bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Durham County Library Problems
Authors: THURLOW OLGA H.
Published: March 2008

I WANT to discuss the problems and difficulties facing us now in County Durham as they appear to one who, though only a newcomer is, perhaps on that account, an enthusiast. I will begin with our Superior Library Service Scheme under which we have established six branches this year. In the first place the word “superior” is not desirable— it was used from some psychological motive I believe, as the aim of the county library should be to give as good a service in its smallest branch as in its largest. These six branches have been founded with the aid of differential rating and I can say without hesitation that differential rating is undesirable in every way. Its use is supported by the vague theory that the area where apparently greater expenditure is entailed should bear the burden of that additional expenditure. I say apparently, because I think sight has been lost of the fact that the book supply facilities given to the smallest branch are often in excess of its rate return and that differential rating more nearly resembles laying the burden on the goose that lays the golden eggs. I think that if I outline our schemes my reasons for objecting to it will become obvious.
What is P.E.N.?
Authors: POWER WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

WHAT is P.E.N.? The answer to that question may be of interest to the readers of a literary magazine of world‐wide circulation. For P.E.N.—the initials stand for Poets, Playwrights; Editors, Essayists; Novelists; or, alternatively, for “Paix Entre Nous”—is a world‐wide literary organisation. And not much information about it is to be gleaned from the press, at least the English press, which for the most part has consistently ignored even the not un‐important international congress of P.E.N. Perhaps the reason is the healthy English distaste for internationalism, or for the idea of organisation in connection with so individual a thing as literature. But Britain was the godmother of the League of Nations, and remains its staunchest supporter. And it was in London that the parent P.E.N. club was formed.
Graduate Library Facilities at Michigan
Authors: OLIN KEENEY PHILIP
Published: March 2008

IN recent years the public libraries in the United States have been trying to place more and more of their resources directly in the hands of their clientele by so arranging the book‐stacks that visitors can go immediately to the books without consulting a catalogue or an attendant. The same idea is utilized in those restaurants and stores where patrons serve themselves, a merchandizing scheme which at present is enjoying considerable popularity in America. Some of the smaller colleges have been able to follow a plan similar to that in use in the public libraries, but it has not been successful in the large universities where resources are comparatively large and space for storing books is limited. To permit students to browse at will, would create confusion and prevent the library employees performing their work efficiently.
Book Collecting: Possible Futures
Authors: GRUBB G.H.
Published: March 2008

IN all this rush for bargains in first editions, and the feverish anxiety on the part of many collectors, pseudo and genuine, there is a natural desire to look ahead, and to discover the big writers of to‐morrow, because it is their books of to‐day that will be the rare and valuable items of to‐morrow. But there's the conundrum It is easy enough, if we are rich enough, to buy, shall we say, Arnold Bennett's Old Wives Tale for £50 or more, because we are constantly learning how few copies there are about, and because it is really a good first edition to have. The same may be said of the rare things of Shaw, Barrie, Wells, Galsworthy and others. To select an unknown writer, and to say to oneself: his first book is going to be a notable and closely sought for book to‐morrow, is, indeed, a difficult task which few of us can encompass. Yet it is done. There are those happy ones who said it about Shaw in his early days, of Tomlinson in his, and they now possess real worth in two ways. I do not ever want to forget the literary value of these, and other writers: there is, indeed, value there; but there is the other way—the economic value. Some wiseacres, in their shrewd vision and intelligent and intellectual anticipation, hug themselves in bibliographic glee in that these two ways are theirs. Fads and fashions, conventions and popularisms, come up and pass these good people by. They blazed their own trail, and, in their quiet and contented way, they proceeded to their own contented end, and now they may justifiably revel in their own fore‐sightedness. Blessed are they among the growing army of book collectors.
On the Road to Concord
Authors: TOMLINSON H.M.
Published: March 2008

IT was unlikely that I should remember, even when in Boston, Massachusetts for the first time, that there was a pond called Walden, presumably near, and good for rod and line. Walden is a familiar name, but it suggests only some rare ideas—ideas so rare, you may retort, that they could not embody so much as an image of a pond. That may be so—I bear in mind my schoolmaster's comment on Thoreau. The comment was “all moonshine.” I defend myself with the suggestion that moonshine is all right. It is said that phases of it are so admired by everybody at times that they will swear it is plain daylight; they will go as far as to declare, of their particular lunar phase, that if you can't see things plainer by its light then you are probably a traitor or an atheist. We know that in our rough island story there was once a Hidden Hand, obvious enough by moonlight, but invisible by day. I am all for freedom in moonshine.
Literary Tendencies in Modern Scotland
Authors: BLAKE GEORGE
Published: March 2008

THE choice of the Book Society has twice within three months lighted upon novels by Scotsmen. This is a very gratifying fact, but I keep wondering how the statisticians of the Scottish “Renaissance” propose to reconcile the vast difference between these two works and to justify their inclusion under the same heading in the national literary balance‐sheet. For whereas Mr. Gunn's Morning Tide could only have been written by a Scotsman reared in Scotland, Mr. Linklater's gorgeous comedy, Juan in America, might have been written by an Englishman or an Irishman. When, in other words, is a novel a Scottish novel?
The Cave of the Winds
Authors: HIGHET GILBERT
Published: March 2008

DAILY journalism is a risky business. You need not be in Fleet Street to know that; and within the past few years it has become apparent that the risks are growing greater. A melancholy madness has seized upon our newspapers: they propose and dispose with a frenetic zeal: their words and gestures seem less and less coherent, and they are gagging recklessly, like actors who know their play must be succeeded by another at the end of the week, and are already learning their new parts.
Libraries for Slum Children
Authors: KENT MURIEL
Published: March 2008

MISS Clara Grant's Reminiscences (privately published under the title of Farthing Bundles) will be of equal interest to educationalists and social workers. For more than thirty years she has been a teacher in slum districts of London; and Fern Street Settlement, which she founded in 1907, and still directs, “for the fifteen poorest streets in the Bow Common area,” is famous as a unique channel of personal service centred round the school.
The Concord Spirit
Authors: TOMLINSON H.M.
Published: March 2008

AN Englishman sees at once, with the New England landscapes about him, that he could easily make his home there—in the exhilaration of the moment he clean forgets the quota and the fact that he isn't wanted, and Al Capone, prohibition, and the slump. New England is as far from Hollywood as Old England is. Its hills are of granite and the harsher rocks. Its woods, with trees reminiscent of home, yet certainly foreign, are still savage, and the Indian place‐names remind you that the frame‐houses are recent invaders. See it under snow and the sun, when the temperature is dropping to zero though the sky is blue, and you begin to understand why so much New England poetry and thought is as delicate and austere as a flower on stoney ground. These people, for generations, have had to keep resolutely watchful and on their guard, knowing they could survive only if they could get corn enough to husband. They have some residue from the memories of their forefathers of the stockaded settlement, when the Indians were lurking in the dark swamps without. Their hope has been bleak enough in their fight against granite and snow, and the seas of the North. Enduring through long and relentless winters, when nature was arctic, they made more of any sign of spring in the heart, or in the fields, than we should. Mysticism, a sense of relationship with a purpose behind the harsh and unforgiving show of things, is natural and consolatory to lonely folk who, as Thoreau somewhere remarks, have to get through hard times, like bears, by sucking their own paws. There is nothing else. With all against them, they kept watch at the stockade, waiting for morning. What is heard in the silence of the mind, while enduring in loneliness, can be expressed only in austere images. Says Emerson: “What generous beliefs console. The brave whom Fate denies the goal! If others reach it, is content; To Heaven's high will his will is bent.” Emerson was not ironic; those words occur in a tribute to his dead brother.
The Barberini Library
Authors: HAY OF SEATON MAJOR M.V.
Published: March 2008

IN the Calendar of Domestic State Papers (England) for the year 1678 there is a letter containing a reference of an unusual kind to the Vatican Library, written by a man named Giles Vanbrugh to the Bishop of London at the time when the whole city, and indeed most of the nation, had gone crazy over the pretended revelations of Titus Oates. The writer of this letter, who did not see why all the conspiracy should be confined to one party, suggested a most ingenious counter‐plot. He is evidently quite serious; and his plan was perhaps quite practicable. “I shall acquaint you,” he writes to the Bishop, “with what I think not only warrantable but honourable, and what may much advantage the Protestant Religion. It is the assaulting the city of Rome on the side the Vatican stands and bringing away the library …”
The Book Society
Authors: STEVENS MAURICE
Published: March 2008

IT would be a hard‐hearted man who could speak harshly of the Book Society without some inward pang of regret or remorse. Was there ever a more praiseworthy institution? Or one that set out with a more unselfish desire to improve the minds of humanity? So amiable are its figureheads, so admirable its objects, so harmless and well‐intentioned its activities, that the scoffer is silenced and the cynic rebuked. What cause of complaint can one find in a Selection Committee which contains Hugh Walpole, John Boynton Priestley, Clemence Dane, Sylvia Lynd, and George Gordon?
Fleet Street
Authors: BLAKE GEORGE
Published: March 2008

IT is not much of a street to look at—just the average narrow, crowded London street. But for the signs of the world's newspapers sticking out from its façades you could not distinguish it from a street given over to diamond‐dealing or chartered accountancy. (Most of the really big newspaper offices, as it happens, are not in Fleet Street proper, but in one or other of its mean tributaries). Nor are its pavements crowded with long‐haired, blue‐jawed men wearing black sombreros. Save for an occasional silk‐hatted bank messenger or a barrister from the Law Courts hurrying out for a quick poached egg in Groom's, his white ties fluttering, its floating population appears to be very much the same as that of St. Martin's Lane or Whitehall. Its only definite characteristic is that it is predominantly male.
Books and the Walker
Authors: PRATT INSH GEORGE
Published: March 2008

THERE are days—and even seasons—when to the enthusiastic walker his favourite books make but a slight appeal. Indeed on such occasions you need not be surprised if you find him asserting, heretically and dogmatically, that there is no book that will rival in his affection the frayed and tattered and rain‐stained map that has so often been his companion on hill and moor. On the winter evenings, when the curtains are drawn and the rain‐storm whips the window pane, he will pore over it for many an hour, following again in fancy the paths he has trodden in the long summer days, recapturing perhaps the view that opened up before him when, rounding the hillside above Durisdeer, he looked over the gently swelling hills of Nithsdale with their woods, their trim fields, their white farm houses, set against the grey‐blue background of far‐off mountains of Galloway.
A Picture of America
Authors: HIGHET GILBERT
Published: March 2008

THIS essay has two origins—a habit and a request. It was an Italian friend of mine who asked me to choose for him twenty novels which contained the spirit of Britain to‐day: and it was a very English friend who enquired “Why do you read only American magazines, and so many of those?”
The Patient Reader
Authors: JOYCE POWELL M.
Published: March 2008

OF late, the desirability of public library authorities and their officials working out some method of supplying books to hospitals within their areas has been engaging the attention of the Library Association. The humane thought has struck someone that if a public library is supported out of the rates so that the ratepayers and other inhabitants of the area served by that library may enjoy the use of books while in their normal health, by how much the more should the said ratepayers and inhabitants not be cut off from that enjoyment when languishing in hospital with nothing else to do.
The Gentility of Book‐Collecting
Authors: ABBOTT CHARLES D.
Published: March 2008

A dealer in old books remarked to me not long since that he had just received an order for forty feet of his wares, with the stipulation that all were to be in well‐preserved old calf bindings, ten feet of quartos, ten of octavos, etc., but with no stipulation as to the price. I was amused and bandied jests with him concerning his customer, but I could gain no further information and was left to speculate, as endlessly as I pleased, concerning the identity and position of a man who purchased books with no regard to their contents.
The Stationmaster's Horse
Authors: CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM R.B.
Published: March 2008

AFTER the long war in Paraguay, the little railway built by the tyrant Lopez, that ran from Asuncion to Paraguari, only some thirty miles, fell into a semi‐ruinous condition.
The Publisher, the Reviewer, and the Reader
Authors: LANGDON‐DAVIES B.N.
Published: March 2008

IT is always useful in considering any institution to start by asking ourselves the question—essential, according to the Mock Turtle, on all occasions—“With what porpoise?” Why are books written, published, reviewed and read? By considering these problems separately we may be able to discover the causes and even hint at the cures for some of the maladies widely believed to afflict the world of books to‐day.
Cunninghame Graham
Authors: NIVEN FREDERICK
Published: March 2008

THE name is arresting, like the personality for which it stands. Cunninghame Graham: Lavery's equestrian portrait of him conveys the essential man as revealed in his writings, though the other one (somewhat reminiscent of Raeburn's Sir John Sinclair), which presents him to us afoot, lacks nothing save a horse for company. He has a passion for horses and has written many an essay in which they are leading characters and one book devoted to them—The Horses of the Conquest. William Rothenstein has recorded him in lithograph and in oils and in Men and Memories includes a reproduction of a painting of him in fencer's garb. Belcher did a charcoal drawing of him—it appeared in Punch—with a lightly indicated background of Hyde Park Corner and a horse or two, in a dexterous mere line or two, clipping past. There is a word‐picture of him in the epilogue to Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion and another in George Moore's Conversations in Ebury Street. Writer, Scots laird, Spanish hidalgo, South American ranch‐owner, he has ridden and bivouaced in Texas and Patagonia and may be found this month in Morocco, next month in London, or in Venezuela, or enjoying a braw day (or a snell day for that matter) in Perthshire.
The Pursuit of Books
Authors: GORDON CRAIG EDWARD
Published: March 2008

“BOOK collecting is one of the most fascinating of hobbies,” is the first thing that Mr. Andrew Block says in the preface to his Vade Mecum: and he adds that he has written this “popular bibliographical work” for “the amateur collector as well as for the average bookseller:” and that one of his objects is “to safeguard the beginner from the more obvious pitfalls which beset his path.”
Librarianship and Social Research in the United States
Authors: WAPLES DOUGLAS
Published: March 2008

THE following paragraphs are quoted from an examination paper that has just crossed my desk. The paper was written by a librarian widely known to the profession for long and successful experience as head‐classifier in a famous reference library. As a student in this school, she became sufficiently familiar with methods of research in the social sciences to recognize their application to certain problems in librarianship. The testimony of such a librarian, it would seem, should be accorded a fuller measure of confidence than either the testimony of research students who are not librarians or the testimony of librarians who have no adequate acquaintance with the theory and practice of research in the social sciences. The honesty of the statement is believed to be self‐evident.
The South Countryman: what he reads and how he writes
Authors: STREET A.G.
Published: March 2008

THIS is a difficult subject inasmuch that rural dwellers differ widely in almost every respect. The motor car has made it possible for all sorts of town dwellers to live in the country, and still carry on their city avocations. But these are not the true countrymen, so in this article it is proposed to deal mainly with the farm labourer and farmer, or in other words the true sons of the soil.
The Monstrous Regiment of Reviewers
Authors: STONIER G.W.
Published: March 2008

ONCE the shyest and most elusive of mortals—member of no trade union or craft—a lonely figure in drawing‐rooms and in the quietness of the London Library—the Reviewer (like some defaulting country parson) finds himself suddenly dragged into court and starred for attention. The public is looking on! The press are there, sniffing out a scandal! “This wretched man,” the prosecution begins. Alas (it soon appears), he's a bad lot: he belongs to the Monstrous Regiment of Reviewers.
A Reviewer's Thoughts on Reviewing
Authors: MACNAIR REID JOHN
Published: March 2008

TO the ordinary person who buys a book or secures what he wants from the library, the name of the publisher is of little account. How many readers of The Good Companions or Arabia Deserta can remember the names of the publishing houses that issued these books? Is there, indeed, any point in remembering? The books were well bound, of agreeable paper, and sold at prices more or less consonant with prevailing values; but these are qualities the absence of which would be more likely to direct a reader's attention to the publisher's name. It is only when a book or an author has a romance separate from the romance that is told (if it is fiction), such as that of the Waverley novels, that the average reader is aware of a name like Constable or Ballantyne.
The Contemporary Scene
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

I SUPPOSE the question uppermost in the mind of a reader seriously considering the state of fiction at the present time must inevitably be: where are the successors to the thrones at present filled by the older writers? One by one the old school are passing from our midst. Have we, among the younger writers, any qualified to occupy their positions, to inherit their prestige and authority? The names of Mr. Walpole and Mr. Priestley immediately spring to mind. They have reputations. They write abundantly. They are talked about. Their work sells. They are the typical traditionalists of modern letters, the inheritors of a long and fairly continuous tradition of technique and subject matter. They are craftsmanly novelists. They are stylists in their way. They are quiet, urbane, efficient and conscientious. Neither possesses any profound depth of feeling. Neither possesses, as yet, that infallible instinct for character by which, and by which alone (as Arnold Bennett insisted) a novel can reach greatness.
Reminiscences of Mark Twain
Authors: RICHARDS P.
Published: March 2008

MY first meeting with the distinguished humorist goes back to 1903, when he consented to sit to me for his pen‐portrait, which a leading New York weekly was anxious to publish. During the sitting he gave me he was very communicative, and I regret that my efforts distracted me at the time from the conversation, which I have consequently forgotten in great part, though I remember him saying: “I am afraid you are one of the few people who would be willing to pay me to keep me quiet.” I assured him that such was by no means the case, and that, far from interfering with the progress of the picture, it helped me.
Breaking into Literature
Authors: CRAIG ROBERT
Published: March 2008

RUMMAGING recently among some old possessions, I found in a cigar‐case a grimy double sheet of note‐paper with the heading: “date 3 Jan. 1909. All this Poetry was by Mr. R. Craig I think it Will do Just now. I am a good Drawer as People think. I remain.” The poems are on “Christmas,” “New Year,” “The Ocean,” and “Love Marriage and Etiquette.” While these verses proclaim the triumph of inspiration over orthography, their poetic content is poor, and it is unsettling for a bachelor to discover that when eight years old he was gaily capable of writing about his Wife and Boys.
Imagination in Colonial Literary Taste
Authors: LYLE GUY R.
Published: March 2008

IN an address at the dedication of Brooks Library, Brattle‐borough, Mellen Chamberlain made the statement that “before 1700 there was not in Massachusetts, so far as is known, a copy of Shakespeare's or of Milton's poems.” In taking account of the cultural background of colonial America, it is both interesting and instructive to compare this statement with Macaulay's appraisal of seventeenth century England, to the effect that “few of the knights of the shire had libraries as good as may now be found in a servant's hall or in the back parlour of a shop‐keeper. An Esquire passed among his neighbours for a great scholar if Hudibras or Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and The Seven Champions of Christendom lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces.” In the light of the foregoing, it is not to be expected that the colonies would produce much by way of literature. As a matter of fact, colonial literature is largely disappointing, but the remarkable thing about it is that there is as much of it as there is, and that it is as good as it is.
Henley
Authors: NIVEN FREDERICK
Published: March 2008

MOST of us sometimes, I suppose, observe some small boy engrossed upon his youthful affairs and wonder what he'll become, what he'll make of himself or what life will make of him, and what sort of man he will be to look upon, after forty years. W. E. Henley has left us a self‐portrait of himself when young, topped by a broad‐ribanded leghorn, “antic in girlish broideries” and wearing “silly little shoes with straps,” carrying home a great treasure, a book—a Book with “agitating cuts of ghouls and genies;” and, for back‐ground to that picture from memory of the boy he was, are the docks of Gloucester thronged with galliots and luggers, brigantines and barques that came in those days “to her very doorsteps and geraniums.”
The Muse's Dilemma
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

IF we are to understand the peculiar dilemma of modern poetry—and it would be excess of optimism to claim that poetry is in a healthy or stable condition—we must resolutely set aside those poets who have outlived their prime or ceased to be influences. Davies, De La Mare, Masefield, Hodgson, Housman, Bottomley and the rest are not the poets of to‐day but of yesterday. To consider them in this paper would also mean considering, for example, Sir William Watson, who struts unconvincingly in the borrowed traditional singing‐robes of the Victorians. Nor can we consider the Georgian Group, who twittered very prettily together when:
A Cheque for Ten Pounds
Authors: BELL J.J.
Published: March 2008

AMONG my mental photographs that despite the years remain distinct, even vivid, is one of a cheque for Ten Pounds, signed by Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley Head. It represented the agreed payment for a collection of verses embodied in a picture‐book for young people, the artist being Charles Robinson, and it was my first “honorarium” with the dignity of double figures.
Getting the Best out of Books
Authors: McCOLVIN L.R.
Published: March 2008

WHEN broadcasting began many librarians thought that wireless would make people read less. We were wrong. On the contrary, as a nation we are reading very much more than ever. This may seem a sweeping generalisation, but I have been a librarian in touch with all kinds of readers, booksellers and publishers, in different parts of England, for more than twenty years, and I find evidence to support this statement in all directions. We have found ourselves living in a world that is unsettled, changing. We've begun to ask questions about ourselves, our fellow creatures, our environment—everything. And, in increasing numbers, we've turned to books for the answers—naturally, since books are the store houses of facts and ideas, and, because of their limitless range, they can offer something to all types of seeker—not only knowledge but pleasure, comfort and vision.
A Bookish Causerie
Authors: MAUROIS ANDRÉ
Published: March 2008

TIMES of war or revolution, or indeed any periods of stress and disturbance, are definitely unfavourable to the activities of the artist. Under such conditions, the production of outstandingly good literature is consequently rare. This salient fact must be clearly borne in mind before one can hope to arrive at anything like a true estimate of the value, to date, of the twentieth century literary output.
The Theatre To‐Day
Authors: DRINKWATER JOHN
Published: March 2008

I AM one of those optimists who do not believe that there is anything very seriously amiss with the modern theatre. It is certainly very much alive, and has triumphantly confounded the critics who predicted that the advent of the “talkies” would deal it a death blow.
Novels are Worth Reading
Authors: NAIRNE CAMPBELL
Published: March 2008

“I have come to the conclusion,” a Scottish novelist told me recently, “that no novel is worth reading.” His wife heartily agreed with him. She was quite definite in her preference for a good biography.
Some Literary Anarchies
Authors: SPENCE LEWIS
Published: March 2008

SINCE British letters overflowed the barriers of insularity with the dawn of the seventeenth century they have maintained a notable variety and individuality, the wonder and envy of other communities, which, whatever their pretensions to a cosmopolitan view, have certainly nothing so spacious or comprehensive to display on their national bookshelves. We have more than “one,” indeed many, to show “to whom all scenes of Europe homage owe,” we have, perhaps, distributed larger patches of Brittanic red on the world's map in the literary sense than in the political. “Wider still and wider,” grow the bounds of our empire of books. It is the same as regards the much greater atlases of mind and imagination, almost every known isle and province of which has found its pioneers of the British pen.
Specialisation and Information
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

I PROPOSE to deal with two aspects of co‐operation which do not seem to have received sufficient attention as yet. The first I have called “specialisation.”
A Business Girl's Bookish Fancies
Authors: STEEL MURIEL
Published: March 2008

ONE can hardly imagine a time when there were no books to be read and no people to read them; no struggling authors, no hard‐boiled or generous publishers, no ironical or sympathetic critics, and no avid and appreciative readers. Now there are millions of copies of books to be read and millions of people to read them. I think a world without books would be like a house without windows. Every book gives another view of life: some lovely and inspiring, others ugly and depressing, and others views of folly and fun and laughter. There are books for all tastes and moods.
Salute to a Library
Authors: SCOTT MONCRIEFF GEORGE
Published: March 2008

I HAVE been divorced from the main body of my books for four years now. Poverty and a wandering life made it regrettably necessary for me to put them into storage, packed in tea chests, in a London warehouse. But now that I am the tenant of a cottage in the south of Scotland, and now that my life wears a more settled aspect, the day approaches when I shall be reunited with seven hundred volumes, the cream of the library of my grandfather, of that of my uncle, and of my own acquisitions.
Bias and the Historian
Authors: MACKIE J.D.
Published: March 2008

ALL historians are biassed. There is no great harm in that; indeed it is inevitable. The trouble is that some historians are not aware of their bias. “I write without anger or favour, remote as I am from both these things” (“Sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo”), boasted Tacitus, and there is no doubt that he made his claim in good faith. But two comments may be permitted. First his attempt at impartiality detracted from the value of his history. “The Roman historians” said Mommsen, “were men who said what it would have been meritorious to omit, and omitted what it was essential to say.” Again, for all his effort, Tacitus did not attain to impartiality. So much impressed was he,—to take only one instance,—by the contrast between slavish Roman and free barbarian, that his accounts of Germans and Britons must be taken with more than one grain of salt. His history, in other words, was conditioned by his own experience, his own environment, his own heredity.
The Schools are to Blame
Authors: SCOULLER EDWARD
Published: March 2008

THE child of thirty years ago, when he went to school, passed by regular and apparently inalterable gradations from Low Penny to High Penny, and so to Tupenny, Fourpenny, Sixpenny, and on to the mature dignity of the First Standard. I for one have no regrets for those vanished year's when “A CAT SAT ON A MAT” within the drab covers of a hopelessly ugly book. I have had to pay a good deal more than a penny or twopence for my children's earliest readers, but they are things of beauty. They are handsomely bound, the paper is good, the print is large and clear, the margins are generous, and the illustrations are the work of artists like Frank Adams and A. E. Jackson who combine graceful execution with a sympathetic understanding of the ingenuousness of childhood.
Libel in Books
Authors: HEWITT ARTHUR R.
Published: March 2008

IN the absence of a comprehensive judicial pronouncement it is difficult to define a libel. It has been defined as “a writing tending to injure and degrade the character of the person who is the object of it” (Lord Campbell) and also as “a publication without justification or excuse, which is calculated to injure the reputation of another by exposing him to hatred, ridicule or contempt” (Baron Parke). The material part of a cause of action in libel is not the writing but the publication of the libel. “Publication” means “the making known the defamatory matter after it has been written to some person other than the person of whom it is written” (Pullman v. Hill and Co. [1891] 1 Q.B. 527). Again, in Hulton & Co. v. Jones ([1910] A.C.23), Lord Loreburn said “Libel is a tortious act. It consists in using language which others knowing the circumstances would reasonably think to be defamatory of the person complaining of and injured by it.”
The Library Association Examinations
Authors: PATON WILLIAM B.
Published: March 2008

ON no subject of professional concern to librarians has more ink been spilled in recent months than on the vexed question of the examination system of the Library Association. Writers have displayed diverse views on the matter, but everyone is agreed on one thing:—the present situation is unsatisfactory. Although the writer of this article has in the past figured in the role of destructive critic, it is his aim now fairly to assess the merits and demerits of the system, to give unbiassed consideration to the opinions which have been ventilated in the library press, and to suggest, where necessary, remedial measures. The following questions are worth asking:—
Some Early Friends
Authors: BERWICK SAYERS W.C.
Published: March 2008

WHEN I changed the then beautiful town of Bournemouth for the undoubtedly attractive one of Croydon, having almost unaccountably become sub‐librarian there in 1904, I found myself among a set of what proved to be rather remarkable people. “A smart young fellow,” had been my first chief's description of my new one, Louis Stanley Jast, and in the economy of words he was wont to use, this meant much. Of course, before I went for the interview, I tried to gather something of L. S. J. He was versatile, I was told, and volatile, a poet, orator, traveller, one who could not suffer fools with proverbial gladness, who expected you to look him straight in the eyes, where he certainly looked you. This, in itself, was quite enough. However, I came out of the ordeal most pleasantly, after the Chairman, Alderman H. Keatley Moore, one of the best advocates public libraries have had, remarked “If you please Mr. Jast, I am sure you will be very happy with him,” and Alderman Frederick Foss (father of Hubert Foss, the musical composer and critic) had added, “Jast! Fancy anyone being happy with you—Good God!” I believe it is possible to get on with any chief if one is loyal to his purposes, but although I was as raw as a provincial could be, I found that I had reached a place where encouragement and appreciation almost anticipated every effort.
Association Memories
Authors: BERWICK SAYERS W.C.
Published: March 2008

FOR me the earliest number of The Library Assistant still has upon it the silver glow which in middle age belongs to remembered dreams. To our Bournemouth Library in 1898 the modest bantling came, its pale blue cover crowded with advertisements, on the front of binder and bookseller; of the Cotgreave indicator and magazine racks on the back. A simply‐printed affair of twelve pages, as unpretentious as a country‐town bulletin, but a veritable window into life for many, however; and, in my sober judgment, a chief influence in the making of the library spirit of to‐day.
Serving Our Masters
Authors: STANLEY JAST L.
Published: March 2008

I HAVE spent nearly all my life in libraries, and for far the larger part of it as the head of the library, small or large as the case might be. And at the end of my career as an active librarian I have realised more than ever before the overwhelming importance of the rank and file—the people who serve the books, the people who know the readers and whom the readers know. Chief librarians, from the point of view we are considering, are really of quite tertiary importance. I won't say they haven't their justification. A county librarian, for example, must keep her (or his) committee in good humour, must screw money from the council, must cultivate the best possible relations with the director, and without being more disagreeable than is necessary, see that a little army of helpers keep their records of issues with the requisite accuracy. These duties, with the selecting and buying of books, and the cataloguing of them, and so forth, provide, on the whole—let's be fair—a sufficient reason for his or her existence.
Public Library Law.
Authors: HEWITT ARTHUR R.
Published: March 2008

THE law relating to public libraries in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State is contained in 16 Public Libraries Acts. There are 19 other Acts of Parliament in force which contain provisions directly affecting public libraries and, in addition, several Acts relating to public health, local government and other matters, apply indirectly. To add to this accumulation of statute law, Statutory Rules and Orders have been made, and several local Acts of Parliament passed under which public libraries have been established and are still maintained. From time to time additional borrowing powers have been secured by means of local Acts and, before the removal of the rate limitation in England, localities were able to obtain parliamentary sanction to increase the library rate in the same manner. The difficulty of ascertaining the source of the law increases as time goes on. The Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1929, created an anomalous position with regard to county and burgh library rates and, in 1933, the Local Government Act amended the law in England in many respects. The draft of a Public Health Bill, issued in January by the Local Government and Public Health Consolidation Committee, recommends still another alteration affecting public libraries.
Some Dangers and Difficulties Ahead
Authors: STANLEY JAST L.
Published: March 2008

YOU will regard it, I am afraid, as an inauspicious beginning of this address, that I should commence by adding one more to the—what is it ? hundreds or thousands?—of definitions of an optimist. But the particular definition I am about to perpetrate is the result of a few recent experiences of mine, after delivering addresses dealing with library affairs. An optimist is a person whose pessimism is of that profound order that he dare not seriously consider anything which is likely to weaken his optimism. He feels that he must meet any such thing by airily waving it away, and crying in a loud voice: Pessimist! Like Cassius “such men are dangerous,” but for precisely the opposite reason to Caesar's, not because they “think too much,” but because they refuse to think at all. It is the childish belief, to which most of us are prone at times, that if you decline to look at a thing, it isn't there. You who are young are necessarily natural optimists—if you're not, it's a case for a doctor—but your optimism, being probably more instinctive than defensive, should enable you to consider calmly and intelligently any reasoned statement of difficulties and dangers which may, or which do lie ahead of the libraries. And you will not assume that anyone who points these out, because he points them out, believes that the difficulties will not be surmounted, and that the dangers will certainly materialise. If forewarned is not always forearmed, the tiger in the path is surely less formidable if his presence is known, and even if there is discovered to be no tiger, there is no particular harm done by a little wary looking out.
I look at Fleet Street
Authors: ALLAN J.R.
Published: March 2008

I MAY have been a little prejudiced against the roaring Street of Ink. You see I was living in the Temple, by the plane trees in King's Bench Walk. It was a quiet place, given over to precept and precedent and the leisurely but inevitable processes of the Law. Grave gentlemen in wigs and gowns walked slowly through the cloisters, discoursing of torts and common pleas; their clerks trod softly and talked in whispers; even the boy who brought the milk in the morning refrained from whistling in case he might be committed for contempt of court. The Temple was grave, disciplined, serene. Sometimes, when the young moon hung over the Thames, it might be a little whimsical in a mild sort of way, because Crown Office Row was round the corner and something was due to the memory of Charles Lamb. But the whimsicality was kept in decent bounds; it was no more than a trick of light on the solemn face of the Law. The Temple stood as witness to eternal, and oh how solemn, verities.
Library Politics
Authors: STANLEY JAST L.
Published: March 2008

I COME to another danger ahead, indeed not so much ahead as with us, here and now. I refer to the temptation to cater unduly for the crowd, to allow the higher purposes of the library to be sunk in the race for results. This was the subject of a paper read by me to the annual conference of the Association in London in 1934. The discussion which I hoped it would be the means of raising, as a preliminary to some declaration of policy by the Association, did not eventuate. My point was, and is, that we can pay too heavily for big circulations, and that we do pay too heavily, when we stock our shelves, like the majority of modern booksellers, with the books of the hour and of the crowd, neglecting intrinsic for temporary issue qualities. We all of us know that if we considered only circulation we could bring up issues to almost anything we liked, within the limits of our means and population. I don't suggest that any public librarian does this. But obviously the point of compromise will shift according to the personal leaning of the librarian. My contention is that there are many indications that the shift is dangerously on the side of cheap popularity, and that if we are to save the public libraries as primarily an intellectual service, we must see clearly where we are, and formulate some reasonable principle of action.
Public Library Law.
Authors: HEWITT ARTHUR R.
Published: March 2008

IN the matter of rating, library authorities in England have a considerable advantage over both Scottish and Irish authorities in that there is now no statutory limit. The limit of 1d in the pound was abolished in England in 1919 by the Public Libraries Act of that year. That Act provided, however, that if a library authority declares, by resolution, that the rate to be levied shall not exceed a certain sum, the resolution of limitation cannot be rescinded within a period of twelve months. In Ireland the limit was raised to 3d by the Act of 1920 which also enabled county boroughs to exceed that sum, by permission, by a further 3d. The Northern Ireland Act, 1924, however, provided that the amount to be raised in counties should not exceed a sum equal to a rate of 1d except that, in an urban district or town, in respect of which the Acts are carried into execution by the county council, the limit may be exceeded, by permission, to an extent not exceeding 2d in the £. County councils in the Irish Free State may not exceed an expenditure equal to the rate of 3d in the £. The limit of 1d in Scotland was extended by the Scottish Act of 1920 to 3d. County councils in Scotland have certain powers as to library provision under the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, expenses incurred being levied as part of the education rate, so that the limit under the Public Libraries Acts does not apply to expenditure under the Education (Scotland) Act.
Some American Librarians
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

ONE evening, while in Virginia, I dined in very select company—for I was the only guest present, excepting the Secretary of the American Library Association, who had not been a president of that body. I was not, however, the only Englishman in the party,—and by Englishman in this paragraph 1 mean British born,—for Andrew Keogh, the Librarian of Yale University and President for 1929–30, sat opposite me. Keogh, like myself, was born in Newcastle‐on‐Tyne.
Aspects of Research: The Personal Element
Authors: WEIR JOHN L.
Published: March 2008

EVERYONE nowadays has some more or less intellectual pursuit dear to his heart. Dr. Watson tells us that Mr. Sherlock Holmes had investigated, purely for his own satisfaction, the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus and had published thereon: a topic of infinitely less value than his famous study of the different varieties of tobacco ash. Similarly, it would not be hard to find other examples of a love of learning for learning's sake, nor, unfortunately, of a sedulous application to things academic merely for the sake of fame or notoriety. In the modern world the merry business of “getting into print” has seized on the imaginations of the most unlikely people. The popular press keeps us informed of the mental activities of film‐stars and professional boxers, while the “remainder” catalogue tells a sorry tale of public indifference to days and nights laboriously spent. Leaving aside, however, the commercial and utilitarian aspects, the question suggests itself: How best to tackle the subject of one's choice?
How to Write a Last Act
Authors: BRIDIE JAMES
Published: March 2008

ONE of the most remarkable men I ever met, I told young Mr. Cayley, was a chap called Berthold Viertel. One day we were discussing this very matter, and he said to me, Many people can write the first two acts of a play but to make the last act is one of the attributes of the Almighty and so it is with Life itself.
Books for the Rucksack
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

STATISTICIANS tell us that since the war the proportion of male births has strikingly increased, and there is a theory that this increase represents the will of the Life Force working to remedy the ravages of the war. One wonders how much the recent vogue for walking, games, nude‐culture and hazardous exploits is attributable to the same cause. The significance of the hiking movement, which arose in war‐racked Germany and swept across the world, will not be overlooked by the social investigator of to‐morrow. It is true that there have always been hikers. But they were a small and scattered and unself‐conscious clan, usually nature lovers or naturalists, who walked, so to speak, casually and for the fun of it. Your latterday hiker is rather a hierophant of a cult. He has turned walking into a technique which he practises with a grim relish. He is distinctively—often clamorously—dressed. The heavy shoes, the iron‐shod stick, the aching feet, the perspiration, the sun‐vexed neck, the backbone cracking beneath prodigious impedimenta: the picture has been familiarized by the humorous journals from Punch upwards.
Librarianship in America: Some Random Thoughts
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

I BELIEVE America was once called “the land of opportunity.” It still is so far as librarians are concerned. It has so many more worth while posts to offer the man and woman of ambition. Probably the posts don't seem so very numerous to the hundreds of younger American librarians who covet them; to the English librarian who can count the posts worth £800 or more on his hands, the American picture looks more attractive.