Sybil Jack

I am increasingly concerned about the effect that changes to libraries and archives are making - changes that will impact on independent scholars perhaps more even than others. Michael Wilding has produced a worrying paper published in the 'Sydney Review of Books' that makes plain not only the destruction of our heritage but also the possibility of 1984 type 'reconstruction' of the material available. All of this, for independent scholars is exacerbated by the imposition of fees for the use of material but this is the least of my worries. I would like to think that we could start a movement to prevent librarians and archivists becoming the gatekeepers of independent investigation