Madras, Oct. 7: Prof. W.L. Saunders, Director, Post-grad School of Librarianship and Information Science, Sheffield University, said here to-day that libraries would have to take a global and not parochial view of their role and responsibilities in future.

Inaugurating a seminar on “Librarianship and Information Science in 2001”, organised by the British Council Library, Prof. Saunders said the need to optimise the use of all national resources would apply with special force to the resource of information. The library manager would need some of the qualities of the economist in adjusting his own local resources and services to the totality of resources available at national and international levels.

In any big city, it would be essential to think of the total library and information resources. “The move towards co-operation among the different types of library — public, academic and special — is a powerful one and I expect by 2,001 the boundaries will have become very blurred indeed,” he said.

The trend towards a national library system would have emerged in most parts of the world by the end of the century and it would make for a library and information environment in which the individual librarians would be far less prone to “go it alone” and would automatically take account of the system as a whole and their own particular place and role in it.

Prof. Saunders said the possibilities opened up by micro-production, particularly in association with the computer, were quite breathtaking.