Welsh, A; (2012) Broken Pieces: A Library Life, 1941–1978. By Michael Gorman. Pp. 232, ill. Chicago: American Library Association. 2011. [Review]. Library and Information History , 28 (2) 154 -155. 10.1179/1758348912Z.00000000004.

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Abstract

One question implicit in all autobiographies is ‘How personal is too personal?” and we may wonder this repeatedly as we read Michael Gorman’s account of his wartime childhood, London schooling and teenage exploration of Paris. Of course, the historical meat of this book is the first-person account of library education in the 1960s; the glimpse into daily life at the British National Bibliography offices under A.J. Wells; Gorman’s own description of how he analysed the existing cataloguing codes and practices of the day and (though modestly prevents his stating it so bluntly himself) saved the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) from the dangers faced by all committee-written documents – confusing language, poor internal cross-references and lack of concrete examples.

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