The history of Aslib, an independent library/information membership organisation in the United Kingdom between 1924 and 2014, is outlined, with emphasis in the ways in Aslib acted as a de facto national centre for special librarianship and information work, for documentation, and for technical and commercial information. Its activities in this respect included publishing, training and professional development, research and consultancy, and the maintenance of national collections and indexes. Aslib was also an official national centre for several purposes, generally associated with information retrieval and dissemination.