ABSTRACT
The well-stocked bar of the 8th Cranfield Conference on Mechanised Information Retrieval in July 1981 provided the venue for the informal discussions which gave rise to BookshelF. These discussions centred on the potential of the microcomputer to provide automation for the small library. The outcome was a successful application to the British Library Research and Development Department (BLR&DD) for a research grant to support a project based in the Cairns Library and headed by Peter Leggate. Hilary Dyer was appointed as research officer.
