The life of the news librarian used to revolve around a pile of newspapers, a pair of scissors and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the organisation's classification system. I was reminded of those long gone days when I came across an 1827 Manchester Guardian article about French censors chopping out offending passages from newspapers. The piece is an interesting read but it's the description of 'knights of the scissors' fulfilling 'thought-clipping functions' that caught my eye - a perfect description for all those people who used to gut the papers for their news archives.Read the article here.
