bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Hospital Library in Action
Authors: FORSYTH MARGARET H.
Published: March 2008

To one coming direct from a municipal library the first and strongest impression of the hospital library was its smallness. The number of books was not so small, being between nine and ten thousand, but the building which housed this stock was merely a book repository.
William Ewart: Library Pioneer
Authors: SHIRLEY G.W.
Published: March 2008

William Ewart was born in Liverpool on May 1, 1798. His father was the son of the Rev. John Ewart, minister of Troqueer, another of whose sons was Joseph Ewart who became a notable diplomat and envoy‐extraordinary and minister‐plenipotentiary to Frederick William II, King of Prussia. William was the grandson of Andrew Ewart, minister of Kells, and the great‐great‐grandson of John Ewart of Mulloch, member of King William's first Parliament and who, till 1697, represented the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The family as provosts and bailies of Kirkcudbright can be traced back to 1583. Thus, but for the infusion of the Yorkshire strain from his mother, William Ewart was a Galloway man of long and notable descent.
Thoughts in a Library
Authors: TOMLINSON H.M.
Published: March 2008

I was not in the library seeking help on the subject of Art, but the long row of books about pictures stopped me; and, not in the hope that I might learn to paint, I dipped into the volumes, and wondered. Would an artist who attended earnestly to the experts on the mortal parts of truth and beauty ever go near an easel? I think he might be in danger of paralysis through doubt. Perhaps he would turn to criticism. Of course the man who can do it, and knows he can, the fellow whose child‐like innocence is favoured now and then with what has been called the instant apprehension of totality (let nobody, please, ask what that means), that man, presumably, attends to the experts only on wet and blank days when he needs cheering up.
Twenty Years After
Authors: FERGUSON MILTON J.
Published: March 2008

THE author of this little sketch is happy to bear witness of the endurance and strength of a Scottish editor; a fifth of a century ago the projector of the LIBRARY REVIEW, who has remained at its heim ever since, asked for an article for the first number of his journal. That paper came from the West Coast, that is California, and tried to disclose some library items of a hopeful nature. Since that year the world has for a time gone mad, but the REVIEW has continued to promote libraries, reading and books.
The Children's Book Section
Authors: GREEN MURIEL M.
Published: March 2008

IT is curious to note how many more books are written for boys than for girls. Considering the growing number of women writers, it might be expected that girls' books would predominate. It may be that women writers are canny enough to write with their eye on the boy reader knowing that while a totally feminine story will not attract boys, girls often read their brothers' books. Most of the children's classics appeal to both sexes—Peter Pan, Pinocchio, A Christmas Carol, Hans Brinker, The Wind in the Willows, and The Bastable Children, for example. Even the classics of adventure such as Treasure Island, and Robinson Crusoe, have their female devotees and therefore stand a greater chance of survival than books like Little Women, the Katy series, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. With the development of the “family story” popularised by E. Nesbit, there seems to have been a decline in the school story—at least among boys. Either they prefer natural tales of boys and girls together at home, or on holiday, or realistic adventures. A. S. Tring keeps a foot in all three camps, so to speak, with his tale of out‐of‐school activities, adventures and feuds between two day schools. His story entitled The Old Gang (O.U.P., 7/6) is told by the hero himself, in a racy style, and is amusingly illustrated by John Camp. Of the realistic adventure type is The Missing Legatee, by Wilfrid Robertson (O.U.P., 7/6), and it has its setting in the wilds of the Zambesi where the author himself has made expeditions, exploring and big game hunting. It satisfies the boy's demand for plenty of action and at the same time conforms to a good stylistic standard. Another tale of a search undertaken at great risk is David Gammon's Against the Golden Gods (Lutterworth, 5/‐) in which a seventeen year old boy goes out among the head hunters of Papua to rescue his captive father. Fog in the Channel, by Percy Woodcock (Nelson, 7/6) relates stirring adventures by sea, beginning with a collision in the fog when two schoolboys board a mysterious vessel supposed to be on secret service.
Days of Yester‐year
Authors: GREEN EDWARD
Published: March 2008

THE first Library Association Conference I attended was the one held at Cambridge in 1905 under the distinguished Presidency of the late Dr. Francis Jenkinson, and over the intervening years I seem to have attended every Conference of the Association until my retirement nine years ago. I got some elevation and entertainment from the papers read and from the people I met; but I took no very active part in any of the sessions, as the arrangements in those days were so formal and precise that discussion was, if anything, discouraged. But there were the intransigents who demanded to be heard, even though what they had to say dealt with nothing more important than the parish pump. No doubt they have successors!
Editors and Contributors
Authors: KERSLEY HOLMES W.
Published: March 2008

IT IS worth while sometimes spending half an hour in the reading room of a public library in the study of those who frequent it, noticing the kind of people they are and upon what periodicals they concentrate. You will in that way learn something about human nature. Most of them are reading for the sake of the matter in the columns, but amongst them are quite likely to be one or two who themselves contribute or have ambitions to do so, for the number of men and women who are victims of “the scribbling itch” is astonishing to anybody first becoming aware of it. A majority of them want to write because they are under the impression that it is an easy way of making money. Perhaps it is, for a very bright few, but a long experience urges me to say that it is one of the hardest for the scribbler of only average ability like most of us. To begin with, the competition is terrific and the space available limited; your “stuff”—don't flinch from the technical slang !—may be good, but somebody else's on the same subject may be better, or his article's length more suitable. Another topic which, in the editor's view, is more important, may crowd out your article or paragraph. If you mean to go in for the game at all, you must first of all be immune against disappointment, and you must also discipline yourself to take it for granted that it is the editor's judgment, not yours, that matters. Otherwise you will develop the habit of annoyance when your stuff isn't used. For your general outlook's sake, and your peace of mind, assume that the editor is always right, and criticise yourself rather than him.
The Library's Cultural Contacts
Authors: HOWARTH REGINALD
Published: March 2008

A public library service is part ot adult education, but it is not the whole of it. This perfectly simple fact is so often overlooked by the extreme protagonists of two schools of thought in modern librarianship. The one, in its enthusiasm, embracing in its library policy everything from providing a book service to organising lectures, discussion groups, plays, cinema shows, musical recitals, and even the inevitable and unfortunate “brains trusts”; the other rigorously excluding everything but an efficient book service. That the former often works its extension wonders with a woefully inadequate book stock, hoping, no doubt, to whip up interest and support locally; and that the other often consciously narrows its definition of book “service” to conserve resources for its primary function, we can readily appreciate. But, after allowing for local conditions, which have a strong influence on the formulation of any intelligent library policy, we often feel that on either side there is a surprising failure to appreciate clear, simple fundamentals.
The Children's Magazine in Britain Today
Authors: GREEN MURIEL M.
Published: March 2008

THE children's magazine was practically dead a few years ago, in fact during the war there was scarcely one worth buying, and there was a real need for something in this class. While books will always have first place, educationists and all interested in children's reading will agree that good periodical literature is a useful adjunct. On account of its regular appearance it encourages the habit of continuous reading among children who are sometimes lured away by out‐door activities in the summer, and by cinema clubs and other distractions in the winter. A good magazine, too, introduces children to a variety of subjects and types of story, thus widening their reading interests before their minds become set. It may be a vehicle for presenting current affairs in a form more suitable than in the daily papers, as has been the policy of The Children's Newspaper for nearly thirty years. A recent issue covered a variety of news calculated to interest boys and girls—a boy's journey by canoe across South America, the erection of a statue to Robin Hood (who probably comes first amongst boyhood's heroes), science news, a report on the United Nations meeting at Lake Success and an editorial on the subject, an explanation of inflation, wages and prices, a photograph of a model of the new House of Commons, articles on Jeremy Bentham, astronomy, the new constitution of Malaya, as well as other features, jokes, and snippets of information. This is good value and would doubtless enliven a current affairs lesson at school, but, as a magazine for general reading and entertainment, it is rather too serious. It is the kind of periodical that parents and well‐meaning friends think their children ought to read, but do they really read it from cover to cover, or do they only pick out the lighter bits ? As a news‐sheet of information it is excellent, but the production and layout would need to be more attractive to make it a favourite.
Public Library Policy Reviewed (2)
Authors: MCCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

I want to amplify some of the statements in my first article regarding book stock. I suggested then that to be adequate the lending department of a public library must meet three requirements:—
The Public Library Makes a Century
Authors: GRAY DUNCAN
Published: March 2008

So wrote Philip James Bailey in his forgotten Festus. What deeds do we celebrate in the centenary year of British Public Libraries? First, that the 1850 Public Libraries Act should have been passed at all when it was, considering the forces ranged against it, including the representatives of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. “It was a moot point,” wrote Thomas Greenwood, “whether or not the rough uncultured democracy should be permitted even with the most stringent precautions to invade the sacred precincts of a library building.” The workers might get ideas beyond their station, and the buildings become hotbeds of sedition. What poppycock it all sounds nowadays!
Public Library Policy Reviewed (4)
Authors: MCCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

I WROTE last time of the importance of staff in relation to our information service. The quality of all library work depends upon the quality of the people who do it. Here, however, is another vicious circle—many library services are inadequate because their staffs are not good enough, yet while they remain inadequate they don't provide opportunity for good staff. The staffing situation is precisely comparable with the book supply situation, as already discussed. Without good book stocks a library cannot start doing the kind of work that will demonstrably justify good stocks; similarly until it employs people capable of doing genuinely professional librarianship, a library is unlikely to do much that justifies their employment.
Has the Novel Died?
Authors: DAVIES G.R.
Published: March 2008

Mr. Gardner, in speaking of the death of the novel in the Spring issue of library review puts himself in a difficult position from the start. Nothing can die without first having lived; and for death to be noticeable, the life must have been an individual one, something distinctive from a squirming, unguided mass of cells. In that sense, when we are told that the English novel has died, we may well ask before bowing in grief, has it ever had a life of its own to lose?
The Great Libraries of the World and their Functions
Authors: ESDAILE ARUNDELL
Published: March 2008

The earliest and still the most fundamental duty of a library of national rank differs in degree rather than in kind from that of its local younger sisters. It is similarly to preserve for use today and for posterity, however remote, the original records of the nation. It is an old story, often repeated, and not to be repeated again, except in passing, that the Dissolution of the Monasteries in this country scattered the monuments of the Church in England and with them those of the national life, in chronicles, cartularies and the rest; for the commissioners' interest in books was confined to the bindings of jewels and precious metals with which the piety of earlier times had covered some; an interest, and doubtless also a knowledge, which may be described as skin‐deep. To reassemble as many as could be found was the work of Matthew Parker, while Robert Cotton, and after him Robert and Edward Harley, not only carried on the good work, but added the State Papers of later days, and in fact did for the Crown what the Crown had not yet thought of doing for itself.
The Situation as we now see it
Authors: MCCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

I want to begin this, the last of six articles on public library policy, with a personal explanation. When I wrote the first I nursed, with reasonable justification, hopes that have not been fulfilled. I hoped that during this great year of centenary celebrations we should enjoy changes in library legislation which would go far to remove some of the obstacles to the future development of the British public library service, which would enable us better to provide that kind of public library which the experiences of a hundred years have taught us to be necessary and possible.
The Newspaper Office Library
Authors: THOROGOOD HORACE
Published: March 2008

The newspaper office library is quite unlike any other kind of library. It doesn't look like a library, it doesn't feel like one, it doesn't even smell like one. Books occupy a comparatively small space. A visiting librarian from a public library might well think he had been taken to the wrong place.
Gift Books for Great‐Grandmamma
Authors: CLYNE ANTHONY
Published: March 2008

Annuals now, apart from Christmas numbers of periodicals and concoctions for juvenile readers, are utilitarian compilations. Published in great variety to serve many interests and needs, professions and occupations, some are renowned and not a few are rather wonderful in the nature and range, volume and variety, precision and accuracy of the information they purvey.
Fiction and Ourselves
Authors: CARTER G.A.
Published: March 2008

A certain Rural District Council has recently passed a resolution which included the following phrase:—“This Council views with alarm the increase in the cost of the County Library service . …” The Chairman of the Council, in proposing the resolution is reported as having said:—“I am not objecting to the library service itself, but to the terrific cost of running it. This item ought not to be increased any further. It is not right that ratepayers should be asked to pay for people to read Forever Amber and Our Dearest Emma. It would be all right if the service was all educational, but it is not”.
University Librarians and Professional Education
Authors: OWEN EDITH M. , HAVARD‐WILLIAMS P.
Published: March 2008

The purpose of the present article is to ask questions, rather than to answer them. The recent discussions in the University and Research Section of the Library Association have brought the question of professional qualifications for university librarians once more to the fore; but they have included little consideration of the more fundamental aspects of the problem. While the majority would agree that professional qualifications are essential, few university librarians appear to be satisfied with the examination syllabuses now in operation.
One Man's Beginnings
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

F A curious feature of our profession is the paucity of attention given to its human elements. We are too prone to lose sight of the fact that a library's place in the social fabric is determined not by technics or administrative niceties, but in the last resort by the anima, the personal spirit which lies behind them. With, for example, Draynefleete's new branch library we are familiar through photo‐graphs and drawings; we approve its contemporaneity of style, its brisk aseptic social “tone”. But do we ask ourselves whether it is a creative library? Do we give thought to the personal relationships involved—between members of the staff, between the staff and the public? Is there a sense of confraternity, of oneness of purpose? Units thrown together by chance or destiny, we spend a large part of our allotted span within the walls of a library, doing a job, liking or resenting it; yet this vital aspect of our work seldom comes under scrutiny.
Tropical Librarianship
Authors: PLUMBE WILFRED J.
Published: March 2008

The techniques of library work are the same in every latitude and longitude. It follows, therefore, that similarities between librarianship in the tropics and elsewhere are very much more noticeable than differences. Nevertheless, there are many minor contrasts and differences; and it is some of these that we will try to describe.
London Clubs and Their Libraries
Authors: THOROGOOD HORACE
Published: March 2008

Each of these London West End clubs whose libraries I have been visiting is an association of men with interests of a special kind, mainly political, professional or artistic. The libraries, therefore, have this peculiar interest: they reflect the more serious tastes and avocations of the upper crust of London society. Most possess literary treasures or curiosities not, or rarely, to be found elsewhere. The difference between them and other libraries might be likened to the difference between a public park and a private garden. They are very personal.
The Public Libraries Committee, 1924–27
Authors: DOUIE C.O.G.
Published: March 2008

Twenty‐five years have passed since the publication of the Kenyon Report on public libraries, and it is time to put on record the story of the Committee which drafted the report, for soon it will be too late.
The Friendliest Library in the World
Authors: SAVAGE ERNEST A.
Published: March 2008

Yes; “the friendliest library in the world” is Joseph Hone's description of the National Library of Ireland, and according to Stephen Gwynn it was under “one of the most enthusiastic librarians the world has known”. They wrote of a time when Thomas W. Lyster, Dr. R. I. Best and William Kirkpatrick Magee were that Library's eager hosts. Happily Dr. Best and Mr. Magee are with us. It is my misfortune not to have met them. But Lyster I knew well; he was my friend, as far as friendship is possible to men who meet only at Conferences, and when all the approaches must come from the “don”.
Books are Basic: a Report from U.S.A.
Authors: COLLISON R.L.W.
Published: March 2008

At one moment we were being buffeted monstrously as we sat helplessly strapped in our seats, with the incessant sheet lightning giving us glimpses of the awful character of the storm clouds; and then the sky suddenly cleared and we were wheeling gently into Manhattan from the south. The plane tilted and we could see the Statue of Liberty dull copper green on its brown pedestal and the New York skyscrapers gap‐toothed in their wintry defence of the American continent. At La Guardia the bus company was on strike, and next morning we found pickets outside a chain of drug‐stores and in front of a large radio company (where the script writers were claiming that the corporation “could not sell them its story”). Even the Baghdad of the west had its troubles.
Sir Frederic Kenyon
Authors: ESDAILE ARUNDELL
Published: March 2008

Full of years and of honours, one of the greatest scholars and public men of our time has finished his career.
The Librarian and the Whodunit
Authors: WEIR J.L.
Published: March 2008

Looking back over the scores of thrillers that have cheered my leisure in the past two decades, I cannot recall a solitary example which featured a professional librarian in the rôle either of hero or villain. Many an admirable murder has been committed in a library; if my memory serves me right, Francis Bonnamy has even located two slayings in the hallowed precincts of the Library of Congress. But every time it is the professor, the doctor, the lawyer, the priest—yes, sometimes even the ordinary policeman—who fits the pieces of the puzzle together, and brings the evildoer to justice. It is a sobering reflection that the clever people who write detective stories obviously regard the librarian as being insufficiently agile in mind or in body to cope with homicide. At the same time it is good to know that those same authors see no possible talent for the commission of crime among the ranks of librarians. For all that, it is a trifle humiliating. To be a potential Moriarty, or a Marlowe, a Father Brown, or a Dr. Syn, is something. Even the Watsons, even the Bunters have some distinction. Not so the librarian. Like the postman, the plumber's mate, or the sanitary inspector, he is in the eyes of the thriller writer a nondescript, a familiar object of blameless mediocrity.
Library Association Constitutional Changes: a Symposium
Authors: PATON W.B.
Published: March 2008

At the Annual General Meeting of the Library Association held at Bournemouth on 2nd May, 1952, a motion was passed instructing the Council to prepare in consultation with branches and sections a revision of Section B of the Byelaws (Constitution of Council, Committees and Officers), designed to ensure that the majority of the Council shall consist of persons nominated and elected by the members at large. It will be recalled also that the President gave an undertaking that the Council would consider proposals for proxy voting at annual meetings, and for a referendum by postal vote as a means of securing for all members an effective voice in the affairs of the Association. These contentious matters have been duly debated by the Executive Committee, whose findings are submitted in reasoned form in a Memorandum, which, by the consent of the Council, has been issued to branches and sections, who are asked to consider the suggested constitutional changes, and to send their observations, together with any alternative proposals, to the Secretary at Chaucer House not later than 23rd February, 1953. It is stressed that the whole matter is still under consideration by the Council, whose final decision will presumably be made in the light of recommendations from branches, sections and individual members interested enough to express their opinions. The subject is so important for the future of the Association that this symposium of views by representative librarians is offered as a stimulus to the membership at large.
Reading over again
Authors: GUNSTON DAVID
Published: March 2008

Most of us have some favourite books which are read over and over again, and some might perhaps agree with Schopenhauer that “any book that is at all important ought to be at once read through twice, partly because on a second reading the connexion of its parts will be better understood, and partly because we are not in the same temper and disposition on both readings.” “Every good book,” said Charles Bray, “is worth reading three times at least.” Certainly the pleasure obtained from a really good book can usually be repeated at least once later. The experience of many famous bookmen bears that much out.
Passage from India
Authors: GARDNER FRANK M.
Published: March 2008

You only realise the value of something when you haven't got it. That simple truth was brought home to me during my recent sojourn in India as a Unesco Consultant for the Pilot Public Library in Delhi.
Library Advisory Councils
Authors: MACMURCHADHA FEARGUS
Published: March 2008

The idea of a Library Advisory Council does not loom up suddenly within the orbit of librarians' thought from nowhere. Its emergence as a practical and desirable modus operandi for the solution of present difficulties and the shaping of future library ends, is the result of much heartsearching and mature reflection, represents the fruits of bitter experience. It is at one and the same time an admission of past failure and an augury for future success. The failure being the inability of public library services to meet fully the actual requirements of modern society within the restrictive bounds of their present financial and administrative framework; the augury for future success being the acceptance by the central government of the thesis that the undeveloped potential of libraries as educative factors is worthy of consideration and that a real necessity arises to constitute an advisory body for the encouragement and extension of such services.
Lifemanship in Libraries
Authors: POTTERSNAITH S.
Published: March 2008

I take it for granted that the noble institution of Lifemanship is familiar to all librarians. So competitive a profession, where all must Gambit and Ploy to keep in the race, is natural soil for the doctrines of the new evangelism. In truth, the sagest among us were practising the creed before it had a local habitation or a name. But what may not be generally known is that a Sub‐Group of the parent institution has recently been formed to study the problems of our profession. In particular, the Group aims to encourage, advise and guide young recruits; to make the rough places smooth and shorten their pilgrimage to Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre— in other words, the Chief's Chair.
Libraries and Current Information
Authors: WHATMORE GEOFFREY
Published: March 2008

“If you can see it, it's obsolete.” This dictum, applied usually to the amazingly rapid progress in aircraft design, has validity also for books. Not only in technical mat‐ters but increasingly in general subjects, by the time a book reaches the reader the march of events has put it out of date. Later information is scattered in pamphlets and periodicals, in newspapers, and sometimes in manuscript. Somehow or other most of this plethora of paper must be captured, classified, and made more readily accessible.
The Public Library's Function and the Fiction Question
Authors: ASHBY ROBERT F.
Published: March 2008

The fiction question—i.e., whether or not light literature should be provided in public libraries—has exercised men's minds since 1850 and before, and there is every sign that it is still very much alive today. One may perhaps wonder that members of a profession having broadly the same objects in life have not yet reached unanimity on this fundamental point, but we are far from an agreed philosophy of librarianship: we are not at all clear as to what a public library is for.
The Eccentrics and the Muse
Authors: MILLAR ROBINS
Published: March 2008

Poets trooped off on an unmapped path, noisy for quite a time over their audacity. The jocund shouts of the coterie echoed in the wilderness, gradually growing indistinct. For it turned out that they did not discover a new highway for the pageantry of the century tofollow. And the priestess they bore off with them has stolen back, forlorn and much bedraggled by the thickets. She, who was so proudly at the forefront, creeps into the ruck, hardly recognised in the press, a hapless struggler in the rabble of camp‐followers.
Libraries in India
Authors: MAKIN JOHN
Published: March 2008

Having worked in India for the last three years where I have met and talked to many Indian librarians, taken part in their discussions, and visited 100 or more libraries of all types and sizes, Frank M. Gardner's article in the Summer, 1953, issue of the LIBRARY REVIEW had a particular interest for me. The problems touched upon by Mr. Gardner are problems that I see and talk about almost every working day, and it is because of my up‐bringing in the earthy, matter‐of‐fact school of public librarianship no less than the dictates of my official capacity that I ally myself to my Indian colleague in his search for a solution to the complex problem that faces him in his fight to provide a reasonable and efficient library service for his countryman; to gain a suitable recognition for his profession and so obtain for himself adequate salary and good working conditions.
It's a Battlefield
Authors: BUCHANAN J.W.
Published: March 2008

Perhaps it was because I had recently been reading Swift's Battle of the Books, but what I know for certain is that I shall always laugh at those people who tell me that libraries are like sanctuaries, oases of peace in a raucous world. I used to believe that. Not now: not after what happened last night when I was left alone in the library. Did I say alone? Well, now, that's not quite right. But let me tell you about it.
Are there too many Books?
Authors: MORRIS CHARLES H.
Published: March 2008

Shortly after you so kindly in‐vited me to speak to you I noticed on my bookshelves a scarce book published by the Oxford University Press in 1903 entitled A Chart of Oxford Printing, ‘1468’‐1900. In this book Falconer Madan exhibited the fluctuations in the output of the Printing press at Oxford from its beginnings down to the time when popular education was just making its effect felt in a considerably increased demand for its books. In the chart which Madan prepared we see graphically the varying, but gradually increasing, number of books printed or published by Oxford alone over the centuries, from ones and twos annually in the 1480s to the rising volume of 40 or so in the 17th century (over 100 exceptionally in 1643) on to the two hundreds of Victorian times. Today, i.e., in 1952, we have the Oxford University Press publishing, or becoming agents for, 767 new books or reprints.
What Hope for the Literary Periodical?
Authors: NAIRNE CAMPBELL
Published: March 2008

In some obscure corner of the offices of George Newnes, publishers of such thriving periodicals as Woman's Own and Tit‐Bits, the dust that settled four years ago on the files of the Strand must now be settling on the long rows of dark‐green volumes that preserve the pages of John o' London's Weekly. Within a twelvemonth—for the public memory is short—it will be as much a ghost as T.P.s, Cassell's, Everyman, and many other literary weeklies that have gone before it into oblivion.
Some Victorian Juvenile Books
Authors: DALGLISH DORIS N.
Published: March 2008

It is possible to learn a good deal about an epoch from the way in which it treats children. Contradictions arise, naturally. We picture the Elizabethans grimly flogging their small men and women through Latin grammar, but need not forget that young children were remembered in the Litany along with women labouring with child and sick persons. In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution distinguished artists painted delightful portraits of aristocratic toddlers while waggon‐loads of pauper children (one idiot to each load) were trundled off towards the new northern factories. There is no reason to expect any more consistency from the Victorians. Criticism has been concentrated on their earnestness as well as on their noble doubt. Would we not expect traces of all these qualities to appear in the books written for their children? Somewhere now there is probably in preparation a treatise which will make clear exactly how the agnosticism and the developing local government and the other signs of progress affected the reading of boys and girls.
The Small World of Books
Authors: NAIRNE CAMPBELL
Published: March 2008

There are occasions, and they do not grow less frequent as titles multiply and turnover soars to new heights, when I wonder if what it pleases some of us to call the world of books is more than just a parish, and a London parish at that.
Clarity and the Versifiers
Authors: DUNSANY LORD
Published: March 2008

To such an extent has so‐called “modern verse” been ousting poetry for twenty years, that we may be in danger of losing poetry altogether. This would be a loss of about a fifth of the arts, and, since a nation without art could not be considered entirely civilized, it would bring us appreciably nearer barbarism. I think that to distinguish between poetry and “modern verse” is easy. First of all, poetry is written in metre, of which there are many kinds, the grandest being perhaps that to which Tennyson alluded when he wrote of Virgil as,
A Reviewer and his Bookish Prejudices
Authors: STURROCK ALEC
Published: March 2008

Prejudices, of course, are just what a reviewer ought not to have, least of all the kind of reviewer I am. For I am a hack. The term is commonly used in a derogatory sense, though I see nothing in it to be ashamed of. Its definition allows the compiler of Chambers's Dictionary to have one of his little jokes—“n. Hackwork, literary drudgery for which a person is hired by a publisher, as making dictionaries, etc.”
The Library Schools and a Historical Dilemma
Authors: HARRISON J.C.
Published: March 2008

When the Library Association decided ten years ago that greatly extended facilities for full‐time training should form part of the programme of post‐war library development, few of the people concerned could have been expected to foresee what has now become one of the major problems in education for librarianship in Great Britain. It is indeed possible that it was not foreseen by anyone at all. Roy Stokes has reminded us in his article in the Library Association Record, January 1954, that there was not a single British librarian in 1945 with any experience in the management of a full‐time agency for professional training. Nor is there evidence of any consultation with similar agencies in those countries, the United States and Denmark for example, in which full‐time training had for long been recognised as the only adequate form of preparation for professional librarianship. It was in these rather strange circumstances that the nine new schools were founded between 1946 and 1950. In the eyes of the Library Association Council and the profession at large they were simply training agencies within the long‐established framework of the Association's examination and registration system; a system which had developed over a period of sixty years against a background of apprentice‐type training, with little intellectual content to the work, and a confused pattern of methods of preparation—private study, part‐time classes, summer schools, week‐end courses, correspondence tuition. This system had operated reasonably well, without claiming to be anything more than mere technical training, because the Association's exclusive control over both syllabus and examinations ensured reasonable standards of national certification. All candidates, whatever their background, practical experience or method of preparation, had to submit themselves to the one series of tests. That in the minds of many was all that mattered; and, despite the greatly changed circumstances brought about by the establishment of nine full‐time professional schools, there are still many who think it is all that matters today. Which brings us to what has been called “the historical dilemma of professional education”, the problem of relating full‐time training for a profession with what is expected of the products of it by those who examine them and those who employ them. In this connection let us also remember that at present hardly any of the examiners and only a small minority of the chief librarians concerned have themselves had any personal experience of full‐time professional training. Time is on the side of the schools here but there may still be many years of frustration and misunderstanding which will cause most distress to the most important person of all, the student who is on the road to professional qualification.
On “Autobiographies” by W. B. Yeats
Authors: ROBINSON LENNOX
Published: March 2008

When Yeats wrote Reveries over Childhood and Youth in 1914 he dedicated the book to “those few people, mainly personal friends who have read all that I have written.”
The New Scottish Act Surveyed
Authors: PATON WILLIAM B.
Published: March 2008

The passing of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act, 1955, is an important event, comprising as it does the first step forward in library legislation in the United Kingdom for more than thirty years. True, it is a modest measure which in the main does little more than bring Scotland into line with England and Wales and Northern Ireland in the extent of the statutory library powers of local authorities, and still leaves unsolved several problems for the future. Its first clause removes the statutory rate limitation on expenditure and on borrowing powers of Scottish library authorities, thus bringing to a belated end the eras of penny and threepenny rates. This was a move urgently required, especially in the smaller burghs, though it should be realised that probably more than half the population of Scotland had already been freed from the crippling effect of rate restriction through the passing of local acts, and that no statutory restriction has ever operated on library expenditure in the county libraries of Scotland. The effect of the repeal of the 3d. rate limit will, therefore, be much less marked in the country as a whole than might at first be supposed.
The Public Libraries (Scotland) Act, 1955
Authors: DOW ALEXANDER
Published: March 2008

For thirty‐five years the Council of the Scottish Library Association fought for new legislation. Despite opposition from other bodies, refusals from succeeding Secretaries for Scotland to countenance differing proposals, and financial crisis and war, the Council never wavered in its campaign. Memorandum after Memorandum was produced, each succeeding version containing additional points.
How Long to Write a Book?
Authors: GUNSTON DAVID
Published: March 2008

How long does it take to write a book? Authors often get asked this question. There is, of course, no straightforward universal answer; so much depends on the book, on the author concerned, and also on many other circumstances. Some books are generated slowly, some quickly, a few at immense speed. Some may even be the work of very many years, or even a lifetime. The question of the actual time taken over writing is one that always interests readers.
Fleet Street Fifty Years Ago
Authors: THOROGOOD HORACE
Published: March 2008

When the late Lord Norwich entitled his last book, Old Men Forget he was, unfortunately, mistaken. Old men remember too much too readily, and what they remember is apt to have a false glamour upon it. If Kipling had written another “If—,” this time for their benefit, he would probably have told them that IF they could recall the days when they were young without using them to disparage the present times, THEN they would avoid being the pain in the neck which most garrulous old gentlemen are.
The Chaotic Art of Writing
Authors: BUCHANAN J.W.
Published: March 2008

At one point in My Writing Life Neil Bell casually remarks of one of his novels: “All I had to do was sit down and let my pen rip: and let it rip I did to the tune of about 4,000 words a day for five or six weeks.” This is facility indeed, but almost certainly many will view such facility with envy tempered with disapproval. Writers boast or confess at their own risk. Trollope's reputation suffered when he confessed in his Autobiography that he worked to a scheme and by the clock and that he considered novel‐writing to be just another of the educated professions. Thereafter, to some literary snobs, he was little more than a self‐condemned journeyman. On the other side there was Stevenson who admitted that he had “played the sedulous ape” and that he took infinite pains in his writing. He thereupon became suspect as a mere weaver of words. It is a vicious world: confess and be damned.
Fifty Years in Fleet Street
Authors: MACGREGOR HUGH
Published: March 2008

With the exception of general labouring, no profession, craft, trade, or occupation throws its gates so widely open to all and sundry, including rogues and “wise guys”, as Fleet Street, or the newspaper world. And the true Fleet Street man is peculiarly vulnerable to the attentions of the rogues and others, because, while he is one of the most knowledgeable of individuals, he is by training, and very often also by nature, an observer and a critic, not a doer. He seldom can make a fortune for himself, but is open to be used and abused in making fortunes—and large ones—for others. He is also very much an individualist, and so he and his colleagues can seldom agree on common action. Hence the opportunity of the exploiters and financial manipulators. Characteristically, you have not one, but two professional bodies representing the Fleet Street man—the Institute of Journalists, founded last century under Royal Charter, and the National Union of Journalists, founded before the first World War by a few Manchester journalists, which, instead of being Royal, or anything like it, linked itself to the Trade Union Congress, with wage and working conditions as its ruling concern.
Library Methods in the Home Counties
Authors: SAVAGE E.A.
Published: March 2008

In a review of a Report on the Public Library System of London in the Summer, 1956, number (p. 419), I sought a picture of the London and Home Counties service and the factual details composing that picture. Every page of the Report baffled me, as I was bound to say most plainly, and library authorities' annual reports added little to my knowledge. It grieves me, a near‐cockney myself, that the libraries of Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol, to name a few provincial towns, should make so much more impact on the public than London and the southeast. Not that London authorities are wholly inactive. Staffs there play happily around with issue methods. In one borough Dickman, once puffed up, goes out in favour of old tried and trusted Browne. In another a token has been experimentally in play, and is to be kept but not recommended to other authorities; a county, on the other hand, cannot restrain its enthusiasm; while a cautious town tokens only fiction—all most confusing. South of the river an authority has tested, approved and intends to remain devoted to photo‐charging; another, north of the river, has tried and rejected it. London always has been hospitable to eccentricity in librarianship. The kindness continues. Has one of these charging systems been investigated and costed by business experts?
Memories of Henry R. Tedder
Authors: WYNDHAM HORACE
Published: March 2008

Henry Richard Tedder was associated with the Athenaeum in an official capacity for nearly fifty years. He went there in 1874 with a glowing recommendation from Lord Acton, and at the age of twenty‐four secured the appointment of librarian. Fifteen years later he combined the librarianship with the secretaryship. In the latter capacity he followed, longo intervallo, in the steps of Michael Faraday and Edward Magrath.
A Place to Read
Authors: MENTER JEAN
Published: March 2008

I think with nostalgia of the first library I knew. Queen Mary's House, the library of a school in Scotland, stands in its own small garden, adjoining the school grounds. It is hard to separate one's feelings for the books it houses from one's affection for the ancient grey building, the smell of lavender in the garden, the twisting stone stairs, and the lightness and quiet of its rooms.
The Short of It
Authors: HAYMON SYLVIA
Published: March 2008

It is a moot point whether people use abbreviations in speaking and writing in order to save time or in order to have more time to waste; but there are good grounds for thinking that, in one form or another, abbreviations are very nearly as old as language itself.
American Librarianship: Some Women
Authors: HAMILTON WILLIAM J.
Published: March 2008

Having discussed amiably with the editor the importance of women in the American library field, he responded with a request for some of my memories of individual ladies whom I had known professionally and for whom I had high regard. First I must admit that my field has been the public library and the activities of state libraries and library commissions in the extension of public library service. Undoubtedly in university and endowed reference libraries the men in the field showed up more prominently just as they did in activities and decisions of the American Library Association. However, when John Cotton Dana spoke cogently at a conference we did not forget the equally forceful and intelligent Beatrice Winser who had so great a part in running the Newark Public Library of which Mr. Dana was director. This is but one example plucked at random and I do not like to have these indispensable co‐workers ignored.
“Athenæum” and other Memories
Authors: RENDALL VERNON
Published: March 2008

Surviving to a great age, I maintain a vivid interest in literature and journalism. I was pleased therefore to receive from the Editor an issue of the LIBRARY REVIEW, also a copy of his ingenious account of William Morris as Seen by his Contemporaries. These contemporaries were more likely to know what Morris's character was than the many later biographers who had never seen him or heard him talk, or, when they had, had used the reticence familiar in Victorian biographers. I appreciate the judgements made on the important Life of Morris by Prof. J. W. Mackail, which cannot be called a classic, ignoring as it does, for instance, the connexion between Morris's wife and Rossetti, which was well known to me and others who were waiting for somebody to reveal it.
Microrecording in Libraries
Authors: JOLLEY L.J.
Published: March 2008

The appearance of Mr. J. Burkett's pamphlet Microrecording in Libraries provides an incentive to pause to consider the present position of microphotography as a library tool. In his short study Mr. Burkett has succeeded in concentrating much information which has hitherto been scattered in periodicals. He is brief, he is up‐to‐date and comprehensive. He covers forms of microphotographic record, reading machines, publishing facilities and uses. Recourse to his work will often save the necessity to consult such familiar guides as Lewis and Offenhayer or The Manual of Document Reproduction.
I Write a Testimonial
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

Concerning this business of testimonials: I daresay those of my readers (if I have any readers) who are chief librarians (if any of them are) will agree with me that it is fraught with difficulties. When, as a mere counter‐hand, and lamentably few in the pod, so to speak, I first summoned up the temerity to appeal to the Overlord for the usual formal bouquet, it never occurred to me that I was subjecting him to a grave ordeal. For how—short of outrage to his immortal soul—could he be expected to dilate upon me? My shortcomings were, as Professor Saintsbury said of Donne's, “gross, open and palpable.”
Wanted: A Book
Authors: CHETWYND ELIZABETH
Published: March 2008

The reading room of the large library was packed to capacity. The Saturday morning rush of harassed students revealed their anxiety to make the most of the short hours of an early closing day. All‐important examinations loomed ahead. It was necessary to be first in the field, to procure the essential books available in the various courses of innumerable subjects. Surging round the entrance desk of the reading room, the work‐weary handed in their quota of white paper slips, then waited with an uneasy patience for the arrival of the books on which their future depended.