Thirty Years of Change in the UK and in Europe After 1989: A Personal Perspective

Abstract The political events of 1989 had reverberations throughout Europe and beyond. For research libraries, new horizons for researchers and new forms of co-operation opened up, enabled by technology, assisted by the European Commission and its programmes, and made possible above all through fresh human contacts between East and West in the “new Europe”, with all the optimism and energies they brought. This article deals with the wider context of events in the UK in the period leading up to 1989 and afterwards, and personal reminiscences of this propitious period in history.