cqqc – engineering social change

article for the Diversity newsletter, 750 words

February 2005 was called by Schools Out

http://www.schools-out.org.uk/

lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered history month, and

supported by the DfES, the Mayor for London, attracting a
speech by the then MP, Steve Twigg.

As part of the month, I had previously written a paper for

Information and Social Change

http://www.libr.org/ISC/articles/20-John_Lindsay.html

in which I updated the material I had written in Libraries

and Social Change thirty years ago.

During the month I gave a talk to the London Socialist

Historians’ Group called taking a kissybian for a walk
during which I drew together some threads and illustrated
them. This, together with a variety of other articles will be
published in an issue of Information, systems, and social
change in the course of this year.

Thirty years ago when I took part in the launching of Gay

Switchboard, I argued that what was needed was one
telephone number which was so widely available that
anyone who wanted it would be able to obtain it. That was
the central idea behind 837 7324 and I think it has worked.
When I launched the gay librarians’ group with a letter in
the Library Association Record I argued that professionals
have an obligation to provide a positive image of respect
for gay and lesbian users and have to change their
professional practices accordingly. This I still assert.

During the month I undertook a short and simple survey of

some of the resources which might be open to people for I
argued then and still argue that the public library is the first
point of entry into the world of organised knowledge
though now it is as much through the People’s Network as
it will be through books on shelves or magazines. However
the catalogue will remain along with stock selection a most
important professional obligation.

Studying four London public libraries, which perhaps I

shouldn’t name, and looking at the clumps, M25

http://www.m25lib.ac.uk/

and public libraries

http://www.londonlibraries.org.uk/will/Categories.aspx

gave me a very varied picture, I suppose predicatable.

The British Library I studied in some depth to get a feel for

what the national collection might look like. This is clearly
more specialised than most people will want to follow but it
seems to me as chair of the National Forum on Information
Planning that we must have a system, so there are simple
first points of call, then more detailed followup facilities.
These might be in public libraries, for example
Westminister has an exemplary collection on art and
design, or in universities, where again there is great
diversity in the quality of the collections and in this area
journals are in many ways more important than books.

This meant I had to examine also the resources for which

we don’t have a generic name, the databases and indexing,
abstracting services.

Also studied were museums, art galleries, bookshops, and

the Internet.

The Internet is the hard one for we have to distinguish

between the services provided by organisations for example
such as higher education through, again, for example,
SOSIG,

http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

and be able to compare and contrast with the results on

google (which I shan’t url, so there).