Abstract
THE ninth annual Conference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, which was held at Somerville College, Oxford, on Sept. 23–26, opened and closed on a note echoed from the British Association meetings at York. In an opening address to the Conference on Sept. 23, on “Science and the Humanities”, Prof. J. L. Myres directed attention to three characteristics of our own age, in the abundance of information and of working tools or instruments as well as of those who use them, linked up with increasing opportunities of use and the growing complexities of organisation directed to make both more accessible, and suggested that the depression which accompanies this superabundance of means is possibly no temporary depression. The leisure state may well be upon us and it is difficult to predict what the new order will be. All that can be said is that the situation must be met with new ideas and new projects, and Prof. Miles Walker's address at the British Association meeting was essentially a challenge to the present order and to the general outlook. With this the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux is concerned in the provision of information relating both to accurate knowledge of the world and to the training necessary to make people competent to live. Sir Alfred Ewing's presidential address at the York meeting of the British Association likewise issued a challenge to modern politics, economics and systems of education and raised the whole question of the relative value of science and the humanities both in society and in the preparation of people for its privileges.
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Conference of the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux. Nature 130, 586–587 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130586a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130586a0