Library Report
What does the IGA/GASi Library and Information Service [to give it its full title] do ? I am tempted to say – it holds you all up like Atlas … which is true for all of you, some of the time, and even, perhaps, some of you, all of the time.
It is a cost effective operation, run on a small budget of money and time, but providing wide-ranging services for all members, staff and students of the IGA and GASi
It has a comprehensive database of its contents, available world-wide 24/7, provides a VLE [Virtual Learning Environment] to provide legitimate reading list content for all IGA students, and in conjunction with this, provides support for tutors and seminar leaders in the provision of their reading lists. It ensures that the IGA operates within the law with regard to copyright, both in respect of material for individuals, and ‘group’ material for students, i.e. the VLE.
University students naturally expect on-site library and information facilities: that we can offer these to IGA and GASi members and students is a selling point for our training, and retention benefit of membership.
The Library holds a unique collection of material on group analysis and associated subjects: according to Robi Friedman, former President of GASi in Group Analytic Contexts, September 2012, in his ‘President’s Foreword’: ‘The library has the most complete collection of Group Analytic English literature in the World’ [He said it – not me. Of course it might just possibly be ‘the only ….’] The Library holds the residue of S. H. Foulkes Library.
The visible, physical collection, of books, papers and journals, provides the wherewithal to support members’ enquiries and research, but the Library and Information service is about more than physical content. Apart from its own library database, it has access to a number of relevant related library databases through the PLUG [Psychotherapy Libraries Umbrella Group] network, and has access to the physical and electronic resources of the Tavistock Library, including access to a wide range of journals and health related databases.
The physical collection is not static: it is actively curated, in the sense of both additions: new texts, new editions, including all titles in the NILGA [New International Library of Group Analysis] series, and deletions: while classic and ‘light classical’ texts are obviously retained, time-expired material, has been withdrawn, and together with donations surplus to requirements, offered to regions and for sale to members, enabling the ‘book fund’ to be enhanced.
The Librarian has provided to Sage, the publisher of Group Analysis, a comprehensive list of all the Foulkes Lectures / Responses, not previously easily collectively traceable.
Other services are the provision of literature searches, and support to those undertaking their own, training and induction to members and students, and extensive written guidance in the use of Library and Information Services resources.
If this article makes you think ‘I didn’t know they could do that ..’ – please do ask !
Elizabeth Nokes, M.A., IGA/GASi Librarian