ht. Libr. Reu. (1971) 3, 353-354

Editorial Commentary

GEORGE CHANDLER

The contributions to this issue illustrate various aspects of the activities of national, special, university and public libraries or schools of librarian- ship in four continents -Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

The African contribution is a study of some personnel problems in Nigerian university libraries. These appear to be the same problems which affect many university librarians in many countries : how to secure parity of treatment with teaching staff, how to raise the status of profes- sional librarians by allocating non-professional duties to non-profes- sionals.

The studies from Asia are specially shortened and edited versions of a much larger number of papers delivered to the 1969 Conference on Southeast Asian Research Materials in Indonesia. They are published here because they illustrate the contrasting ways in which developing countries organize the acquisition, preservation and use of historical materials relating to their past. Their responsibility is shared by libraries and national archives depositories, but the distinction between printed sources, manuscripts and archives is not clear cut. The collections of archives depositories and libraries overlap. The studies selected for publication relate to institutions serving a national purpose, but a num- ber of valuable papers relating to the research collections of university and special libraries were also submitted to the 1969 Conference on South- east Asian Research Materials.

The European studies include a specially shortened and edited version of a pioneer survey of European statistical libraries originally submitted to the recently created Social Science Libraries Sub Section at the 1970 IFLA Council in Moscow. A contrasting survey is the analysis of the Soviet papers on public and children’s libraries submitted to the same IFLA Council. A study of literature use by European sociologists com- pletes the European section of this number.

All the contributions from the U.S.A. are international. They include a recruiting article for LARC-Library Automation, Recruiting and Consulting Association which has been recently established to survey automation on a world-wide basis. Its objectives overlap with those of

354 GEORGE CHANDLER

the Committee on Mechanization of IFLA, with whom consultation does not appear to have taken place.

The articles on picture books, on the international activities in children’s libraries are further examples of the prominent role of North America in international librarianship and bibliography of children’s literature.