In addition to providing a review of the literature recently published in the librarianship of non‐book materials this survey aims to draw attention to the characteristics, problems and achievements particular to the documentation and handling of non‐book materials (NBM) in many types of libraries. The materials are briefly described and considerations of selection, acquisition, organization, storage and in particular bibliographic control are dealt with in some detail. Other areas of concern to the librarian dealing with media resources, including the organization and training of staff, planning, equipment, exploitation and copyright, are also discussed. The past decade has seen the widespread introduction of NBM into libraries as additional or alternative sources of information. Librarians have been given an opportunity to rethink many basic principles and adapt existing practice to encompass the new materials. The survey reflects the achievements and some of the failures or problems remaining to be solved in this rapidly expanding area of library work.

Progress in documentation: non‐book materials: a decade of development?

Non-book materials: a decade of development?

1895 saw the dawn of film – a new publication medium that we associate particularly with the century that has just ended. The survival of films and of information about them has been severely hampered in the UK by the absence of legal deposit. At the beginning of the new century, proposals to remedy that situation would not only benefit film but might, for the new digital media, help to prevent the loss of treasures on the scale of that suffered by film in the twentieth century.

The century of film: bibliographic control and legal deposit of the moving image

Of all types of audiovisual documents to be found in archives, motion picture film and videotape are among the least accessible. These items are often bulky and not easily handled. They cannot be browsed, and they require special projection or viewing equipment for use either by staff or the clientele of the archives. In addition they are fragile and subject to damage every time they are viewed. For these reasons, it is important for archives to provide catalogs of their motion picture and videotape holdings, catalogs sufficiently detailed to enable the user to determine which films will be helpful in his research and to eliminate the materials he does not need to view.

Jan W. Wright

Papers

Non-book Materials: Their Bibliographic Control.

Non-book materials : their bibliographic control : a proposed computer system for the cataloguing of audio-visual materials in the United Kingdom