ABSTRACT
In the first edition of the Manual of Curatorship, the only major mention of libraries occurs at the end of Bassett’s chapter on museum publications, although some other chapters do refer to them (‘Research: natural science collections’, p. 153; ‘Research: archaeological collections’, pp. 166–167). That there was no section on libraries in the Manual is not altogether surprising, seeing that librarianship is a profession in its own right, with a huge range of publications serving its practitioners. Also, very little has been written on museum librarianship, and most of what has been published appears in American publications; 1 only a few key references are given in a recent book (Woodhead and Stansfield, 1989, pp. 29–30).
