"Scientists are more profitably occupied at the bench that in the library"

“Few inventions have had so rapid and wide-ranging effects as the various machines which now process data and information by electronic energy. But I hope and believe that even these remarkable engines will not supersede the book as an instrument for the transfer of information. I remain sceptical, particularly when I see the advocates of the paperless society and the electronic library writing large books to support their case. I earnestly hope and believe also that libraries, as the records and memory of humanity, can form a fruitful partnership with the latest tools invented to ease the burden of our labour. Provided that these tools are efficiently operated by well-thought-out systems for organising and retrieving information, they offer the possibilities and opportunities for librarians and information specialists in all types of institution to meet the challenges of the new millennium.”

“a typical British affair, with no resources beyond the native wit of its members, no allegiance to any existing system of classification, no fixed target, no recognition by the British Government , and at first only an amused tolerance from the library profession.”

“Classification is thought of by many librarians as either a fearful complication of a very simply act, or an outmoded, almost prehistoric, method of doing a very complex mathematical task.”

“Since books are not their primary source materials, as they are for research in the humanities, most scientists prefer to spend their time on experiments and not on reading.”

“All information services are ultimately based on library methods and materials.”

“During... ten years the C.R.G. has met nearly every month, and although it has never had more than about a dozen active members, its influence has grown to the point at which is causes Mortimer Taube in America to rage over its medieval scholasticism, John Metcalfe in Australia to denounce it as a plot by Ranganathan to ruin librarianship, and a British University librarian to describe it as one of the two most significant developments in British librarianship since the end of the war.”