PARADISE POSTPONED

The 1975, in case you didn’t know, is a popular music ensemble, and as we were searching for some interesting stuff about 1975 we thought it might be worth googling the reason for their name – thinking this might point to something momentous from that year. But it seems it came from one of the band members owning a second-hand edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, in which was scribbled “1 June, The 1975.” Which is intriguing, if a little disappointing for us.

But not as disappointing as 1975 was for a group of Jehovah Witnesses, who fervently believed that Armageddon was most definitely happening that year. This led to some of them selling their businesses and homes in order to properly prepare for the new paradise that was to replace life on earth. Happily, the vast majority of people on the planet were not disappointed.

In fact, rather than endings, 1975 actually witnessed quite a few beginnings, such as Margaret Thatcher becoming Conservative leader in the February, defeating Edward Heath and taking her place as the first female leader of a British political party. This year also saw the birth of Liz Truss …

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque in the United Sates, Bill Gates and Paul Allen launched Microsoft (then called Micro-Soft), its first product being Altair BASIC, an interpreter for BASIC programming which ran on the MITS Altair 8800.

Moving from kilobytes to killer-bites, 1975 also saw the release of Steven Spielberg’s shark attack classic, Jaws.

It was a year that was notable for the number of colonies gaining their independence, too, mainly because of political upheavals in Portugal – Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe in Africa; plus East Timor in the Far East. Also in Africa, Comoros declared its independence from France and in South America Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands, while Papua New Guinea cut its ties with near neighbour Australia. That’s a lot of freedom in one year.

Some of the above did not exactly signal a happy ever after, though; there was bitter fighting in Angola for many years, for example. But elsewhere there was the end of one longstanding conflict, with the fall of Saigon – now called Ho Chi Minh City – marking the close of the Vietnam war.

In neighbouring Cambodia, however, the Khmer Rouge took power and a genocide that was to cost the lives of 1.5 to two million people from 1975 to 1979 began. To put this into some sort of grim perspective, the population of Cambodia was 7.8 million in 1975 …

It’s tempting to name 1975’s Eurovision Song Contest winner here, just to end on something light and fluffy, but sometimes you need to leave a bad taste in the mouth. There have been far too many genocides, and not one of them should be forgotten.

THANKS FOR ALL THE FICHE

Like the universe, the internet seems limitless, and in these times of online documents space has ceased to be a final frontier. Back in 1975 this was not the case, and the storage of documents was a real issue, partly solved with the use of microform, or microfiche. In a piece called ‘Use of Microform in Legal Publishing’ in the first issue of The Law Librarian of 1975, we’re told that microform not only saves space in a library but is also useful when copies of an in-demand work are in short supply.

This was obviously a hot topic back in 1975 – even though legal microform had been around since the 1930s – and there is also a review of a book that attempts to list many of the legal microforms in existence, failing dismally to do so in the eyes of our reviewer, who says the work is a “slovenly production”.

Also in the book review section, but certainly not slovenly, two of the big names in the classification business – if classification can be classified as business – Willi Steiner and Elizabeth Moys, appear in the same piece, with the latter reviewing the former’s Classification Scheme and list of subject headings for the Squire Law Library. Elizabeth writes that it’s a “very interesting, well-constructed classification scheme, that will repay further study”.

Sticking with books, as most librarians still like to do, it was reported elsewhere in the issue that a publication called the Manual of Law Librarianship was delivered to the publishers and was expected to be out before Christmas, assuming printing strikes – which seem to have been a feature of 1975 – did not delay its publication. It would have been quite a long read, as the manuscript amounted to 200,000 words, we’re told, which “required a small suitcase for its journey” to the publishers.

FINDING MEMO

Mind you, a “small suitcase” is nothing when compared to a delivery Nottingham University Law Library once received: “four and half tons of US law reports arrived and broke the paving stones outside the library”! The exclamation mark has been added, we felt it deserved it.

The above is taken from an interesting profile of the Nottingham library, which kicks off the second issue of 1975. This issue also contains a memorandum from BIALL to the Lord Chancellor’s Office concerning court libraries, the association arguing that “libraries attached to the courts should serve the whole legal profession as well as the courts …” and that “There should be one unified system of court libraries …” The memorandum, which by the time of publication was a couple of years old, is printed in full, and it’s then explained that a delegation of three BIALL members had a face-to-face meeting with the Lord Chancellor’s Office. However, the final decision was disappointing. “Although the Office accepts that the provision of adequate libraries for the courts is important, it does not consider that the solution proposed in the association’s memorandum is practicable or desirable.” Oh well, can’t win them all.

Willi Steiner also makes an appearance in this issue of The Law Librarian, reporting on two very different gatherings. The first of these was the fifth course on law librarianship, which was held in Washington at the Library of Congress. The second was the first workshop on law librarianship to be held in Africa, which took place in Lagos in Nigeria, and culminated in the forming of the Association of Nigerian Law Libraries.

Back in the UK, inflation was a big problem at this time, and the journal was forced to raise the price of subscription, which had been £2 for the past six years. From the beginning of 1976 this was to go up to £3.50 per volume (three issues). That’s roughly £25 in today’s money, so it was still pretty good value. A pint was 20p back then, too. Lovely place, the past …

FALSE A-LLAMA

The past was also a place that was not over-reliant on computers, as a piece entitled ‘Computers and Legal Publications’ in the third issue of 1975 shows, though the author was not so sure a future with them would necessarily be great, finishing with these words of warning. “Whatever transpires in the future, whatever the effects of computers on legal publishing or in the legal office, one must never lose sight of the fact that the computer cannot replace legal judgement. The machine can be an exceptionally useful and efficient tool in a lawyer’s world but the day it is used for more than this, confusion is inevitable.” Replace ‘computer’ with ‘AI’ and that’s as true today as it was 50 years ago.

This issue also has some very interesting notes from the Seventh Annual General Meeting (held at the Sixth Annual Conference in Nottingham), such as the circulation figures of The Law Librarian, which was 553, up by 46 on 1974. Meanwhile, we’re told that there were 71 personal members of BIALL; 64 institutional members, while associate membership was 38. That’s 173 in all, 20 up on the previous year.

Also at the meeting, the feasibility of holding a conference in Dublin was considered at length, and while it was agreed that this should happen at some point in the future, it was decided that the matter should be deferred for further consideration.

While Dublin would have been fun – and has been! – Nottingham also proved to be a great host city for the conference, and the report on it in this issue is full of the usual strange happenings which seem to be a feature of conferences then and now. This one finished with: “As a post-script, it is reported from a reliable source that (during a period of well-earned relaxation on Sunday afternoon) Robert [Logan] claims to have seen a yak and a llama walking through Nottingham. It is hoped that future conferences will not exercise such a toll upon the organisers, and we wish Robert a speedy recovery to full health!”

You will be pleased to be informed that the Conference Committee will be issuing a guide to Birmingham’s wildlife in time for this year’s Conference.

As seen on the streets of Nottingham in 1975 … perhaps