Epsom library

This morning an email arrived from Epsom Library arrived telling me all about their new improved computer systems which they will be installing during August.

They will stop doing things like reminders by post and I get the impression that the library will not be a very friendly place for people who do not like computers - or supermarket-style checkout machinery.

They will be becoming part of something called the Libraries Consortium which already includes a lot of London Boroughs and appears to be run by computers operated by the Overdrive Corporation of Ohio. As far as I can make out the core business of this last is distribution of ebooks, not bricks and mortar books at all.

One wonders whether librarians these days have computer qualifications rather than old fashioned librarian qualifications, from the days when librarians might be expected to know all about books. A cursory investigation did not reveal much beyond the fact that a British School of Librarianship was founded in 1919 and subsequently subsumed by the Department of Information Studies of University College London. A rebranding which was echoed in the similar rebranding of the Treasury & Cabinet Office library in GOGGS during my time there, at about the time they sold off all their old books. While the once stuffy looking 'Journal of Documentation', once published by Aslib (founded as the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux), has been gobbled up by Emerald Group Publishing. While CILIP - maybe the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals - seems to have taken on the leadership role. See reference 6.

All that said, I do not use Epsom library very often, but the service is very good when I do. And I fully expect that, certainly as far as I am concerned, it will get better.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OverDrive,_Inc. 

Reference 2: https://www.overdrive.com/. The OverDrive HQ.

Reference 3: https://tlc.overdrive.com/. The Libraries Consortium.

Reference 4: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/information-studies.

Reference 5: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/. 'We’re a vibrant business full of energy and passion about making research count. Going beyond the bounds of a traditional publisher, we want to be a facilitator of impact, encouraging equitable, healthy and sustainable research and publishing for all'.

Reference 6: https://www.cilip.org.uk/.