For centuries libraries have been established to enable easy access to knowledge and save significant items from being lost or destroyed. The people who manage, organise and collect the materials are known as librarians and their roles in the process vary according to the type, size and reason for setting up the collection. Large libraries have a large number of staff and the various tasks necessary to operate can be shared out amongst them. Small libraries, such as the National Library of Conductive Education, may have only one librarian who deals with all aspects of library management, from selection, purchase, processing of items (such as cataloguing and classifying ), answering enquiries and as a consequence gets to know the stock really well.
I had an enquiry last week asking for a list of 'relevant and meaningful' items on facilitation in Conductive Education and this raised the question of evaluation. As it happens I have compiled a pitifully short list of references on the subject, mostly pieces/sections from longer items but all these had not been included in the list because they were meaningful, but because that was all I could find. Because there is so little material that deals with such specific areas of CE anything that is available tends to be included. It is not the librarian's job to be selective or evaluate, that is for the reader/researcher to do. Over the years I have learnt a lot about CE and know what are the most popular texts, but I do not know enough to offer informed opinions yet. I leave this to others such as Andrew Sutton who has now posted a very interesting look at facilitation on his blog
The literature of CE is sparse, to say the least and much of it has been written by those who aren't conductors. More written by conductors is needed to ensure that worthwhile accurate information about the philsophy and practice is available to form a firm basis for those wishing to extend their knowledge, increase the number of items available to be included in lists, and build the literature.
A number of lists are available at
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