External Information Services: SESSION 6: CONCLUSIONS AND INITIATIVES

Professor W. Saunders: I have listened with very great interest to the proceedings of the last two and a half days and it seems that a picture has gradually built up during that time. We started with Mr. Arnold and Mr. Vickery setting the scene and an attempt by Mr Vickery to indicate some broad guidelines, and then we had what really amounts to a very important series of case studies from various points of view. We finished with snags and problems and a look at the manpower implications. And at the end of it all, I must say that I have a general impression that the state of this particular art that we are concerned with is not unlike that of our own discipline of information science, information studies, or at least what it was a year or two ago. As a professional educationalist I am concerned all the time that I'm attempting to teach library and information science with theoretical frameworks, with general principles. I am trying to find a framework, I am trying to find principles. What one does so often find is empirical evidence, ad hoc studies, and gradually one is conscious that all of these studies are becoming accommodated, becoming built in to some sort of emerg‐ing theoretical framework, not very hard yet, but on its way. And so it is, it seems to me, with this present problem, the problem which is the theme of this conference, except that we are still very much at the stage of ‘ad‐hoc‐ery’.