New Review of Information and Library Research Volume 4 (1998)

Peter Brophy begins his editorship of the review with a theme issue on hybrid libraries, consisting of over a dozen papers from the “Integrate, co-operate, innovative” conference held in London in December 1998. The volume has then been published commendably quickly and sets a useful marker for the whole topic. It is slightly unfortunate that this speed is to a degree vitiated by the fact that the projects had scarcely settled into their work and so report aspirations and questions rather than results. In practice the papers are enriched by a number which cover some wider topics such as clumps, inter-lending and impact studies.

The volume is introduced by Brophy and Fisher with a useful basic primer to the language background and issues of hybrid libraries. This is followed by a solid account from Carr on the current state of CEI and the work of its preceding committees, with some typically shrewd apercus and by the keynote paper from Priestley seeking innovation. Three papers follow which are well intentioned, earnest and well written, but less than demanding of the reader. Walton and Edwards argue that commerce can teach libraries about joint ventures, while ignoring the panoply of joint ventures which already exist in universities, report on a LISA search and think leadership important. Dalton and others report on a study of the views of university managers which show them to be prejudiced, minimally informed and masters of the obvious. Lastly Day and others report from the apparently inexhaustible seam of IMPEL, a project which bids fair to become the longest running victim support agency in the profession. A series of articles then follow on HyLiFE, RIDING, CAIRNS, Music Libraries On-Line, SEREN, MALIBU, HEADLINE and AGORA, with Eaton’s article about HEADLINE and issues of user authentication being notably good. Finally there is an excellent paper from Price on collection development in hybrid libraries.

This is a valuable collection as a basic primer on hybrid libraries and as such accessible to many levels of library staff. In a rapidly moving field it provides an easy introduction to issues projects and current thinking. It also usefully assembles material in one place rather than requiring one to search the diverse journals in which these authors will publish other reports of their work. But at sixty-five pounds it’s not cheap