it did mean that ASLIB’s function was to foster the growth of efficient scientific information services from the demand perspective, and not to meet the professional development needs of scientific information practitioners. This orientation explains why ASLIB had traditionally confined its educational activities to encouraging the extension of courses run by existing training bodies, rather than by setting up programmes of its own. By undertaking responsibility for educational provision, ASLIB branched out into a new sphere and hinted that it might play a substantially different role within the library and information world than had hitherto been the case. However, while offering rudimentary, uncertificated training in response to the crisis demands of wartime was relatively uncontroversial, anything which hinted at more formal provision would move matters into far more problematic territory. Not only were there real and obvious tensions in a single organisation claiming to be able to further the interests of both employers and professional employees, but there was also potential for conflict with the LA in particular, which was well-established as the professional advocate for librarians and had been trying to extend its remit to cover new scientific information workers, and was unlikely to look favourably upon any suggestion that an alternative body might be preparing to emerge. Relations between ASLIB and the LA at the end of the war were overwhelmingly good. A number of developments indicated that, provided that ASLIB did not show any signs of wishing to encroach upon areas which the LA 37 38

Aslib Information, No. 55 (1943); Aslib Information, No. 62 (1945). Aslib Information, No. 62 (1945).

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considered to be its rightful domain, co-operation between the two bodies was perfectly possible. In 1945, ASLIB approached the LA with the suggestion that the two associations join forces to organise a summer school on special librarianship.39 The LA responded in friendly terms, offering both the use of its facilities at Chaucer House and publicity for the event in the Library Association Record; but it was insistent that the proposed school should ‘not be linked with any examinations or the granting of any certificates’.40 ASLIB agreed, and the first of several annual week-long Study Groups on Special Librarianship was held at the end of July. It was open to members of both the LA and ASLIB and consisted of morning lectures and seminars, afternoon visits to libraries and evening talks and discussions.41 Negotiations of a more protracted and involved, but still amicable, nature began in 1946 over the contents of the new LA examination syllabus. Launched that year against the backdrop of the foundation of the new schools of librarianship the syllabus immediately drew criticism, especially from university and special libraries, the Association of Assistant Librarians and the schools of librarianship themselves. ASLIB condemned the ‘public library bias’ and privileging of English Literature which, it argued, made the syllabus quite unsuitable for university and special librarians, and promptly began to exert pressure on the LA for reform (Bramley, 1981, pp. 129–35). Its suggestion that two ASLIB members be appointed as official representatives on the LA education committee was rejected on the grounds that, ‘as a number of members of ASLIB are on the Education Committee their point of view is adequately represented’,42 but this refusal should serve as a reminder of the considerable overlap in personnel between the two organisations. Over the next two years, the LA attended to ASLIB’s recommendations for reform, and in 1948 a revised syllabus which incorporated the proposed amendments almost in their entirety was introduced.43 The close and complementary relationship between ASLIB and the LA made these negotiations possible. ASLIB acted as a pressure group for the non-public library interest, whilst essentially upholding the position of the LA as the examining and qualifying body for librarianship. However, dissatisfaction with the LA syllabus had also prompted ASLIB to undertake a much more wide-ranging review of educational provision for scientific information staff. Concern to improve facilites for the handling of scientific information had moved higher still up the national agenda in the immediate postwar period, and ASLIB was naturally at the forefront of efforts to implement practical solutions. In 1945, for example, ASLIB established the Journal of Documentation under the editorship of Theodore Besterman, to foster discussion 39

40

41 42

43

‘Minute from E.M.R. Ditmas to members of the Aslib Education Committee’ (20 April 1945, Ed. Com. 9/45, Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Memorandum to members of the Aslib education committee’, Ed. Com. 10/45, Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Timetable for study group on special librarianship, 1945’, Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Minutes of Education Committee, 1936–47,’ p. 123, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives. Ibid., p. 157; ‘Minutes of Education Committee, 1948–49,’ p. 88, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives; E.M.R. Ditmas to J.E. Holmstrom (3 December 1948), Aslib Archives.

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and dissemination of ideas across the whole field of documentation theory and practice. ASLIB was the recipient too of its first grant from the DSIR in 1944, made on a pound for pound basis to match membership income.44 It was within the context of efforts to find ways to answer more fully the complex information demands of science and industry that ASLIB undertook its detailed scrutiny of education and training. The crucial question to be answered was how far it was possible, given suitable revisions, for programmes of library education to supply vocational training appropriate for workers right across the scientific information field. During a discussion on education and training at ASLIB’s 1944 annual conference, a number of delegates had begun to express the view that a more nuanced understanding of scientific information work was needed, which took account of the different kinds of roles that had developed within the sector.45 At the end of 1946, Edith Ditmas drew up a statement for consideration by both the conference and education committee and the council of ASLIB in which she tried to set out the main currents of opinion among the membership on the issue, and the alternative courses of action suggested by each. Ditmas identified two broad camps. On the one hand were those who believed that, ‘librarianship training facilities, if sufficiently extended, could meet the needs of workers in all types of special libraries and information bureaux’. On the other hand, however, were those who stressed the presence within ASLIB’s ranks of an class of information workers who were primarily scientists and technologists and who, if they drew on elements of librarianship at all in their work, did so in only a very limited way. The title of information officer was used to distinguish this group. Ditmas herself was clearly in sympathy with the latter perspective, arguing that ASLIB’s very name already suggested that there were in fact two distinct types of work being carried out by its representatives. She made explicit the distinction between special libraries, run by special librarians qualified in librarianship, and information bureaux. In the second: ‘although some subjects such as classification will be held in common with the librarian, the angle of approach, the emphasis and much of the technique is so different as to demand a distinct type of training and a separate standard of qualification’. For special librarians, librarianship training provided an adequate basis for professional practice. But information officers represented nothing less than the vanguard of a new profession, and ASLIB was the only body qualified to undertake their training and qualification.46 When the options outlined by Ditmas were debated by council in January 1947, the division of special library and information work into two distinct branches was formally adopted as the basis for the development of future education policy. No time was lost in seeking to bring into being the alternative programmes of training and qualification, and in March 1947 an education committee sub-committee on training for work in non-public libraries and information departments was appointed. Thus it was that the negotiations outlined above with the LA began on 44 45

46

See Chapter 3. ‘The education and status of special librarians’, in Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, Report of the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference (1944), pp. 65–77. E.M.R. Ditmas, ‘The training of special librarians’, STA 1/47, Box 51, Aslib Archives.

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the extension of its syllabus to reflect the skills required by special librarians. Meanwhile, ASLIB’s leaders showed great enthusiasm at the prospect of their association repositioning itsef as a training and qualifying organisation. A strategy paper drawn up by the conference and education committee shortly after the council debate defined ASLIB’s immediate responsibility as devising appropriate short courses in information service techniques, but anticipated the development of these into full professional training for information officers. More ambitiously still, it envisaged the long-term evolution of ASLIB into a professional institute, representing the interests of information officers and setting standards for their training, recruitment and salaries. Such a move need not, it was argued, bring ASLIB into conflict with the LA, provided there was a clear understanding that librarians and information officers were two quite distinct professions.47 The following eighteen months were a time of much activity, as the education committee worked to draft a programme of separate training for information officers. Their efforts were given what appeared to be a powerful boost in the summer of 1948 at the Royal Society’s Scientific Information Conference. Itself an indication of the growing attention being directed towards the field of scientific information, the conference included a session devoted to exploring training and employment in information work from an international perspective. ASLIB’s current work on the subject came under close scrutiny, and received warm support in the conclusions and recommendations that were drawn up at the close of the session. In an attempt formally to clarify the distinction between the two groups of workers in the field of scientific information, conference asserted that: The task of the special librarians is to assemble and have readily accessible the literature which the user wants. The task of the information officer is to ensure, both on his own initiative and on request, that the enquirer gets the information he needs from the literature and elsewhere in its most suitable form.

Different training schemes were thus entirely appropriate, and it was recognised that the educational efforts of both ASLIB and the LA should be given every encouragement. The conference stressed that the training question was critical because it had clear implications for the status that was accorded to special librarians and information officers, and therefore by implication for the calibre of recruits that these positions could hope to attract. Information officers and special librarians should, it concluded, ‘be regarded as equal in standing to fellow scientists employed in research, industry and administration, and should receive comparable treatment in training facilities, rank and emoluments’ (Royal Society, 1948, pp. 164–8, 202–3). Fired by this prestigious vindication of their endeavours, ASLIB’s education committee and council circulated the results of their deliberations, Paper S.1.48, ‘The training of the information officer’, to which were appended the Royal Society’s conclusions and recommendations, to ASLIB’s entire membership that August. The paper outlined proposals for a three tier qualifying scheme for information officers along similar lines to the LA syllabus, and notified its readers that a mandate to proceed would be sought by debate and a

47

‘Aslib as an institute’, CEC 4/47, Box 51, Aslib Archives.

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free vote at the forthcoming annual conference.48 ASLIB’s leadership was clearly thrown quite off balance when a heated and at times acrimonious debate ended in stalemate. Less than one fifth of the membership’s representatives were there to vote, and the final count of 68 for and 65 against was acknowledged to be an insufficient basis for action.49 There were several reasons why the proposals were not carried. Paper S.1.48 was an ill thought out and muddled document, combining general questions about the need for vocational qualifications for graduate and non-graduate staff with a quite specific summary draft syllabus. As J.E. Holmstrom of ICI told Edith Ditmas in the aftermath, the feeling among delegates was that, ‘what is needed is first to define the functions of the Information Officer by contrast with those of a librarian, then to decide what kind of training he needs, and only lastly to discuss how his qualification is to be certified’.50 Brian Vickery, an ICI colleague of Holmstrom, stated that he had arrived at the conference intending to vote for the qualification scheme, but feeling confused and unprepared, had finally voted against it. His views were echoed by Eric Simons at the Sheffield steel works of Edgar Allen and Co., and the opinion was evidently widely shared that the entire matter had been poorly handled.51 J.S.P. Paton, Head of the Intelligence Department at Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, had been a keynote speaker at the conference debate. There, he had asserted that there was a need for ‘a suitably abridged course in those subjects of librarianship in which it is desirable that the Information Officer should have some training’, and had urged delegates that, ‘the proposals as put forward by the ASLIB Council… go a long way towards meeting that need’ (Paton, 1949). Yet he was afterwards forced to concede that the council should perhaps have taken more time deliberating the matter, and confined its attention to the question of whether a course of training should be provided, and if so of what kind, rather straying onto the more controversial matter of providing formal qualifications.52 Even those who had been most closely involved in the production of S.1.48 reflected that insufficient preliminary discussion had taken place, as council member B. Agard Evans did in his editorial to the next issue of Aslib Information.53 Poor management and want of proper consultation, do not, however, provide a sufficient explanation of why the council’s momentum in favour of a tailored scheme for training and qualification of information officers was so abruptly halted. After all, as we have seen, enthusiastic backing for such a move had recently been expressed in the outcomes of the Royal Society conference. Moreover, it is evident that the direction in which ASLIB’s leaders wished to develop the organisation’s activities reflected international trends in scientific 48

49 50 51

52 53

‘The training of the information officer,’ S.1.48, Box 51, Aslib archives. The draft of this paper was prepared in June 1948. See ‘The qualification of information officers’, COU 16/48, Aslib Archives. ‘Second thoughts’, Aslib Information, No. 95 (1948). J. E. Holmstrom to E. M. R. Ditmas (27 September 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives. E.N. Simons to B. Agard Evans (1 November 1948); A.H. Raine to E.M.R. Ditmas (3 November 1948), both in Box 51, Aslib Archives. J.S.P. Paton to E.M.R. Ditmas (27 September 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Second thoughts’, Aslib Information, No. 95 (1948).

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information. Their overseas counterparts provided British scientific information specialists with abundant evidence that special librarianship and information work were commonly treated as complementary but distinct professions, and indeed, internationally-agreed definitions of the two occupations were being worked out (Royal Society, 1948, pp. 164–5).54 Rather, the chief reasons why matters came to an impasse when put to the vote must be sought in the promiscuous nature of ASLIB’s membership, embracing as it did organisations from science and industry, academia and the public and voluntary sectors, and in the increasingly ambiguous ground which the association seemed to occupy as a representative of both employers and their scientific information staff. As Edith Ditmas had stated, there were at least two clearly defined and opposing schools of thought on the education question.55 Perhaps it should have come as no great surprise, then, when the drive to establish information work as a new profession quite distinct from librarianship did not attract universal approval. The correspondence received by Ditmas in response to S.1.48 underlines the sharp differences of opinion that existed within ASLIB. However, tracing the fracture lines with precision is far from easy. Certainly, it was the scientific and industrial lobby which provided the impetus for separate training provision, and of course it was its will which had been so influentially expressed in the recommendations of the Royal Society conference. Elsewhere, J.F. Powell of the John Bull Rubber Company in Leicester, for example, asserted: ‘We feel that there is a definite need for both post-graduate and non-graduate qualifications in information work’, and argued that, ‘Aslib should certainly have a major hand in the arrangements… and not rely too much on existing courses preparing for library work’.56 M. P. Lawson of English Electric Company, among others, agreed, stating that there were, ‘subjects which are not adequately covered by the revised LA syllabus, but a knowledge of which is essential to information staffs’.57 Even more forceful views were offered by E. Ower of the British Shipbuilding Research Association, who claimed that no training scheme which did not recognise the essential difference between the special librarian and the scientific information officer would command the respect of the latter, and deplored the extent to which ASLIB seemed willing to consult with the LA over the training question.58 Ower complained that the proposed training innovations were scuppered because, ‘pure librarians have carried undue weight in Aslib’s deliberations’.59 Undoubtedly, much weight of opposition did come from the public library sphere. F.G. Hutchings, City Librarian in Leeds and the education officer of the LA, led the campaign within ASLIB against the S.1.48 proposals at the annual conference, arguing that both special librarians and information officers required 54 55 56 57

58

59

See also; ‘Aslib as an institute’, CEC 4/47, Box 51, Aslib Archives. E.M.R. Ditmas, ‘The training of special librarians’, STA 1/47, Box 51, Aslib Archives. J.F. Powell to E.M.R. Ditmas (27 August 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives. M.P. Lawson to E.M.R. Ditmas (11 November 1948); see also, Jean M. Jenkinson (English Electrical Industries Ltd) to E.M.R. Ditmas (27 August 1948), both in Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Notes on the training of information officers and special librarians’, appended to E. Ower to E.M.R. Ditmas (16 November 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives. Ibid.

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the same basic training in librarianship (Hutchings, 1949). At the Royal Society conference, Hutchings had mounted a lonely challenge to the prevailing views expressed in the session on education and training which included a defence of the LA’s position as the sole examining and qualifying body in the field of librarianship.60 But it was not simply from within the public library sector that support was expressed for the professional identification of information work with librarianship. A striking degree of accord with that viewpoint was also expressed by many staff within the industrial sector. So, for example, B. Chibnall of Shell Oil’s film unit gave hearty support to Hutchings at ASLIB’s annual conference, arguing that he had himself found courses on the LA’s registration examination useful, and stating that the revised LA syllabus would adequately meet the need for additional instruction among both special librarians and information officers.61 Among the most passionate defenders of the status of information work as a branch of the library profession was Douglas Foskett, information officer at the Metal Box Company, who had entered information work via public librarianship and was a Fellow of the LA. In a long letter to Edith Ditmas, Foskett argued that trained librarians alone possessed the skills for information work, and could easily acquire the broad but essentially shallow special subject knowledge necessary to perform their duties; however, information officers could never hope to function effectively without an understanding of library techniques. The inevitable outcome of a new and separate qualification from ASLIB would be, he warned, to, ‘aggravate the dualism which is already the fatal weakness of the profession’.62 What the evidence actually suggests is that a small subset of ASLIB’s industrial membership, whose concern was with those information officers qualified as scientists and with neither background nor vocational interest in librarianship, were trying to set the organisation’s agenda. They were undoubtedly an influential group: they had always been among the most committed ASLIB activists, and of course the association had originally been created to act as their champion; they clearly enjoyed the support of the Director although she tried to present an impartial face; and their opinions reflected those of the Royal Society’s Conference. However, the weight that they carried in the upper echelons of ASLIB simply did not reflect the widespread opinions of those who served as representatives to the association. L.G. Coatts of the joint library of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy and the Institution of Mining Engineers (and himself another industrial representative who rejected both the spirit and the letter of S.1.48), doubtless expressed sentiments felt by many when he wrote: [M]any members of ASLIB are perturbed at the endeavour of certain people to create two distinct divisions, namely that of the Special Librarian and that of the Information Officer. As these extreme views are mainly held, and this theme relentlessly pursued, by certain members of the Council I can only say their views

60

61

62

‘Minutes of the education committee, 1948’, p. 144, Library Association Archives, University College Archives. ‘The training of the information officer: discussion’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1949), p. 95. D.J. Foskett to E.M.R. Ditmas (24 August 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives.

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are not representative of the majority of ASLIB members. I suggest that the Council is very much out of touch with its members.63

ASLIB’s leaders were in an awkward, if not impossible, position, trying to pursue one path but being far indeed from having persuaded most of their representatives who were actually employed in the protean world of special library and information work of their arguments. For those with professional librarianship qualifications working in any sector, the suggestion that recognition be given to an alternative form of expertise cut to the very core of their professional integrity. In the wake of the annual conference, ASLIB took stock. It was clear that there was to be no about turn on the insistence either that information officers formed a distinct professional group from librarians, or that ASLIB was the body which should be responsible for overseeing their occupational welfare. But there was general acknowledgement that time needed to be spent in mature reflection and discussion. Agard Evans made these points explicitly in his Aslib Information editorial, and a similar mood was apparent at the meeting held by the education committee in the wake of the conference.64 There, it was agreed that the training of special librarians was the business of the LA, and ASLIB should restrict itself to a monitoring and advisory role. As far as information officers were concerned, further research was needed into the precise scope and content of their work, with a view first to establishing what training was required and thence to make recommendations. In the meantime, ASLIB would continue to organise short courses in documentation.65 On the surface, the late 1940s produced little that was new in terms of educational provision for the information professions. Yet these were critical years, during which simmering differences within the British library and information world on the question of education and qualification became much more explicitly articulated and two alternative viewpoints became increasingly obvious. After a brief lull, in September 1951 a development took place which effectively galvanised those on both sides of the debate. At its annual conference in Rome, the International Library Committee (ILC, subsequently the International Federation of Library Associations) adopted a resolution which proposed that in each member country ‘separate training for librarians and documentalists should be created where necessary’.66 This statement was, of course, a ringing vindication of the stance adopted by the ASLIB council and its supporters; but not surprisingly it also proved to be deeply controversial. In early 1953 the LA education committee unveiled its carefully crafted response to the ILC recommendations. Here, the LA argued that librarianship ‘consists of the selection, accession, organisation and exploitation of all forms of recorded thought’. By this definition, ‘documentation’, so called, was but the recent rediscovery of librarianship by certain elements within the special library field who had no training in librarianship but found themselves employing some of its techniques in the performance of their work. The LA, 63 64 65 66

L.G. Coatts to E.M.R. Ditmas (11 November 1948), Box 51, Aslib Archives. ‘Second thoughts’; ‘Education Committee Minutes’, Edu 4/48, Box 51, Aslib Archives. Ibid. ‘Minutes of the Education Committee, 1950–53’, p. 251, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives.

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therefore, ‘has never regarded documentation as other than a name for a part of librarianship,’ and it was this view which had underpinned the syllabus changes that had been implemented to ensure that LA training met the needs of workers in all types of library. Unequivocally, the response confirmed: [T]he Library Association cannot accept the views put forward in the International Library Committee resolution…, nor the implication that a documentalist is anything other than a librarian who has specialised in some part of his technique.

Urging the ILC to reconsider, the LA urged the holding of detailed discussions on ASLIB’s the subject and seemed confident that its views would prevail.67 response could hardly have been more different. By 1953, the education committee had drawn up a draft post-graduate syllabus for information workers and begun approaches to the UCL School of Librarianship to see if it would be willing to establish a new diploma based on the syllabus. In the meantime, a pilot survey of 232 of ASLIB’s industrial and other member organisations was commissioned in an effort to determine the extent of likely support among employers for a diploma course for information workers. Although responses were received from less than half of those canvassed, the results were sufficiently encouraging to allow the survey’s administrator to conclude that ‘there would be about 40 supported students on an evening course in London, now’.68 Around the same time, as the British representative to the International Federation for Documentation (FID) ASLIB was asked to make a formal comment on the statements of both the ILC and the LA. ASLIB warmly recommended that the FID endorse the ILC resolution, observing: British experience, particularly but not only in industry, has shown that there are [those], called variously Information Officers, Research Librarians, or Documentalists, who, while they practise some of the techniques of general librarianship, also use other techniques and are to some extent research workers. The fact that training is available for such part of their work as may be covered by general librarianship does not alter the need for specilaized training in these other techniques.69

This view represented the stance of an increasingly vocal and confident presence within the scientific information sphere who were determined not only to establish a distinct programme of professional training and qualification for scientific information officers, but also to pursue this project to its logical conclusion and achieve for themselves full and independent professional status.

67

68

69

‘Minutes of the Education Committee, 1952–56’, pp. 25–7, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives; Library Association Record (1953), pp. 219–20; See also, ‘Minutes of the Education Committee, 1950–53’, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives p. 251 and pp. 293–4. J. Farradane. ‘Report on the results of a questionnaire on training for information work’, EDU 9/54, Box 51, Aslib Archives. Edu Drafting 7/54, Box 51, Aslib Archives; Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 4 (1954), pp. 117– 18.

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Yet the question remained of precisely how such specialized training might be developed and delivered, and in recognition of the weighty and difficult nature of the subject, an ad hoc education policy committee was formed within ASLIB to advise the Council on training matters. Remarkably in light of their very public disagreement on the issue, ASLIB’s first strategy was to approach the LA with a view to conducting ‘an exhaustive joint investigation’ into the training of librarians and information officers. The LA agreed, a committee was formed with six representatives from each association, and in June 1954 its first meeting was held.70 The undisputed overlap of some library and information techniques meant that the LA clearly had much to offer in the way of expertise and experience, and it was evidently not beyond the hope of many within ASLIB that differences could be resolved and an LA syllabus be produced which would also meet the needs of information officers. Having explicitly stated its desire to see separate training provision set up, ASLIB appeared to step back and pursue shared provision instead. Over the next two years, no fewer than five revised syllabuses for the LA’s registration examination were drafted by the joint committee, but it proved impossible for them to reach agreement on a form and content which would be acceptable to all within the library and information sphere. When the committee’s final findings were unveiled in 1957, they concluded that, while the basis of a common syllabus for general and special librarians had been approved, ‘the same syllabus could not be stretched to meet the need of information officers’.71 Although this inability to accommodate information officers within a revised framework of library education echoed the results of the negotiations held ten years earlier between ASLIB and the LA, this time it was swiftly followed by decisive steps, taken independently of either association, to put in place a full programme of training aimed specifically at meeting the needs of scientific information officers. The climate of 1958 was very different from that of 1948. Surveying the various opinions and attitudes that were aired on the question of professional education and qualification during the 1950s strongly suggests that, while the prospect of an inclusive conclusion to the joint deliberations was unlikely from the first, it only became more inconceivable as time passed. As the statements quoted from above on the ILC resolution indicate, at the heart of the widening gulf between librarians on the one hand and a certain group of scientific information officers on the other were increasingly powerfully expressed and divergent professional identities. Training issues had always impinged to some extent on this broader theme, but increasingly the two became intimately entwined in ways that made a common outlook impossible. The Library Association’s post-war educational policy was shaped by determination to ensure the unity and enhanced status, under its control, of the evolving library profession (Bramley, 1981). Librarianship’s claim to full professional standing had always been fragile, and the LA was acutely sensitive to any influences which might undermine that aspiration. A crucial component of the 70

71

Aslib Proceedings (1957), p. 99; Edu Drafting 7/54, Box 51, Aslib Archives; ‘Minutes of the Education Committee, 1952–56’ p. 113, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives. Aslib Proceedings (1957), pp. 99–100.

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professional ideal has always been the insistence on a shared corpus of expert knowledge, and it was this which the LA was committed to preserving. Evidence of this agenda was apparent, for example, in the grip which the LA sought to maintain on the examination regime of the new library schools, and it fundamentally informed the stance adopted in the syllabus negotiations. William B. Paton, honorary secretary of the LA and a member of the joint committee, observed: There is, I am certain, a common and quite extensive core of training required by all types of librarian, and it will be for the lasting good of the library profession, general and special, if that fact is recognized by all concerned, and translated into a workable, embracive syllabus acceptable to the whole professional body.72

Thus special librarianship and information work, both regarded as they were by the LA as new developments within the broad church of librarianship, might legitimately demand certain adjustments and extensions to the syllabus but nevertheless had to be underpinned by knowledge of certain inalienable principles and practices. Moreover, it is apparent that one way in which some of the LA’s leading lights hoped to further librarianship’s assertion of professionalism was by the creation of an elite stratum composed of graduate recruits and spanning the three sub-disciplines of public, academic and special librarianship. By supplementing the degree subject specialisms of those aspiring to senior appointments with training in the fundamentals of librarianship, it was envisaged that mobility between sectors would be greatly facilitated. Ambitious librarians would be thus provided with much enhanced career prospects, and the vision of librarianship as a single, integrated profession would be considerably strengthened. Public libraries had only recently begun to show signs of actively seeking university educated staff, so the success of this strategy depended to no small extent upon harnessing the graduate prestige located in the special library and information field. But even as the LA hoped to bring all scientific information workers formally within its orbit, its members nursed suspicions that ASLIB did not share their concern for the welfare of the profession. For many, the revisions which ASLIB was demanding to the syllabus seemed designed to provide a ‘short cut’ to qualification and to ignore key essentials of librarianship. Mabel Exley, chief librarian at Boots Pure Drug Company, warned the first meeting of the joint committee: Aslib’s proposals appear to be based on an anxiety to meet the needs of the man who wants a qualification quickly, and not the needs of the profession. We must be careful not to bring the standards of the profession down by introducing changes which make qualification easier. Specialists must also have the basic knowledge required.73 72 73

Library Association Record (1956), p. 167. ‘Summary of discussions between representatives of Aslib and the education sub– committee of the Library Association on the education and training of special librarians and information officers, held at Chaucer House on Tuesday 15th June, 1954’, Box 51, Aslib Archives.

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Significantly, the LA representatives on the joint committee included not only Exley but also another key figure on the industrial libraries scene, Douglas Foskett who, as we have seen, was a staunch defender of the essential unity of librarianship and information work. The position adopted by both Exley and Foskett is instructive for the light which it casts on the allegiances which were taking shape around question of professional education. Although Exley and Foskett represented their organisations within ASLIB they were also LA members, and when matters of professional integrity were at stake they identified their interests with those of the established library profession. Once again, the tensions inherent in ASLIB’s position as an employers’ organisation which was attempting to negotiate on the requirements for professional qualification became clear. Ultimately, the LA refused absolutely to yield to the demands of ASLIB, and its commitment to the preservation of what it defined as the ‘minimum acceptable common core’ of librarianship overrode concerns to make complete accommodation. ASLIB had wished to see advanced cataloguing and classification, together with methods of dissemination of information, provided for in the LA’s Registration (intermediate) examination, but the principal sticking point was the emphasis given to library organisation and administration.74 In 1956, both sides on the joint committee drew up their own draft syllabuses. The LA proposed an initial core paper covering the organisation of knowledge in libraries, bibliographical organisation and library organisation, followed by a paper in which candidates opted to treat administration in a particular type of library service – academic, special, public or children’s. But the ASLIB syllabus looked very different, effectively combining these two papers into one which covered the organisation of knowledge in libraries and bibliographical organisation as core subjects, then offered a third multiple choice question in which candidates dealt with library organisation in a particular sector.75 The emphasis placed by the LA on library routine was deemed superfluous to the needs of scientific information officers. Jason Farradane, senior information officer with the sugar manufacturer Tate & Lyle and a recent recruit to the joint committee, summed up the view when he wrote of information work, ‘Strictly speaking, it should not include library organisation’ (Farradane, 1954) For those whose views were represented by the ASLIB contingent on the joint committee, the essence of the problem was that the LA syllabus seemed designed – as of course it was – to produce librarians. Described with dismay by ASLIB’s own librarian, Jack Bird, as, ‘a faction which shuns the very name of librarian’,76 scientific information officers were, by the early 1950s, becoming increasingly vocal in their articulation of an distinctive professional identity. A central component of this project entailed enumerating the precise ways in which the work of the information officer differed from that of the librarian. Eric Simons argued that, ‘The information officer … is a man in either a large or small organisation whose fundamental job is not to keep a library of books, but to provide quickly and 74

75

76

‘Minutes of Education Sub-Committee, 1956–58’, p. 51, Library Association Archives, University College Archives. ‘Minutes of Education Sub-Committee, 1956–58’, pp. 2–10, Library Association Archives, University College Archives. Aslib Proceedings (1956), p. 60.

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accurately such information as it is required by any member of the firm, as a help in carrying out his professional duties’ (Simons, 1952). This notion of the information officer as the key intermediary between the research worker and the mass of available information was enthusiastically endorsed by Edith Ditmas, who had resigned as director in 1950 but retained the editorship of ASLIB’s periodicals and remained very much an active and respected figure in the sphere. Ditmas asserted that both the aims and approaches of documentation were complementary to, but different from librarianship, ‘being developed to aid the user of recorded thought, in a situation where two new factors, the immense increase in output, and the necessity for speed in exploitation, threatened to hold up progress’.77 What critically distinguished the information officer from the librarian was the way in which his or her work was underpinned and informed by specialist scientific knowledge. Time and again, those who defined the qualifications needed for scientific information work stressed scientific training to degree level. And from this position it was logically concluded that, far from being a sub–discipline of librarianship, scientific information work was in fact a distinct branch of professional science. Jason Farradane, the most vocal and persistent exponent of this point of view, expressed it thus: The information officer…is essentially a research scientist. … To emphasize the correspondence with research scientist, it is suggested that it would perhaps be more suitable if the professional title were that of ‘Information Scientist’. The information scientist may now be defined as a research scientist who specializes in collecting, collating, organizing and disseminating published or unpublished, recorded or unrecorded (verbally communicated) facts of a scientific and technical nature, acting thereby in the capacity of agent for others, providing information and ideas stimulating to research and development, and carrying out work relating thereto (Farradane, 1953, p. 328).

Certainly, it had been the case from the first that many of those who entered information work in science and industry did so from scientific backgrounds, and evidence strongly suggested that information officers continued to identify themselves as scientists. In 1954, E.B. Uvarov, Head of Technical Information Services with the Coventry textiles firm Courtaulds, conducted a survey of science graduates holding information posts in a variety of organisations. Of the 159 who replied, more than three quarters confirmed that they regarded themselves as scientists, and that colleagues similarly viewed them as such (Uvarov, 1954). By adopting the title of ‘information scientist’, not only did scientific information officers distinguish themselves emphatically from librarians, but they also laid claim to a separate and special field of expertise within the scientific professions. As befitted those at the forefront of an aspiring new profession, information scientists were keen to see the speedy establishment of both full training courses and a professional body to accredit expertise. Although there was a hopeful current of opinion which believed the LA might be able to supply the former requirement, it is apparent that, even as the syllabus negotiations were taking place, a hard core of advocates were working to develop provision from a different quarter. Writing 77

‘Librarianship and documentation’, Box 6, Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

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in 1953, Farradane hoped that ASLIB would begin to sponsor full training courses in information science and perhaps eventually become a full professional institute, observing, ‘If not, a separate institute will have to be formed’ (Farradane, 1953). The same year, eight scientific information officers approached ASLIB council to propose the establishment of an affiliated institute of information scientists.78 With responsibility for training, qualification and organisation, the institute was envisaged as vital to the future growth and development of the profession of information science. ASLIB expressed full agreement with the spirit of these aims, but was firmly opposed to what it termed the ‘further proliferation of library organisations’.79 Leslie Wilson, successor to Edith Ditmas as ASLIB’s director, penned a lengthy rebuttal of the plan in which he argued that the laudable objectives of the proposed institute could and should be met through ASLIB.80 Among Wilson’s alternative suggestions was the development of an official hierarchy of qualifications for information work which would be linked to individual ASLIB membership, in a similar way to the associateship and fellowships of the LA. A variety of schemes for the formal measurement and recognition of professional information officer status were put forward for consideration in the following years, including the inauguration of a licentiateship in documentation and the establishment of a register of information officers. The latter proposal was approved by ASLIB council in 1956, much to the alarm of the Library Association.81 Not only was the LA justly angered by ASLIB’s statement of intent to use the LA’s examinations as one of the bases of qualification without prior consultation, but there was deep concern that a small professional field could not accommodate two registers without rivalry and the exaggeration of differences between its various branches.82 In the event, however, when the register proposal was put to the vote at ASLIB’s annual conference, it was defeated. Once again, ASLIB’s variegated membership made it impossible to carry through measures which would have allowed it to act as a professional body for information officers and an alternative to the LA. When the syllabus discussions ended soon afterwards with information officers still uncatered for, that was sufficient signal to those to the fore of the new profession that a different approach was required. Thus, in 1958 the Institute of Information Scientists was founded. Over the next year, the IIS worked to draw up a syllabus for a course of training in information work, to be approved by ASLIB, and in 1960 the two organisations formed a joint committee to investigate the possibility of establishing ‘a full-time course for information workers in the field of pure and applied science.’83 Thus it was that the course at Northampton College of Advanced Technology was inaugurated in January 1961 with Jason Farradane as programme co-ordinator. The 78

79 80 81

82 83

Recalling events in 1970, Farradane identified himself as leader of this group which included Agard-Evans, Hanson, Liebesny and Gordon Foster. See Farradane (1970, p. 145) and Chapter 3, Note 36. ‘Professional education and training’, EAF 4/55, p. 4, Aslib Archives. ‘Information Scientists’ Institute’, folder 6/4/4 IV, Aslib Archives. ‘Minutes of the Library Association Education Sub-Committee, 1956–58’, pp. 281–2, Library Association Archives, University College London Archives. Library Association Record (1956), pp. 314–15. ‘Training for information work’ (15 June 1960), Aslib Council paper, Aslib Archives.

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topics to be covered were grouped under the themes of language, writing and editing; flow of information; and information techniques, and included such novel subjects as ‘detailed study of written, visual and oral sources’.84 Conclusion The birth of information science as a professional field in the early 1960s followed forty years of debate and experimentation to try and establish what skills, knowledge and experience best equipped staff to manage information for science and industry. These developments took place at the interface between librarianship and industry, and as such it may be tempting to cast the story as a struggle between opposing literary and scientific cultures. However, to do so would be to fail to recognise the considerable degrees of subtlety, nuance and negotiation that actually characterised relations within the library and information field during these decades. Before the Second World War at least, the main current was towards co–operation and the search for accommodation, rather than conflict. Much faith was placed by science and industry in the capacity of librarianship to adapt to meet the training needs of industrial information staff. Arguably, reflection suggests that this effort was always doomed to fail, both because some branches of scientific information work were clearly emerging that simply could not be conceptualised as part of traditional librarianship, and because librarians were unlikely to compromise their fragile claims to professional recognition by yielding what they viewed as the critical core of professional training. From the 1940s clear signs can be detected that a new profession was preparing to assert its identity, and with strands of international as well as national opinion moving in that direction such a development became inevitable. But care should be taken not to draw the dividing lines too deeply and too soon. The creation of the discipline of information science, and its explicit separation from special librarianship, was an attempt to forge clear professional identities from the fluid, experimental and disparate approaches that had evolved to deal with scientific information over the previous forty years.

84

‘Collecting and communicating scientific information syllabus’, City University Library Archives Collection.

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Chapter 7

Women’s Employment in Industrial Libraries and Information Bureaux in Britain, c. 1918–1960 Helen Plant

In November 1953, readers of the monthly bulletin of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) were invited to take part in an essay competition on the subject ‘Setting up a small special library’.1 The competition was prompted by a paper on the same subject delivered at the Association’s annual conference two months earlier by James Revie, librarian and information officer at the British Jute Traders’ Research Association.2 Without doubt, the type of special library which the ASLIB leadership particularly hoped to encourage by this exercise was what Alistair Black terms the ‘company technical library’, a dedicated in–house information service tailored to meet the scientific and technical information demands of its parent enterprise (A. Black, 2004b). Since ASLIB’s foundation in 1924 its agenda had been dominated by industrial interests, and the early 1950s witnessed new vigour in the drive to persuade industrial organisations to establish their own special libraries and information services.3 It was in such a spirit that the competition was conceived. Prospective entrants were instructed to pen their contributions under the pseudonym of Miss Smith, the imaginary administrator of their model organisation. The choice of a female alias is revealing, a ready acknowledgement of the striking degree to which women were engaged in scientific and technical library and information work in industry by the 1950s. Women’s widespread recruitment into the expanding field of library work in Britain from the mid-Victorian period onwards was a phenomenon well-recognised by contemporaries but which until recently has attracted little attention from historians investigating modern patterns and practices of female employment. However, growing realisation within British library history of the fruitfulness of adopting gender as a category of analysis has lately yielded a number of studies which shed light on the ways in which discourses of femininity and masculinity have shaped practices around library work in a range of historical contexts (Kerslake, 1999; Kerslake and Lalidhar, 1999; Kerslake and Moody, 2000). 1 2 3

Aslib Information, No. 156, (1953). Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1953). ‘Aslib consultant service (3 July 1951); ‘Inauguration of a consultancy service’ (12 December 1951); ‘Information in industry’ (8 February 1952), typescript papers in Box 51, Aslib Archives. See also Aslib Information, No. 132 (1951).

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Among these, Evelyn Kerslake’s detailed investigation into the position of women employed in public libraries between 1871 and 1974 is particularly important. Kerslake shows how notions of public library professionalism were cut across by gendered assumptions about the different capabilities of male and female workers, so that although women outnumbered men on public library staffs by the inter-war period, they remained marginalised in professional discourses. Consequently, women were rarely able to secure senior appointments and often found themselves steered towards careers in ‘feminine’ branches of the profession such as children’s librarianship. Women librarians were thus disproportionately confined to either junior grades or distinct spheres that were deemed suitable in light of the limited and specific capacities of their sex (Kerslake, 1999). However, the fact that public libraries were numerically the most important library employers of women during the first half of the twentieth century does not mean that Kerslake’s analysis should be treated as an overarching thesis which explains the experiences of women working across all library sectors in Britain in that period. In this paper, I explore the status and roles of women employed in technical libraries and information bureaux in industry between the end of the First World War and 1960, and argue that their experiences were shaped by quite distinctive occupational discourses and practices which reflected the specific context and evolution of that branch of library work. Technical library and information work spanned, often uneasily, librarianship and industrial science and this dual heritage bequeathed a complicated, not to say ambiguous, perspective on the meaning of gender. Although librarianship was accepted as suitable work for women and so supplied the entry key to this new line of work, the world of industrial science was overwhelmingly a masculine domain. Much research remains to be done on the employment of women in professional and other nonmanual posts in industry after the First World War, but evidence suggests that opportunities for entry and advancement were extremely limited (Horrocks, 2000).4 Prevailing assumptions about both the fundamentally masculine nature of industrial enterprise and the unacceptability of employing women in positions of authority over men made industry an uncongenial and unpromising choice for aspiring female scientists. A small number of sex-specific openings existed, for example as supervisors in organisations which employed large numbers of female operatives or as demonstrators of the new labour-saving domestic appliances being mass produced by electrical engineering companies.5 Women did begin to find work in the research laboratories of industrial firms during the inter-war years, but as Sally Horrocks has demonstrated they were usually confined to performing a narrow range of monotonous tasks and enjoyed few prospects for promotion (Horrocks, 2000). Technical library and information work was significant as perhaps the only field in which both female and male science graduates were routinely recruited across industry, yet clearly they did not occupy an equal 4

5

The paucity of studies exploring the employment of educated women contrasts with the detailed attention given to women manual workers in industry during the same period. See, for example, Braybon and Summerfield (!987), Glucksmann (1990) and Wightman (1999). See, for example, numerous articles in Journal of Careers during the 1930s, and Davidson (1982).

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position in the prevailing employment ideology of the industrial sector. Matters were further complicated by the contested efforts being made during this period to map out the professional boundaries between the new sphere of technical library and information work and traditional librarianship. ASLIB provided the organisational impetus for an increasingly concerted national movement devoted to the development of professional theory and practice among technical librarians and information workers, and to their articulation of a distinctive professional identity based on combined expertise in science and documentation. A number of women from the industrial sector were prominent figures in this movement, but it is also clear that women seeking to carve out careers in industrial library and information work had to do so along considerably narrower paths than those that were open to men. Industrial library and information work offered a relatively new employment prospect both for women and men in Britain after the First World War. It developed out of changes dating back into the nineteenth century which gradually transformed and coupled the practices of science and industry. The professionalisation of scientific research during the Victorian and Edwardian periods brought an explosion in the output of periodical literature, and kindled early attempts to devise effective documentation systems (Hutton, 1945; Ditmas, 1948a). Meanwhile, the unprecedented operational scale and complexity reached by some industrial enterprises, together with the growing competition faced by British manufacturers from overseas trade, prompted innovative industrialists to explore the possible advantages of harnessing this burgeoning scientific knowledge in the service of industry. Demand for ready access to up-to-date scientific and technical information was fuelled by the war, as industrial opinion became firmly convinced of the urgent need both to apply the findings of academic research and to keep abreast of international advances in industrial theory and practice in the pursuit of economic competitiveness and national security (Sanderson, 1972, pp. 214–42). These concerns were embodied in the in-house research departments established by many private companies and in the co-operative, informationsharing activities of the numerous industrial and trade research associations which were created from 1918 onwards under the auspices of the recently–founded Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) (Foreman-Peck, 1994; R. Edwards, 1950; Melville, 1962, pp. 74–93). Information services, known variously, although as we shall see not necessarily synonymously, as scientific or technical libraries, information bureaux and intelligence departments were a central feature of these research functions.6 ASLIB was founded to provide a forum where interested bodies could increase awareness of and promote good practice in the use of specialized information, and although its membership hailed from across the spectrum of academic, political, voluntary, professional and public sectors, its driving force came from the industrial community. By 1950, industrial organisations accounted for around one third of the Association’s members.7

6

7

Jason Farradane estimated that only 2% of firms had their own technical information service; many would have relied on the services provided by the relevant research association. See, Farradane (1953). ‘List of members’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1950), pp. 295–329.

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Women were employed from the first as technical librarians and information officers in industry, and as the field expanded over subsequent decades, their presence likewise multiplied. Attendance lists for ASLIB’s annual conferences crudely convey a sense of this growth. In 1925, 13 women and 44 men represented private industrial firms or research associations and institutes; by 1950, 64 female and 57 male delegates worked for such organisations.8 The lists and photographs of delegates from annual conferences confirm that these were very much mixed gatherings. Edith Ditmas, director of ASLIB between 1933 and 1950 and formerly a lecturer with the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women, recalled the inter-war conferences with fondness and especially those held at the Oxford women’s colleges where men and women were all housed under one roof: ‘there are many memories of light-hearted moments as well as of discussions argued fiercely into the night’.9 Among the firms which employed women in this field during our period were, for example, General Electric Company, MetropolitanVickers and British Thomson Houston in electrical engineering; motor manufacturers Austin and BSA; Kodak; Chivers; Boots Pure Drug Company; Shell Oil; Courtaulds textile producers; Hoover, and the chemicals giant ICI. In the cooperative research associations, women worked in the libraries and information departments of those serving, among others, the cast iron, rayon, baking, cotton, electrical, rubber, linen and flour milling industries.10 As an employer of both sexes, and without the obvious grounds of demarcation which divided men and women in other mixed-sex occupations such as teaching, technical library and information work was remarkable as a rare example of a graduate field treated in some contemporary careers guides as if it were completely gender neutral.11 Scratching beneath this veneer, however, it becomes clear that women’s suitability for the work was widely conceived in terms of their possession of a range of useful and supposedly inherently feminine skills as much as their scientific and technical acumen. During the inter-war period, careers advice literature aimed at girls optimistically signposted scientific and technical librarianship as a favourable new opening for educated women. Writers pointed to the substantial if humble inroads which women had made into the public library sector, and promised prospects of a distinctly superior order.12 So, for example, in 1923, a pamphlet of the Women’s Employment Publishing Company enthused: 8

9

10

11

12

‘List of visitors to the conference’, Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, Report of the Proceedings of the Second Conference (London, 1925), pp. x– xiv; ‘List of delegates and visitors to the twenty-fifth annual conference’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 2 (1950), pp. 173–7. ‘1930s conferences’, No. 7, in file headed ‘Documentation’ Ditmas Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Details compiled from the lists of delegates attending Aslib annual conferences given at the front of published conference proceedings, and from ‘List of members’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1950), pp. 295–329. See, for example, ‘Special librarians and information officers: work for men and women science graduates’, Journal of Careers, Vol. 14 (1935), pp. 619–20; L.R. Thomerson, ‘Openings for men and women in technical and other special libraries’, Journal of Careers, Vol. 17 (1938), pp. 503–7, 562–4. On the sexual divisions within the teaching profession, see Oram (1996). ‘Women’s work as librarians’, Journal of Careers, Vol. 12 (1933), pp. 25–8.

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‘The work of Librarianship is eminently suitable for women’, but advised that the ‘comparatively new fields’ of specialised and technical librarianship provide ‘more scope to women than do the older branches’.13 Feminist writer and activist Ray Strachey was highly critical of the limited opportunities for promotion facing most women entering library work in her well-known Careers and Openings for Women (1932). She anticipated brighter possibilities, however, for graduates, and indicated that women with science degrees might find a congenial field for the application of their specialist knowledge in technical libraries (Strachey, 1932, p. 117). Elsewhere, industrial librarianship was heralded as a favourable outlet for women with academic backgrounds in science or economics and a good command of foreign languages (Hughes, 1936, p. 140). Careers guides hinted that women’s prospects extended to responsible appointments, and aspiring candidates were advised that they would need, ‘enough knowledge and aptitude in science to permit of the making of intelligent précis of scientific periodicals, to supervise the purchase of new technical books for the library, and to answer requests for information from heads of department on technical points’.14 In the wake of the Second World War, as skills shortages stimulated a more vigorous drive to encourage women scientists to take up careers in industry, technical library and information work was again vaunted as an attractive proposition. So, for example, in the early 1950s Mamie Oliver, who herself had risen to become both chief research chemist with the jam manufacturer Chivers & Sons and one of the few women to hold office in a scientific learned society, turned her attention to urging other women towards careers in industrial chemistry. Oliver regarded as self-evident that women were intellectually and temperamentally different from men in ways which generally limited their fitness for work such as problem-solving and plant management. Yet, she asserted, their attention to detail meant that they could become ‘first rate analysts’, while they were ‘often more suited than men to library and similar work, and the duties of positions such as patent officer and technical information officer are being well carried out by women’ (Oliver, 1950; 1955). From organisations which might have been expected to challenge more robustly the frontiers of women’s industrial opportunities too, the reliance on library and information work as a safe path in difficult territory was evident. In 1957, the British Federation of University Women (BFUW) produced a pamphlet detailing careers open to women in the various branches of science and technology. Surveying the prospects for qualified physicists, for example, the authors pointed to research and development and observed ‘Women do well at technical information and library work and abstracting’. Indeed, the publication contained an entire section devoted to the discussion of library and information work where it was observed, encouragingly, that qualified women were ‘in great demand’ (BFUW, 1957, pp. 9, 46–7). Certainly, the openings were there. It would be misleading to suggest that industrial employers exclusively sought women to fill their technical library and information posts, but they were clearly willing to engage women for this type of 13

14

Careers for Educated Women. Section III: the secretarial, organising and administrative professions (London, 1923), pp. 1–2, 9. ‘Prospects for employment of women science graduates,’ Journal of Careers, Vol. 17 (1938), pp. 421–3.

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work to a remarkable degree. Situations vacant listings in Aslib Information during 1947 and 1948, the first years in which such material was carried, included forty industrial vacancies. Women were specifically solicited on nine occasions compared with only two instances where employers stated that applicants must be men, and in the twenty-nine remaining cases either no preference was indicated or it was explicitly affirmed that both male and female candidates would be considered. Gender was a key determinant in personnel decisions, and the apparent readiness of many organisations to fill library and information posts with members of either sex should not obscure that fact. When industrial concerns indicated that they were prepared to accept women as employees in this sphere, whether or not men were also in the running, it was because they believed that the work was suitable for women. Most crucially, employers’ opinions were influenced by assumptions about both the particular skills which were required for the job and the status and career potential which the post in question enjoyed within the parent organisation. The extent to which the gendering of skills affects women’s access to employment in information work today is a question that continues to exercises social theorists (Henwood, 1993). During the four decades before 1960, a chief reason why many industrial organisations were prepared to put aside their unfavourable attitudes towards the employment of graduate women when it came to selecting library and information staff was that the status of the skills demanded for the work could be highly ambiguous. On the one hand, employers called for an impressive package of knowledge and expertise which included scientific education up to university level frequently coupled with one or more foreign languages. In 1923, for example, the Woodhall-Duckhams Company sought a ‘Lady with scientific training and good knowledge of French and German to extract Technical literature and to have charge of library’.15 Similar qualifications might be expected even for assistants. Bakelite Ltd advertised in 1946 for a female assistant information officer to undertake abstracting, indexing and classification work together with the preparation of a weekly technical bulletin. Prospective applicants were required to have a degree in chemistry together with knowledge of technical French and German.16 On the other hand, though, as the evidence from careers advice literature cited above indicates, this line of scientific work was deemed appropriate for women because they supposedly also brought to it a natural flair for routine, clerical-type tasks which demanded method, organisation and attention to detail. In other words, the attractiveness of women science graduates to employers resided in the fact that they could legitimately be expected to perform the range of semi-skilled or unskilled duties which many aspects of information work required, whilst also possessing advanced scientific knowledge. By the period with which we are concerned here, clerical work had become firmly established as a highly feminised, and hence low-status, sphere of employment and many of the tasks associated with it, particularly typing, were classified exclusively as ‘women’s work’.17 Research carried out to date on the history of women in 15 16 17

Chemistry and Industry, Vol. 42, No. 41 (1923). Aslib Information, No. 79 (1947). On the feminisation of clerical work, see e.g. Jordan (1996), Lewis (1984) and Zimmeck (1980). On the establishment of typing as ‘women’s work’, see G. Wilson (2000).

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clerical work has focused overwhelmingly on the commercial sector so we do not currently have a clear picture of the patterns and practices surrounding women’s recruitment into clerical posts in industry. Evidence gathered in the course of the present study strongly suggests, though, that even the most hostile industrial organisations were increasingly assigning their lower status office appointments to women. So, for example, at Shell and the British Cast Iron Research Association, both of which belonged to industrial fields into which professional women made scarcely any incursions during the period under discussion, female technical library and information workers joined non-graduate clerical and secretarial employees on what were otherwise entirely male staffs.18 Employers were sometimes explicit in their request for female recruits to library and information work who had clerical as well as scientific experience. Thus in 1924, for example, a ‘Midlands factory’ sought ‘Lady Chemist for library service’ with ‘Knowledge of German and typewriting’. 19 Not all advertisers were this frank, but wherever they were willing to take on women the implicit message was that the post required more than – by which, of course, was meant something rather less than – purely scientific expertise. Among women scientists themselves, there was evidently widespread acceptance of the truth that their employability in industry largely depended upon their offering a somewhat motley assortment of talents, including those which were deemed appropriately feminine. During the interwar years, the journal Chemistry and Industry carried numerous advertisements from men and women seeking employment in which hopefuls set out their qualifications and experience. Women frequently listed shorthand, typing, filing, indexing and similar skills alongside French, German and university degrees and emphasised their aptitude for secretarial and clerical work in the effort to attract the attention of prospective employers.20 For aspiring women scientists entering industry, the common requirement that they possess non-scientific, ‘feminine’ skills had highly negative implications. These were clearly enunciated at a private conference on scientific employment for women convened in 1938 by the Women’s Employment Federation (WEF). Among the delegates was Edith Ditmas, director of ASLIB. The conference heard that most junior openings for which women were considered eligible called for the ability to undertake ‘secretarial’ as well as scientific work, and that once employed the women who filled such posts rarely moved further up the career ladder. Typically, therefore, opportunities for women were ‘neither progressive nor remunerative’.21 Women’s recruitment into industrial library and information work was generally consistent with this trend of restriction to posts with low pay and few real prospects. However, it was also the case that some of these appointments could, 18

19 20 21

‘Internal telephone directory, 1953–6’, Shell Archives; ‘Industrial research laboratories, their work and staffing methods: the British Cast Iron Research Association’, Journal of Careers, Vol. 15 (1936), pp. 568–70. Chemistry and Industry, Vol. 43, No. 30 (1924). E.g., see Vol. 44, No. 3 (1925); Vol. 50, No. 1 (1931); Vol. 52, No. 6 (1932). ‘Papers of a private conference on scientific work for women, 29 January 1928’, Women’s Employment Federation Papers, The Women’s Library, London, 6/WEF, Box 496.

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albeit in a rather limited and lowly way, provide women with one of the few means open to them of securing responsible and professional scientific work. How individual organisations structured their technical library and information functions played a significant part in determining the scope of women’s opportunities. In organisations supporting large, multifunctional information departments where the senior appointment conferred managerial status and some degree of organisational standing, as at Courtaulds, Kodak, Shell, ICI and Metropolitan-Vickers, the head of department was invariably male. Numbered among the men who held these senior information posts were some who went on to become leading figures in the industrial sector, like J.G. Pearce who left Metropolitan-Vickers for the directorship of the British Cast Iron Research Association. Undoubtedly, the mixed sex staffing of these large information departments immediately presented a major obstacle to the appointment of women to senior positions.22 Women such as Susan Neuberger, who headed the information department of the General Electric Company’s London research laboratories between 1947 and 1952 before leaving to pursue an academic career in Britain and the United States, were exceptional, and her case is instructive. Significantly, the staff at GEC’s information department was entirely female (General Electric Co. Ltd, 1953, pp. 6–7). Industry’s prevailing hostility to the idea of women managing men continued well beyond the end of the period under discussion here, as employment investigations continued to disclose (Seear, 1964; Shell Petroleum Co., 1970). Equally significant, though, were other factors which reflected the deeply entrenched different work and life cycle expectations that were ascribed to women and men. By dint of their sex, women simply did not command the same right to a career structure and promotional prospects as their male colleagues. As several studies have argued, a chief motivation behind the employment of educated women in a range of expanding industrial and commercial operations from the late-nineteenth century onwards was concern to preserve male career prospects in the face of mounting staffing requirements at junior levels. Women represented a class of educated workers who could be cheaply employed to carry out the growing number of vital but routine tasks without any claim to promotion. Specifically, it was assumed that women had only a short working life as they would quit after several years in order to marry, keep house and raise children. Men, on the other hand, would marry and be responsible for providing a family wage so should be ensured appropriate career progression (Horrocks, 2000; G. Wilson, 2000; Jordon, 1996). Table 7.1 Average salaries of science graduates working in industrial libraries and information bureaux, by sex and age group Age group

21–25 26–30 22

No.of individuals M

F

4 10

8 13

Average salary (£ p.a.) M F 575 610

512 564

Average female salary as % of average male salary 89 93

In the largest mixed sex profession, teaching, women were effectively excluded from holding the headships of mixed secondary schools: see Oram (1996, p. 6).

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31–35 36–40 41–45 46–50 51–55 56+

11 11 18 10 12 13

6 11 6 6 7 2

1,064 1,073 1,158 1,325 1,,183 1,188

716 795 916 992 936 *

67 75 79 75 79 –

*Group too small to calculate Source: E.B. Uvarov, ‘The scientist as information officer’, Aslib Proceedings, vol. 6, no. 4 (1954).

The limited evidence which is available suggests that male and female experiences in industrial library and information work conformed to this established pattern. In 1954 E. B. Uvarov, Head of the Technical Information Bureaux at Courtaulds, conducted a detailed survey into the experiences of science graduates working as technical librarians and information officers. His sample consisted of 90 men and 59 women employed in industry, government departments and the research associations, and the findings on age distribution and salary set out in Table 7.1 are suggestive. Both in real and proportionate terms, more women than men working in the field were below the age of 30; indeed, 46 per cent of women in the survey were below 35 years of age whilst only 27 per cent of men fell into that category. For those women who did remain in the field after the age of 30, their position in terms of pay relative to their male counterparts worsened dramatically, with the gap between equivalent male and female salaries peaking in the age range 31 to 35 where women earned just 67 per cent of the average male salary. Thereafter they never reached above 79 per cent of average male earnings. These figures suggest that women were both over-represented in junior posts and denied access to better paid positions if they stayed in the field beyond their twenties (Uvarov, 1954). The findings bear out the evidence on scientific employment presented by the WEF to the 1944 Royal Commission on Low Pay. The Federation observed that although some firms paid similar starting salaries to new male and female graduates, men were usually soon promoted to higher posts so that their earnings rapidly outstripped those of women of similar age.23 Nevertheless, as Uvarov’s survey hints and more qualitative material confirms, despite enjoying scant opportunities for advancement some women scientists pursued lengthy careers in industrial library and information work. Moreover, although they may have lacked access to the more prestigious posts in the field they were still able to secure positions which offered responsibility and appreciable scope for personal professional development. The chief such opening available to women was the specifically titled post of ‘technical librarian’. As I shall argue below, the reasons why women were widely recruited into that role only serve to confirm the points being made above about the ways in which they were confined 23

‘Evidence of the Women’s Employment Federation to the Royal Commission on Equal Pay, 1944’, Women’s Employment Federation Records, The Women’s Library, London, 6/WEF, Box 496..

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to subordinate posts with few opportunities for career progression. However, it was certainly also the case that some women technical librarians exploited whatever openings their positions offered to demonstrate professional autonomy and capacity for innovation. Furthermore, as the occupational field of technical library and information work became increasingly organised and active from the 1920s onwards via organisations such as ASLIB, some women used their careers as a springboard to participation as equals alongside men in the development professional theory and practice. At Metropolitan-Vickers during the 1920s, for example, the so-called Intelligence Section was headed first by J. G. Pearce and later by J.B.P. Paton while the post of librarian was held by Miss L. Stubbs who served as a member of the first standing committee of ASLIB. She was succeeded in 1930 by Beryl M. Dent. During her time as librarian, Dent served on various ASLIB committees and made numerous conference presentations detailing the workings of different aspects of Metropolitan-Vickers’ busy library and information service. In addition, she led several local initiatives designed to foster technical library co-operation and development between interested organisations in the Manchester area (Dummelow, 1949; Dent, 1933; Fleming and Dent, 1946).24 The principal technical information bureau of Courtaulds was located at its Coventry works, under the direction of E.B. Uvarov in the post–war period. At the company’s London site, however, subsidiary services were delivered by a technical librarian, Miss E.E. Stowell, and her assistant Mrs Ragnhild Woodward. Miss Stowell was chair of ASLIB’s special group on economic information, and when her fellow group member, the feminist Philippa Strachey, visited the Courtauld library in 1954 she found ‘an impressive set up, obviously doing a great deal of work for the industry’.25 This arrangement, where women held the post of librarian within male–headed information departments, was mirrored elsewhere. At Kodak, for example, the section was headed by Dr R.S. Schultze, with Miss M.D. Gauntlett in the role of librarian. The Shell oil company had numerous information departments serving its many different functions, and a similar pattern can be seen throughout these.26 It was also the case that the library and information services of many organisations were on a considerably smaller scale than those of the substantial enterprises outlined above. Here, the function was usually simply organised as a research or technical library under the direction of a member of staff styled ‘librarian’. These posts were often occupied by women as, for example, at J. Lyons & Sons, Boots Pure Drug Company, Hoover, Chivers, and the National Institute for Research in Dairying, and could offer real scope for initiative and leadership. Marion Gosset was employed by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell in 1946 to set up and run a technical library. By 1949, the library was taking a wide range of published grey literature and overseeing an information service, and when Gosset retired after 19 years in her post her staff 24

25 26

See also, ‘Register of scientific research units and laboratories’ (1938); ‘Work of the research department during 1930’ (1931), pp. 33–4; ‘Work of the research department during 1936’ (1937), p. 47, Metropolitan-Vickers Archives, Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. ‘Aslib folder’, Philippa Strachey Papers, The Women’s Library, London. ‘Internal telephone directory’ (1953–6), Shell Archives.

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numbered 47 (Gosset, 1949).27 Gosset served on committees of ASLIB and the British Society for International Bibliography, and was also a member of the technical committee of the International Federation for Documentation.28 Unfortunately, it has not been possible to confirm whether Gosset’s wide responsibilities included management of male staff; some evidence suggests that it did, but there would certainly have been ways to avoid such a situation. At Boots Pure Drug Company, however, Mabel Exley provided a definite if rare case of a female chief research librarian with a male assistant. Exley was a member of the Library Association Education Committee as well as author of a detailed published essay on the establishment and administration of scientific and technical research libraries (Exley, 1951). Mary Allen, librarian at the Linen Industry Research Association, provided a description of the work of that library which highlights how closely the scope of its work approximated in practice to that of a large information or intelligence department. Besides maintaining a stock of technical literature, it also, ‘assist[ed] the research staff by providing them with all possible information regarding the problems at hand’, and helped to build up an ‘Information Bureau’ containing all kinds of published and unpublished material on linen and related fibres (M. Allen, 1932). In her exploration of the position of women scientists in the United States during the early-twentieth-century, Margaret Rossiter pinpoints librarianship as one of the few openings through which women entered scientific work in industry in significant numbers (Rossiter, 1982, pp. 248–66). They were able to do so, she argues, because this sphere became effectively classified as ‘women’s work’. While on the one hand this designation allowed women to undertake influential and ground–breaking work, for example in the field of chemical librarianship, it also ascribed low status to the occupation (Rossiter, 1996). The British experience was somewhat different, insofar as the occupation was by no means simply ‘women’s work. Male technical librarians were employed at, for example, ICI, the Metal Box Company, British Nylon Spinners Ltd. and the Institute of Mining Engineers as well as in many of the industrial research associations. This male presence may be a reflection of the fact that librarianship as a whole in Britain did not become ‘feminised’ to the same extend that it did the United States (Garrison, 2003; Hildenbrand, 1996), and there can be little doubt that women benefited from being able to claim equal professional status with men engaged in the same work. Technical librarians were anxious to distinguish their work as an educated and skilled profession, and doing so could entail explicitly distancing themselves from too close identification with public librarianship, and especially with its unskilled, feminised face. For instance, Jack Bird, ASLIB’s own librarian, made a plea for improved training, better pay and recognised professional status in which he deplored the prevailing climate in which the public ‘associate[s] all librarians with the junior that stamps its books on a Saturday night’ (J. Bird, 1956). However, 27

28

See also, ‘Profiles, librarian at Harwell’, Harlequin, No. 32 (1961), pp. 24–5; ‘Marion Gosset’s curriculum vitae’, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Archives. Thanks to Sue Connell, UKAEA Records Management Services, for the last two items. ‘Report on the restricted conference of the International Federation for Documentation’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1949), pp. 57–67.

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Rossiter’s findings do offer some helpful pointers for understanding why women were so widely accepted in this role. As her work demonstrates, technical librarianship developed as a distinct occupational enclave within the industrial sector. The post of librarian could therefore be assigned as a self-contained position which did not automatically confer access to the established scientific career structures of the parent organisation. This argument takes us beyond simply the question of how far women were recruited because they could be easily ‘locked into’ jobs where clerical–type tasks effectively devalued their scientific expertise, and focuses our attention on the ways in which the professional boundaries of technical library and information work were being mapped out and contested by practitioners and others during the period under discussion. Questions about the nature of technical library and information work and the skills required by technical librarians and information officers exercised ASLIB members from the first. The chief grounds of friction were the relative importance accorded to theoretical and practical training in librarianship on the one hand and in science or technology on the other.29 Debate reached a head after the Second World War, when concern over how best to ensure the efficient provision of scientific and technical information to industry commanded unprecedented attention in policy-making circles.30 The Royal Society’s 1948 conference on scientific information services recommended that ‘information officers and special librarians should be regarded as equal in standing to fellow scientists employed in research, industry and administration’ (Royal Society, 1948, p. 202). However, it is evident that librarians in particular were not widely regarded as equal. During the 1940s and 1950s ASLIB witnessed around a decade of intense wrangling between members over the training and qualification of special librarians and information officers. The notion that there were in fact two separate professional groups working within the field was articulated with particular clarity by industrial interests representing the extensive information departments of large enterprises. They argued, influentially, that technical librarianship was a branch of the existing profession of librarianship while information work was a new sub-discipline within science. The precise distinctions on which this reasoning was based centred on perceptions of fundamental differences in the type of work undertaken and material handled. Technical librarians were charged with responsibility for managing the organisation of and access to an organisation’s stock of technical books, periodicals, reports and so on, while information officers aimed to provide scientific and technical information required by their colleagues using any sources from within or outside the organisation.31 Some of ASLIB’s rising voices, including J.E. Holmstrom and 29

30

31

These debates can be traced through papers in Aslib’s published conference proceedings, Aslib Information and Aslib Proceedings, as well as the correspondence and committee minutes in Box 51, Aslib Archives. Royal Society (1948); ‘Advisory council on scientific policy: panel on technical information services’ (1950), Box 52, Aslib Archives. See correspondence and papers 1947–54, Box 51, Aslib Archives. For summaries of various aspects of these discussions see ‘Second thoughts’, Aslib Information, No. 95 (1948), pp. 1–2; ‘Symposium on the training of the information officer’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1949), pp. 83–97; Simons (1951); Mackiewicz (1953).

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Brian Vickery of ICI and, most insistently, J.E.L. Farradane of sugar producer Tate & Lyle, pressed the claim that industrial information officers should be fully acknowledged as trained scientists and accorded equal rank alongside their colleagues engaged in scientific research.32 Moreover, they also stressed a hierarchical distinction between the information officer and the technical librarian. The former was, in Farradane’s words, ‘a research scientist who happened to work in a library instead of a laboratory’, a highly skilled library user rather than simply a library organizer. The descriptive title ‘information scientist’ was proposed for members of this new profession.33 As we have seen, these theoretical boundaries between technical librarians and information workers which some argued were so critical might actually be blurred to the point of non-existence in practice; indeed, matters could simply come down to the particular nomenclature adopted by individual organisations. Nevertheless, these tussles over the extent to which technical librarians might legitimately be regarded as scientists amply illustrate the highly ambiguous status which they enjoyed in terms of industrial employment. They were recruited to fulfil a specific function which was supportive of rather than equal to scientific research, and adopting this role almost invariably meant relinquishing any claim to equal recognition and opportunity alongside scientific staff. That technical librarianship could be a ‘dead end’ job precisely because it did not fit neatly into organisations’ scientific and technical career structures was a recognised problem facing both men and women in the field (Garrett, 1930). However, when British Nylon Spinners Ltd advertised their vacancy for a librarian in 1948, they tempted wouldbe applicants with the exceptional comment that ‘the post is a senior one carrying good salary and prospects’. Predictably, the position was filled by a man, W. Ashworth, a science graduate and Fellow of the Library Association.34 More usually, though, appointments lacked these desirable attributes, and it was for that reason that they could reasonably be offered to women. I would suggest, however, that whilst adopting the dual professional identity of scientist and librarian doubtless served to confirm women’s restriction to posts which carried low remuneration and poor promotional prospects, it could also be a sensible strategy for negotiating industry’s unwillingness to place women in responsible scientific positions. As we saw above, some women appointed as technical librarians devoted considerable energy to developing their posts from within. Arguably, the very professional distinctiveness of the technical librarian within an organisation gave her or him a claim to special expertise which went some way towards mitigating their subordinate status. The job title implied the possession of professional skills and knowledge different from and complementary to those of research staff. Miss Stubbs, librarian with Metropolitan-Vickers in the 1920s, presented a paper to the second ASLIB conference where she suggested a model in which the special librarian and a number of technical staff holding equal 32

33 34

J.E. Holmstrom, ‘Observations on the training of information officers’, (1948) Box 51; B.C. Vickery, ‘Training of information officers’ (1948), Edu 6/48, Box 51, Aslib Archives; J.E.L. Farradane, ‘Discussion’, Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 5 (1953), pp. 289–90; Farradane (1953). Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 5 (1953), p. 289. Aslib Information, No. 87 (1948); Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 1 (1949).

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rank provided special library and information services to an industrial research department (Stubbs, 1924). Women who entered technical librarianship also displayed a greater propensity than men to supplement their science degrees with qualifications in librarianship (Uvarov, 1954). Doing so suggests a willingness to base their professional credentials on being both a scientist and a librarian. Among those who earned qualifications from the Library Association were Mary Allen at the Linen Industry Research Association and Miss M. Gauntlett at Kodak, while Miss D. Knight of the National Institute for Research in Dairying took the diploma in librarianship at University College, London while in post. This is not to suggest that the women concerned ceased to view themselves primarily as scientists, and Uvarov’s survey found that even technical librarians with library qualifications stressed the primacy of their scientific identity. Rather, with the upper reaches of industrial science, and even industrial information work, largely closed to them, women scientists aspiring to an industrial career sought fully to exploit what openings there were. For information workers to stress their scientific acumen and agitate for equal status with their fellow scientists made sense when they were men who might reasonably make such claims; women did not share that credibility. In isolated cases and for exceptional women, technical librarianship could function as means of entry to an organisation which was prepared to support career progression within scientific research. Beryl Dent began work in 1930 as technical librarian at Metropolitan-Vickers where she was one of only two women on the senior scientific and technical staff of the research department. The high status of her appointment suggests that she was employed chiefly for the technical skills and expertise which she brought to the post. Dent arrived at Metropolitan-Vickers equipped with a Masters degree in physics and four years’ experience as a research assistant at Bristol University during which time she authored and co-authored six published research papers in the field of theoretical physics (Dent, 1929; Dent and Lennard-Jones, 1926; 1927; 1928a; 1928b). In 1949 she was promoted to section leader of the company’s new computation section and appointed women’s supervisor in the research department. Dent retained this position until her retirement in 1960, publishing in the meantime several well-received papers on the use of computers in electrical engineering (Dent, 1956; 1958).35 Her ability to progress within the organisation almost certainly owed much to the relatively favourable attitude, in theory at least, which Metropolitan-Vickers appears to have adopted towards the placing of women in professional positions. Although the number of female recruits to senior posts within the organisation remained tiny, its apprenticeships were open to women from 1917 onwards and it was vocal in support of the expansion of opportunities for graduate women in electrical engineering.36

35

36

Biographical information and details of publication from ‘Beryl May Dent’s registration card’, Roll Office, Newnham College, Cambridge. I am grateful to Samantha Chalmers for supplying this information. Journal of Careers, Vol. 8 (1929), pp. 15–16; W. Jackson, ‘Opportunities for girls in electrical engineering’, in Women’s Engineering Society, Report on a Conference ‘Careers for Girls in Engineering,’ held at the City of Coventry Training College on 13/14 July, 1957, The Women’s Library.

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Women’s experiences in industrial library and information work shared some broad similarities with the patterns that have been traced in relation to their employment in public libraries. Most notably, women were relatively unlikely to secure the more prestigious, senior posts in the field and they tended to be confined to positions which had few promotional prospects and where their supposedly feminine skills were deemed particularly applicable. However, these tendencies were characteristic of women’s employment opportunities as a whole for much of the twentieth century, and to insist upon the public library relationship would be to miss the distinctive and fundamental forces operating in the industrial library and information field. It was the gendered employment discourses and practices of the industrial sector which ultimately determined the scope and pattern of women’s recruitment and career progression, and we must seek to understand their experiences in those terms. Technical library and information work offered one of the only industrial openings for women science graduates during the period under discussion. If there was any connection between this development and women’s wider library employment, it lay in the way that librarianship was perceived to offer scope for their aptitude for clerical-type jobs. Clerical skills as well as scientific knowledge were often called for in the technical library and information posts to which women were appointed, and recruits were rarely admitted into the scientific career structures of the parent organisation. Nevertheless, technical librarianship should be acknowledged as an appropriate career strategy in light of the difficulties which women scientists faced securing professional recognition and responsible positions in industry. Within the limits of their post, some women not only forged innovative and lengthy careers within their parent organisation but also contributed to the wider world of technical library and information development.

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PART V CONCLUSION

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Chapter 8

Reconsidering the Chronology of the Information Age Alistair Black and Dave Muddiman

The central proposition of this book has been that a society increasingly aware of the need for, and uses of, information began to emerge in Britain in the 70 or so years between 1890 and 1960. Successive chapters have charted the dimensions of this early, or pre-computer, ‘information age’, all of them documenting the increasing importance of the idea of information in economic, scientific, commercial and administrative life. In essence, we claim that by 1960 something recognisable as an infrastructure of information systems and services had emerged in Britain. This comprised a series of networks of specialised institutions – some, but by no means all, of them libraries – dedicated to the dissemination of information and its exploitation as a resource. Many of these, as we have seen, were sponsored to some degree by the British state, but others, as Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate, were underwritten already by the needs of global industry and commerce for scientific and economic data and intelligence. In both the state and the private sector these institutions spawned sizeable bureaucracies, and in Chapters 3, 5, 6 and 7 we have documented how these gradually evolved into a self-conscious domain of information work. By 1960, this occupational field had in fact matured in Britain into a complex network of interconnected professional groupings, complete with courses of vocational education and training, systems of membership, accreditation and occupational control, and the almost inevitable internecine disputes and turf-wars. Of course, the suggestion that all of this amounted to an ‘early information society’ in the first part of the twentieth century is not unproblematic or uncontested. On the one hand, as we have noted in Chapter 1, conventional ‘information society’ theory tells us that information only really assumed centre stage in modern life with the ‘information technology revolution’ of the 1970s and beyond (Porat, 1977; Castells, 1996). On the other hand, perhaps rather more problematically for our case, a growing number of historians have begun to search for the origins of an information ‘revolution’ in periods well before the twentieth century, locating its roots variously in the development of printing (Feather, 2004, pp. 16–20); the sixteenth-century rise of capitalism (P. Burke, 2000, pp. 149–76); and the enlightenment and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Mattelart, 2003, pp. 5–25). Headrick (2000, p. 217) perhaps develops this approach most systematically of all, claiming that ‘the information revolution in which we live is the result of a cultural change which began roughly

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three centuries ago’ and that the ‘age of reason and revolution’ spawned most of the modern techniques of organising; displaying; transforming and communicating information that we utilise today. Although we recognise the validity of most of these claims, and would accept without hesitation the idea that information has a long and complex history, we would nevertheless contend that only in the earlytwentieth century did the significance of information become clear. Only then, we would argue, did it become a resource, a commodity, a phenomenon in its own right. In earlier times, as P. Burke, Headrick and others have noted, contemporaries spoke of knowledge, in the abstract, or books and documents, in the concrete, but not usually of the information to which they were linked. Even in Victorian Britain, as Weller and Bawden (2006) observe, although the term ‘information’ became commonly used in its everyday sense it was only rarely conceived as an ‘independent’ phenomenon or resource which could be divorced from a particular context.1 Hence, although it is possible to trace the growing use and importance of information in Victorian Britain, and to speak of a ‘Victorian information society’ in hindsight, it is unlikely that many contemporaries would have recognised the term.2 By the end of the nineteenth century, however, it is clear that the concept of information was beginning to emerge from the shadows. The urgent and ever more apparent need for data and knowledge became obvious in industry, science, government and, especially after 1914, the military and it became widely discussed in circles such as the ‘national efficiency’ movement discussed in Chapter 2. Eventually, this generated not only the institutions and infrastructures already described but also a new professional discourse and language of information. Opening ASLIB’s inaugural conference in 1924, J.G. Pearce, arguably one of the early information society’s leading propagandists, described its coming in the following terms: The most characteristic and significant feature of the last few years has been the enormous growth in ‘fact information’ relating to all departments of human activity. In science and technology, the accumulation of organised fact knowledge has been enormous, and in other directions considerable work has been done in the recording of experience and the collection of statistics of many kinds. In parallel with this growth a steadily increasing tendency has been observed to utilise existing information to the full before taking decisions, or commencing new undertakings in industry, commerce or in other fields, rather than rely on a complex of experience and knowledge unilluminated by actual facts. These tendencies were emerging definitely before the War, but the sudden adaptation to new conditions then

1

2

For example, Dickens, in his most celebrated satire of a dysfunctional information polity, the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit (1857), makes occasional use of the term ‘information’ in its everyday sense – his hero Arthur Clennam, for example, enquires ‘how I can obtain official information as to the real state of the case’ (p. 127). However, he never embarks on a general discussion of the topic, even though, in hindsight, it might be seen as a central theme of the novel. Weller and Bawden (2006) about the use of the term in their studies of the Duke of Wellington, Florence Nightingale, Paul Julius Reuter and Eleanor Sidgewick. For example see A. Black (2001b), Campbell-Kelly (1992; 1994), Weller and Bawden (2005).

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demanded rendered doubly necessary some means whereby relevant information could be collected, properly recorded and distributed to those whose function it was to make use of it… Post-war conditions have strengthened rather than diminished the necessity for this systematic treatment of information (Pearce, 1925, p. 12).

One obvious consequence of this advent of information, according to Pearce, was the proliferation of information ‘bureaux’, sometimes known as ‘intelligence’ or research centres. A few examples of these – such as that established by Stanley Jast in Croyden Public Library, and Pearce’s own bureau at Metropolitan-Vickers in Manchester – were founded before 1918, but after the First World War they had increased in popularity, encouraged especially by the model promoted by the Research Associations of the DSIR.3 In the inter-war years such bureaux became commonplace, although not ubiquitous, in British industry and commerce, legitimised partly at least by the inclusion of the ‘information’ label prominently in ASLIB’s title. Even in public libraries, by the late 1930s, the information bureau became a common sight, ‘where inquirers may be sure of obtaining current information with the minimum delay’ and the telephone attained a new prominence. These bureaux, as described by public librarian Eric Leyland, handled much more than books: ‘business codes; statistics of all descriptions… local information stored in cards and files’ (1937, pp. 74–5).4 Information bureaux, although highly visible, were arguably only one relatively superficial manifestation of the information idea. Of rather more significance was the increasingly serious recognition – inherent in Pearce’s call for a ‘systematic treatment of information’ – of the potential for units of information to be packaged, documented, disseminated and ultimately utilised as a resource. As Chapters 4 and 5 especially have demonstrated, such practices of what would now be labelled information management began to impact on British companies and organisations from the late-nineteenth century onwards, as the effective use of knowledge became linked with efficiency and techniques of scientific management were popularised. As office management became information intensive, new technologies and techniques of processing data were developed, and investment in information assets – both new hardware and an information workforce – was becoming more justifiable in cost benefit terms (Yates, 1991; Orbell, 1991). The contribution of informational labour to ‘national efficiency’, moreover, became fairly rapidly recognised as national concern, especially after the First World War when the shortcomings of British documentation became apparent. In 1918, smarting from what they perceived a chaotic lack of co-ordination of scientific information during the war, the luminaries of the Faraday Society famously launched a call for rationalised system of scientific information which would serve both economic and military ends. The efficient organisation of national scientific 3 4

On Croyden see Krauss (1910). For the DSIR see Chapter 2, pp. 61–66. Technical and commercial information bureaux were more likely to be found in the larger public libraries, such as in the new building opened in Sheffield in 1934, where a large amount of space was devoted to a Commercial Library and a Science and Technology Library. For commentary on the new Sheffield Public Library, see The Architects’ Journal (5 July 1934), The Builder (13 July 1934) and The Architect and Building News (20 July 1934). In smaller libraries the fairly widespread installation of ‘information desks’ was noted by Doubleday (1933, pp. 181–3).

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and technical information subsequently remained on the agenda throughout the period covered by this book, a stable system only really emerging after the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference of 1948. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the systematic provision of information – especially where it had economic, industrial and military importance – had effectively become an important and continuing concern of state policy in Britain. The same could be said of most other advanced economies of the time. Closely linked to this new interest in the exploitation of information was the developing realisation that information, if it were to be treated systematically, could be the subject of a science. In the early-twentieth century the discipline of documentation, pioneered by Paul Otlet in the 1890s, provided the main focus for such a science of information, encompassing ‘all aspects of the study of documents broadly conceived… anything written or iconographic that could contribute to our sum of knowledge’ (Rayward, 1985 p. 123). In Britain, as Chapter 2 describes, the new field of documentation stimulated the interest of a good number of eminent scientific thinkers concerned about ‘documentary chaos’: Norman Lockyer; H.E. Armstrong; Richard Gregory; H.G. Wells and J.D. Bernal, as well as the attention of bodies like the Royal Society and the British Science Guild. Some scientists, such as S.C. Bradford, B.C. Vickery and Jason Farradane went on to become full time documentalists and information scientists; others, such as Alan Pollard, Wells and Bernal made a significant intellectual contribution to the development of the field. In the period between 1920 and 1960, the scientific study of information was effectively founded by these men in Britain, in areas such as bibliometrics (Bradford); classification and information retrieval (Pollard; Farradane); and user studies (Bernal). By the 1950s, information research had become institutionalised in the Aslib Research Department, founded in 1958; by 1963, as Chapter 6 details, the first full-time course for information workers was opened at Northampton College, later City University, London, with the title of Postgraduate Diploma in Information Science. By then also ‘information theory’, popularised by Shannon and Weaver’s Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949), had inaugurated an American-led transition to the more technologically oriented disciplines of information and computer science; for some commentators, such as Frederick Adams (2003, p. 471), such mid-century intellectual developments heralded the real beginning of ‘the information age’.5 The conclusions of this book, it should now be clear, are rather different. We argue that the advent of this so-called information age was a historically much more measured process. Its deepest roots, as Mattelart and others have argued, probably lay in the coming of modernity – and with it widespread literacy; secularisation and embourgeoisement – to European society from the sixteenth century onwards. However, information only really became sociologically visible 5

Adams argues that ‘the information age... began around the year 1950 (plus or minus two)’, although, to be fair to him, it is clear that his claim relates to the ‘application of information theory to philosophical problems of mind and meaning’ and not an information society in general. Interestingly, he also points out that as early as 1928, in an article by R. Hartley entitled ‘Transmission of information’, American engineers and mathematicians began to debate the topic of information theory. See Adams (2003, p. 471); Hartley (1928).

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in Britain with the rise to prominence of its institutions, technologies, ideas and systems in the first half of the twentieth century. To a substantial degree, its emergence at that point in time can be theorised as a manifestation of Beniger’s ‘control revolution’ – a response to what he characterises as a mid-nineteenth century crisis of industrialism which necessitated ‘rapid changes in the technological and economic arrangements by which information is collected, stored, processed and communicated’ (Beniger, 1986, p. 427).6 Hence, as successive chapters of this book have suggested, the informatisation of Britain in this period was closely linked to its ‘second’ industrial revolution. Developments such as the rationalisation of scientific documentation; the management of knowledge in firms; the establishment of company libraries; the harnessing of technical information by the British state; the diffusion of office and communications technologies – all of these were driven by the need to control, harness and understand industrial advance. ‘Information’, in the early twentieth century, hence became commonly a scientific, technical and commercial commodity, and its exploitation and control, as we have seen, gradually became a recognised condition of industrial progress. It would be in our view, however, a mistake to reduce the many informational developments of the early-twentieth century to a narrative of industrialism and technical control. Like Antony Giddens (1985; 1990) we would instead prefer to link the rise of information to a series of interrelated ‘institutional dimensions of modernity’, all of which, we would argue, became knowledge intensive as modern societies evolved into their urbanised and state-centred twentieth-century forms. Giddens (1990, p. 59) identifies these elements as fourfold: capitalism and capital accumulation, industrialism, military power, and surveillance and social supervision. Information, in this scheme, is in fact linked especially to the concept of surveillance, and to the development in particular of the modern state and its administrative and bureaucratic apparatus of social control. However, as Chapter 1 of this book illustrates, the utilisation of information also became important in each of the other facets: it became indispensable in fields such as internationalised commerce; capital accumulation; industrial organisation and in the planning and conduct of internal policing and war. The shift to more information intensive societies in the early-twentieth-century was hence a product of the complex of forces – economic, technological, political, social and intellectual – which shaped twentieth-century modernity as a whole. No single underlying cause, or technological mainspring, is obvious to discern. There remains, of course, a great deal of historical research to be undertaken in order to unravel these forces and themes. This book, exploratory in the main in its nature, has touched on most of them, but analysed few in any depth. Where there has been a detailed focus, this has been upon the foundation and development of institutions of information in early-twentieth-century Britain, and upon the establishment of their occupational culture. Even in this relatively limited sphere, we would contend, many more detailed histories remain to be written: of libraries and information bureaux, of pioneer practitioners, educators and theorists, and of 6

Beniger’s thesis is based on a study of developments in the mid/late nineteenth century United States; Weller and Bawden (2005) have recently applied some of his propositions to Britain.

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professional movements and groupings both in Britain and beyond. More generally, information histories are needed which address larger themes: histories of technologies and systems before the computer; studies of knowledge management and industrial capitalism in the Fordist age; studies of the nature of early information work beyond the professions emphasised here. The evolution of information management in the modern state – as theorised by Weber; Foucault and Giddens – also requires empirical investigation in settings such as policing, social welfare and the civil service, a line of enquiry recently inaugurated in the work of Higgs (2001; 2004). Comparative studies of modes of informatisation, for example in the liberal democracies and the communist bloc, are also waiting to be written, following, perhaps, the groundbreaking work of the late Pamela Spence Richards (1994; 1996) The military context, too – linked especially in Britain in this period to the revival (and final decline) of empire – remains comparatively hidden, although the military impetus behind many informational innovations is beginning to be recognised, most recently in the general reassessment of the British ‘warfare state’ by Edgerton (2005). As this suggests, whilst many of these topics have attracted pioneering work,7 the early-twentieth-century information age, like information history as a whole, is largely virgin land. This study, at best, represents a staging-post: there is a great deal more to discover. In the interim, however, we would like to think that our book has advanced the debate about the informatisation of society, both in Britain and beyond. In broad terms, it seems to us, the developments described herein add weight to the proposition that any information ‘revolution’ has a long, rather than a narrowly contemporaneous, history: its roots, as Giddens and many other commentators now agree, resting in the multifarious influences which shaped ‘modern’ society, rather than in any single technological break.8 More specifically, we have highlighted a particular epoch in Britain – 1890–1960: a period which we have characterised provisionally as an ‘early’ information society. During this period, we argue, the pace of the informatisation quickened. The concept of information first assumed its generalised, modern meaning and the institutions, systems and professions associated with its use and exploitation were born. In the half century before the computer, information hence became reflexively important in spheres as various as science, industry, economics, commerce, government and the public sector. For some visionaries, such as Wells and Bernal, it even became the key to an ideal state or society. Although, in the end, this early information society may not have amounted to the fully fledged ‘wired world’ of the computer and its networks, these developments, we suggest, nevertheless marked the dawning of what is now commonly called the information age. As we embark upon what many claim to be a new millennium abundant with information, we might reflect that the origins of this information age are not as recent as they are often assumed to be.

7 8

Most of this work is reviewed in Chapter 1. The notion of the ‘long history of the information revolution’ is borrowed from Robins and Webster (1999), Ch. 4.

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Appendix 1

Glossary of Common Abbreviations ACSP

Advisory Council on Science Policy

ADI

American Documentation Institute

ALA

American Library Association

AScW

Association of Scientific Workers

ASIS

American Society for Information Science

ASLIB/Aslib

Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux

BAAS

British Association for the Advancement of Science

BCS

British Computer Society

BFUW

British Federation of University Women

BNFMRA

British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association

BP

British Petroleum

BSIB

British Society for International Bibliography

BSG

British Science Guild

CILIP

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

CNRS

Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique

CPGB

Communist Party of Great Britain

CRG

Classification Research Group

DGD

Deutsche Gesellschaft f_r Dokumentation

DSIR

Department of Scientific and Industrial Research

FID

Fédération International de Documentation

ICI

Imperial Chemical Industries

IIB

International Institute of Bibliography

IIS

Institute of Information Scientists

INTD

Institut National des Techniques de la Documentation

LA

Library Association

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NLLST

National Lending Library for Science and Technology

RSSIC

Royal Society Scientific Information Conference

SLA

Special Libraries Association (United States)

SS

Science Service (United States)

UDC

Universal Decimal Classification

UFOD

Union Française des Organismes de Documentation

UNESCO

United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

VDB

Verein Deutscher Bibliotekare

VINITI

Soviet Union Institute for Scientific Documentation

WEF

Women’s Employment Federation

Appendix 2

Alphabetical List of Archival Sources and Locations Association for Information Management, London (Aslib Archives) Bank of England Archives Borthwick Institute, University of York (Rowntree-Mackintosh Archives) Bromley Public Library, Kent (Documents relating to H.G. Wells) Cambridge University Library Archives (J.D. Bernal Papers) City University Library Halifax Citadel Museum, Nova Scotia, Canada (British Army regulations) History of Advertising Trust Archive (Selfridge’s Archives) Imperial Chemical Industries London Corporation Archives (Lyons and Co. Archives) Manchester Museum of Science and Technology (Metropolitan-Vickers Archives) National Archives, Kew (Records of the Committee on Industrial Productivity’s Panel on Scientific Information Services and of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Edith Ditmas Papers) Newnham College, Cambridge (Roll Office) Port Sunlight Village Trust (Records relating to Lever Brothers and Unilever) Prudential Archives, London Royal Mail Archives, London Science Museum Library, London (Archives of the British Society for International Bibliography) Shell Archives, Shell Centre, London Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (Papers of G. Watson Davis, the American Documentation Institutions and Science Service) Special Libraries Association, Washington DC The British Library (Archives of the East India Company Library)

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United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell (Records Management Service) University College London Archives (Records of the School of Librarianship and the Library Association Archives) University of Illinois Archives Department (Papers of H.G. Wells and the American Library Association) Wates Group Limited Women’s Library, London (Philippa Strachey Papers and Women’s Employment Federation Papers)

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Index

A Report on Public libraries in England and Wales 61, 62 accounting, public 38 American Documentation Institute (ADI) 43, 46 American Society for Information Scientists (ASIS) 44 Anglo-Persian Oil Company 133 army protocols 137 AScW (Association of Scientific Workers) 67–8 ASIS (American Society for Information Scientists) 44 ASLIB see Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux Aslib 94–5 see also Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) Aslib Proceedings 93 Association of Scientific Workers (AScW) 67–8 Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) 33–4, 35, 42, 71, 76–7, 194–7 ‘Aslib,’ name change to 94–5 British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) 91–2, 94–5 centralisation of information services 93–4 company libraries 219 conferences 91 consultancy 95 education 204–17 enquiry service 85, 86, 94, 95 executive council 84 finances 84, 86, 96

information bureaux 64–5 information research 98 Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) 97–8 interest groups 98 international profile 92 librarians 87–8 Library Association (UK) 88–90, 203–4 joint education committee 212–15 membership 83–4, 95–6, 155–8 microfilm service 86 networking 82–7, 100 objectives 82 origins 79–82 premises 83–4, 94 as professional organisation 87, 99 publications 83, 85, 93 regional branches 88 special librarians 87–8 state support 94, 95 training 88, 96 translation 95 World War II 86, 202–3 Auxiliary Publication Service 20–21 Baker, Ernest 196–7 Bank of England 116–21 library 161–3, 173 Barnett, Corelli 31 BCS (British Computer Society) 39 Bernal, John Desmond 66–72, 90 Besterman, Theodore 93 Bibliofilm Service 21 bibliography 21, 40 Blackett, Patrick 73 book production 14–15 BP (British Petroleum) 133–4

282

The Early Information Society

Bradford, Samuel Clement 61 Briet, Suzanne 48 British Computer Society (BCS) 39 British Council 50 British National Committee on Documentation 91 British Petroleum (BP) 133–4 British Publishing Authority 34, 68 British Science Guild (BSG) 31–2, 56 British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) 43, 91–2, 94–5 Brown, James Duff 29, 39 BSG (British Science Guild) 31–2, 56 BSIB (British Society for International Bibliography) 43, 91–2, 94–5 bureaucracy 26–7, 30–32, 141–3 Bush, Vannevar 21–3 business libraries see company libraries calculators 112 capitalism and information 24–9 census 13 Central Science Library 33 centralisation of scientific communication 66–73 Chapman, Sydney 28 Chartered Institute of Information and Library Professionals (CILIP) 44 Church, Archibald 61 CILIP (Chartered Institute of Information and Library Professionals) 44 circulars 119 civil service computers 121 information management 121 classification schemes for science 74 clerical work 225–6 commercial libraries 62–3, 76, 178 see also company libraries; industrial libraries Committee on Industrial Productivity 180

communication industrialisation 14–15 networks 9–10 to staff 120 technology 12 company libraries 144–7, 148–51, 153–8 see also commercial libraries; industrial libraries Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) 219 Bank of England 161–3, 173 commercial information 152–3 economic depression 168 education 172–3 functions of 151 ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) 160–61, 173 information management 151–2 information science 179 information services 151–2 information work 176–85 liaison 152 librarianship 177–9 Library Association (UK) 179 Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company 193 naming of 152 new industries 166–7 Post Office 159 public libraries 164–6 rationalisation 169–70 research 167–8 science 168 scientific management 174–6 technical education 170–73 United States 163–4 company magazines 129–35 company technical libraries see company libraries computers business 25 civil service 121 LEO (Lyon's Electronic Office) 23

Index conduct protocols 119 control revolution 241 corporate information 25–6, 33 corporate memory 119, 126 cultural democratisation 40–41 Dana, John Cotton 39–40 data processing 112 database assembly 112–13 Davis, G. Watson 19–21 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) 32, 33–4, 59–60 information bureaux 63 Panel on Technical Information Services 73 Research Associations 76, 192 Non-Ferrous Metals 80 specialist libraries 62–5 Devonshire Commission 55 dictaphones 16 Ditmas, Edith 84–6 documentalists see information officers documentation 43, 92–3, 181, 182, 240 documents duplication 113, 118, 128 production 112 registries 114, 119, 122–1234, 125, 127–8 Drucker, Peter 7, 28 DSIR see Department of Scientific and Industrial Research duplication of documents 113, 118, 128 East India Company library 154 economic liberalism 31 education Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) 204–13 company libraries 172–3 information science 189–202 Library Association (UK) 212–14 enforced leisure 5

283 Enlightenment 11–12, 136 evening classes 171–2 facsimile reproduction 19 Federation International de Documentation (FID) see International Federation of Documentation filing see also indexing departments 114, 115 MI5 128 systems 112–14 Fordism 24–5 formal procedures 135–40 Foskett, Douglas 42 Foucault, Michel 13–14 France, information society 47–8 free trade 31 futurology 8 Gates, Bill 4 General Register Office 30, 32 Germany 56 information society 46–7 libraries 59 science 58 Giddens, Anthony 29 globalisation 49–50 governmental information 26, 121–2 governmentality 109 Herries & Company 136 Hollerith machines 17–18, 112, 118 Hudson Bay Company 136 Hutton, Robert Salmon 80 ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) 160–61, 173 IIB (International Institute of Bibliography) 43, 50–51, 122 IID (International Institute of Documentation) 43, 51 IIS see Institute of Information Scientists Imperial Institute 50

284

The Early Information Society

in-house technical libraries see company libraries index cards 143 indexing 113–14, 119, 125–6, 150 see also filing Kaiser system 146 India, surveillance 13 industrial libraries see also commercial libraries; industrial libraries age/salary distribution 227 women employees 219–34 industrial revolution, second 55 industrialisation of communication 14–15 information 107, 238–9 abundance of 16 capitalism 24–9 corporate 25–6 economic growth 27 governmental 26 nation states 29–36 nationalisation of 34–6 planning 65, 68–73 scientific 56–61 technical 56–61 technologies of 14–24 welfare state 73–8 information age 240–41 information bureaux 60, 63–4, 166, 205, 239 see also information work information centres 33, 35 information flows 106 information history 8–10 information infrastructure 11, 107–8 national 61–6 information management 106–7, 239–40, 242–3 Bank of England 116–21 civil service 121 company libraries 144–7, 151–2 definition 110–11 government 121–2 librarianship 141–4 MI5 125–9

Post Office 122–4 Prudential Assurance Company 138–9 Royal Navy 125 systems 110 information officers 179–85, 205–10, 215–16 see also information science; information scientists; information work Library Association (UK) 212–15 training 230–31 women 222 information policy 12, 73 information professions 37–45 information research 98 information rooms 116 information science 43–4, 93, 202–17 company libraries 179 education 189–202 information scientists 216 see also information officers information services 221–2 company libraries 151–2 state intervention 73–8 information society debate 3–6 France 47–8 Germany 46–7 globalisation 49–50 historic 10–14 and history 6–8 international 45–52 origins 7 United States 45–6 USSR 48–9 Victorian 12 information technology, manual 114–15 information work 36–7, 221 age/salary distribution 227 company libraries 176–85 librarianship 41–2 qualitative 39–45 quantitative 38–9 women 219–34

Index

285

Kaiser indexing system 146 Keir, James 28 Kenyon, Frederic 28–9 Kenyon Report 61, 62 knowledge 107 knowledge capital 106–7 knowledge documents 109 knowledge economy 27–9 knowledge management 105–8, 111, 116 Bank of England 118–21 company magazines 132–3 MI5 128–9 Post Office 124 Kumar, Krishnan 7

LEO (Lyon's Electronic Office) computer 23 Lever Brothers 134–5 librarianship 4–5, 39–41, 210–11 company libraries 177–9 information management 141–4 information work 41–2 School of Librarianship (University College London) 179, 195–9 special see special librarianship technical 228–34 training 212–13 women 42, 223–4 libraries 10, 140–44 see also librarianship; public libraries; technical libraries commercial 62–3, 76, 178 Germany 59 in-house technical see company libraries industrial 219–34 information desks 40 punched cards 18 reference desks 40 scientific 57, 61–2 specialist 62–4 Library Association (UK) 40–41, 62 Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) 88–90, 203–4 joint education committee 212–15 company libraries 179 education 212–17 information officers 212–15 professionalism 212–13 scientific information services 199–201 special librarianship 88, 96, 100 library manuals 142 Lysenko crisis 70

learning organisations 105–11, 145

Memex 22–3

information workers see information officers informatisation 243 Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) 44, 96 Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB) 97–8 education 217 Institute of Scientific Information (VINITI) 49, 77 International Catalogue of Scientific Literature 31, 58–9 International Federation of Documentation (FID) 43, 51, 91–2 International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) 43, 50–51, 122 International Institute of Documentation (IID) 43, 51 International Library Committee (ILC) 210–11 J. Lyons and Company 23, 25 Joliot-Curie, Frederic 48 Journal of Documentation 93 journals, scientific 57, 58

286

The Early Information Society

Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company 193 MI5 30–31, 125–9 microfilm 18–21, 128 punched cards 21–3 modernity 241 Morrison, Herbert 35 Mowat, Magnus 61 Mumford, Lewis 16–17 Mundaneum 51 nation states and information 29–36 National Distribution Authorities for Scientific Information 69–71 national efficiency 56, 58, 239–40 national information strategy 32–3 National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLLST) 75 nationalisation of information 34–6 Nature 56, 58, 69 neo-technics 16–17 NLLST (National Lending Library for Science and Technology) 75 office management revolution 15–16, 25–6, 111–16 office mechanisation 117–18 Office of Publicke Addresse 11 operational research (OR) 38 Otlet, Paul 43, 50–51, 121–2 Panel on Technical Information Services 180 paperless office 5 passports 13 Pearce, J. G. 63–4, 80 photocopying 113 planning for information 65 pneumatic-tube messaging system 138 political arithmetic 13 Post Office 122–4 library 159 Powers accounting machines 112 printing 11–12, 14–15

procedures, formal 135–40 professional society 13–14 protocols, written 135–40 Prudential Assurance Company 131–2, 136–9 public accounting 38 public libraries business 166 commercial information 25, 33, 76, 165 company libraries 164–6 information bureaux 166 scientific information 33, 62 technical information 25, 33, 62, 76, 165 women employees 220 public science 56, 60 punched cards 17–18, 112, 118, 127–8 microphotography 21–3 Rapid Selector 21–3 rationalisation of company libraries 169–70 Recordak 20 red science 66–7 Reform of the System of Scientific Publications 68 registration of births, deaths and marriages 13, 30, 32 registries 114, 119, 122–4, 125, 127–8 A Report on Public libraries in England and Wales 61 research, company libraries 167–8 research librarians see information officers retirement age 5 risk society 16 Rowntree & Co. 139–40 Royal Navy 125 Royal Society 73–4 Scientific Information Conference (RSSIC) 70–72, 74 rules and orders 119

Index School of Librarianship (University College London) 179, 195–9 science company libraries 168 education 55–6 Germany 58 information 56–61 investment 56 planned 66–73 politicisation 66–7 public 56, 60 red 66–7 state intervention 74 Science Centre 74–5 Science Museum Library 57, 59, 61–2 Science Service 19–20, 46 scientific communication centralisation 66–73, 76 classification schemes 74 planning 75–6 standardised formats 74 scientific documentation see scientific communication scientific information officers see information officers scientific information work see special librarianship scientific journals 57, 58 scientific libraries 57, 61–2 scientific management 24–5, 174–6 scientific publication see scientific communication second industrial revolution 55 Security Service see MI5 service revolution 27 Sheffield Information Organisation (SINTO) 62 Shell Oil Company 130 SINTO (Sheffield Information Organisation) 62 SLA see Special Libraries Association social capital 108–9 social determinism 14

287 Social Function of Science (Bernal) 33, 34, 66–8 social knowledge 9–10 space, standardisation 29 special librarianship 87–8, 181, 205–6 education 189–202 growth of 191–202 training 230–31 Special Libraries Association (SLA) 42, 46 company magazine 130–31 Public Business Librarians Group 165 specialist libraries 62–4 spreadsheets 115, 117 standardisation 29–30 state intervention information services 73–8 science 74 state monitoring mechanisms 13 statisticians 38 surveillance 12–13, 241 Taylorism 25 technical education company libraries 170–73 evening classes 171–2 technical information 56–61 technical librarians 228–34 as scientists 231–2 technical libraries 62–3, 76, 144–7, 150–53 women employees 219–34 technological determinism 8, 14 technologies of information 14–24 telegraph 15 telephones 112 time standardisation 29 Tizard, Henry 61, 90 Toffler, Alvin 7 training 119–20 typewriters 115, 117

288

The Early Information Society

UDC (Universal Decimal Classification) 50, 91 United States company libraries 163–4 corporate research 168 information society 45–6 public business libraries 164–5 Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) 50, 91 Universal Documentary Repertory 122 Urquhart, Donald 75 USSR, information society 48–9 vertical filing systems 113 Victorian information society 12, 238 VINITI (Institute of Scientific Information) 49

Wates 132–3 welfare state, information 73–8 Wells, H. G. (Herbert George) 51–2, 59 women age/salary distribution 227 clerical work 225–6 industrial library employees 219–34 information officers 222 information work 224 librarianship 42, 223–4 public library employees 220 World Encyclopaedia 51–2 World War I 59, 167 World War II 86, 130, 169, 202–3 written protocols 135–40