Professor Alistair Black has been invited to give a talk at the Institute of English Studies (IES) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London on July 3, 2012. His talk, titled: "'The necessity of clear expression’: home-grown writing, organisational learning and the library staff magazine in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century,” is part of IES’s History of Libraries Research Seminar.
From his description: “Unlike staff magazines in private enterprises, which pre-date them by two decades, library staff magazines of the early-twentieth century were more truly the product of employees, operated as they often were by staff associations. The library staff magazine provided opportunities for employees to write – as a pastime, as a form of organizational learning and networking, as a contribution to labour solidarity, and, finally, as a vehicle for personal professional advance and identity formation, though one which contained an element of ‘othering,’ of the public as well as junior and female staff.”