bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
La Situation des Bibliothèques en France
Authors: HENRI LEMAÎTRE PAR
Published: March 2008

LES bibliothèques françaises se trouvent encore trop sous l'influence des conditions matérielles où les a laissées la guerre, pour qu'on puisse passer sous silence les difficultés qu'elles ont éprouvées. Un certain nombre d'entre elles ont vu leurs collections partiellement ou mme totalement détruites; c'est le cas de la bibliothèque universitaire de Nancy, des bibliothèques municipales de Lille, d'Arras, de Mézières, de Noyon, de Reims, de Réthel, de Saint‐Quentin, de Verdun, pour ne citer que les plus importantes. Il a fallu construire de nouveaux édifices et remplacer les volumes; c'est un travail de longue haleine, mais il commence à toucher à son terme. A Reims, la bibliothèque est rebtie, sur ses rayons ont pris place 66,000 vol. au lieu des 125,000 qu'elle possédait auparavant; de mme à Arras 1,200 manuscrits sur 2,500, 21,000 vol. sur 49,000 ont été sauvés; la bibliothèque de Réthel se relève de ses ruines, celle de Verdun est achevée.
The Pen and the Sword
Authors: BLAKE GEORGE
Published: March 2008

“THE great book about the war has still to be written,” say those in whom the passion for classification takes the place of the capacity to think clearly. As if the whole truth about the war 0f 1914–1918 could be got into one book! As if there were some peculiar necessity to get it all into one book! No, we can safely leave “the great book about the war” to some Tolstoy of the future. The more important and interesting fact is that the literature of the war is already of considerable bulk and is rapidly being augmented. It is, I suggest, a fact of particular importance to all librarians. Would it not be a useful service to the causes of history and sociology to reserve in every library a corner for the literature that derives from the experiences of men during the four black years?
The American Book Clubs
Authors: MELCHER FREDERIC
Published: March 2008

THE publishing and distribution of books in the United States has seen many changes in the last decade and seems now to be entering into a period of uncommon activity. During the war the number of new titles decreased, owing to the rising costs of manufacture, and the total number has not yet reached the level of 1914. At the same time the number of volumes being sold from the old and new titles has very rapidly increased and it may safely be judged from the government census figures that the number has doubled since 1919.
Reading at the Local Centre
Authors: READ‐ANDREWS MRS.
Published: March 2008

TILL I took on the work of a local librarian under the Essex County Library I think I had never felt what a reality the phrase, “Republic of Letters,” stands for. I had vaguely thought that it implied a sort of mental relationship between all book lovers and creators, but that it could connote such a real community of interest and feeling, as I have seen growing up in Bulphan since we started just a year ago, I should not have thought possible. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, or give the impression that the millenium has arrived, or that we have sloughed off our ordinary selves and are all hobnobbing together in consequence of taking a ticket under the Carnegie scheme,—but just one common factor we have discovered between us: we all come to the library because we are honestly interested in books; not because we ought to be, but because we are.
The Child's Book and the Reviewer
Authors: YORK ERSKINE LAURIE
Published: March 2008

IN a recent season Mr. A. A. Milne published an entirely enchanting book of verses entitled When We were Very Young. Later this was followed by other Milne books for and about children. The literary pages, literary departments and literary reviews of two nations gave a great deal of space to criticism of, comment upon, and gossip about these books, and by the most expert and practiced critics of these nations the charming volumes were given their just meed of praise.
Surrey County Library
Authors: POWELL M.J.
Published: March 2008

THE Public Libraries Acts were adopted by the Surrey County Council in July, 1924, the county librarian took up office in June, 1925, and the first books were issued in December of that year. The library has therefore been functioning for exactly three years, and from zero has in that time achieved a stock of roughly 60,000 books, 25,000 borrowers, a headquarters staff of five, one hundred and thirty seven branches and a motor van. During the last complete year (which ended nine months ago, so the figures cannot be up to date) a total of 282,131 book loans was reached, representing an increase of 163,846 issues over the previous twelve months, or more than double. In fact, during that year the growth of the library as a whole, in book stock and in population served, as well as in issues made, was more than double the previous year's achievement. It has already by thousands a larger stock of books than any other library in Surrey, though the ratio of books to population in the county area is only as yet about one book to every ten people. This proportion, equivalent to ten per cent., looks very meagre when compared with the Departmental Committee's statement “that no library should be satisfied with a stock which represents less than 30 volumes per 100 of population.” On the basis of this figure a stock of 168,000 books would be required to serve the Surrey County Library area.
Conversation in Valetta
Authors: McFEE WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

IT was one of the minor distractions of participants in the late great war in Europe to observe the fantastic evolutions of marine nomenclature. As an immediate example it was my own destiny to sail, first, in a ship named after a West African village, transferring a little later to one called after a Costa Rica river. A year or two later an elderly vessel, City of Oxford, became my home, only to be exchanged, at the armistice, for a fuel ship immortalising an ancient city of Asia Minor. And the return journey from Anatolia was achieved in a trim modern sloop‐of‐war bearing the attractive but unsuitable soubriquet of Delphinium. We were lucky. Some of our brothers‐in‐arms were serving or travelling on ships whose names they could barely pronounce.
The Romantic Reference Library
Authors: MILLAR RUDDICK
Published: March 2008

WHY, oh why do we for ever associate romance with moonlit nights, snow‐capped mountains, southern seas, and the sun‐baked alleys of the Far East? Why, when everywhere and every day it is to be found close at hand, whether we live in the solitude of the country or the clangour of the town? The very air is charged with it; the elfin figures of romance dance and weave their intricacies before us, if we have but eyes to see.
The Murray Tradition
Authors: GORELL LORD
Published: March 2008

I HAVE been asked by the Editor, whose powers of persuasion are great, not merely to write an article for the LIBRARY REVIEW but to write one on “The Murray Tradition.” Thus is my labour set and my duty defined—a pleasant labour and an honourable duty. I am grateful to Mr. Macleod, not for extracting a promise to write but for easing that extraction by naming the subject on which I am most willing, and at the same time without a specific invitation should have been most diffident, to write.
The Reading Habit
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

WHY do we read? A few days ago J might have been content with a straightforward answer. People read, I would have said, either because they wanted to or because they had to—in other words, because they were interested or because they needed information for some purpose or other. Now, I would not be so rash, for I have been reading a recent American study of the reading habit, and find that it is a much more complicated matter.
The Historical Novel: Types and Definitions
Authors: NIELD JONATHAN
Published: March 2008

AGAIN and again, of late, it has been made evident that there is, at the present time, no uniform way of defining the term “historical novel.” A very distinguished writer—known as both novelist and critic—has gone so far as to condemn the description “historical” when applied to any novel which depicts figures or events contemporaneous with the author, while another literary man of similar dual attainments and authority, has expressed an altogether contrary opinion, and has defined as “historical” a novel based upon its author's own youthful experiences. Yet again, I have seen it confidently stated in a newspaper article a week or two ago, that any list of historical fiction now put forward, ought to include books reflecting the period 1914–1918, seeing that such period is “one of the most memorable in the world's history.”
On Books for Boys
Authors: MORLEY F.V.
Published: March 2008

A BOYS' book, I suppose, is a book without a heroine; that is, without a heroine in what too often is the film‐meaning. Women and girls may enter, perhaps should enter, but there ought to be “no nonsense” and no “love interest.” They are to have all rights as individuals, yet only a restricted right as females. They are to come and go as characters, yet if their sex makes them attractive, it should be such attraction as one feels for a chest of gold doubloons. Elusiveness is permissible if it is like the elusiveness of buried treasure; “desire,” except as one desires treasure—which is something to be found rather than fingered—is disallowed.
The Books against Battle
Authors: ZWEIG ARNOLD
Published: March 2008

IT was not until two years after the War had finished that I felt the inner compulsion to set down my experiences of it. Two years had to pass for me to recuperate from the horrors of those three‐and‐a‐half years. But it was not enough for me merely to write an account because, contrary to the opinion of some literary circles, I believe the value of an account lies in its form. The form creates the characters, and I regard these characters as having a symbolical meaning.
Up from Journalism
Authors: POWER WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

THE young man who loves books and has literary aspirations generally tries for a post on a newspaper staff. He is duly warned by the veterans:—“Daily journalism is no more the road to literature than a county attorneyship is the road to the English Woolsack. You will dissipate in small change the talents you require for writing books. This is not a sculptor's studio, but a machine bakery. The art you lavish on the daily cakes will vanish when they are eaten. Why not stay in a steady routine job that does not compromise your imagination, and write in your spare time the things you want to write?”
The Student and The Library
Authors: PRATT INSH GEORGE
Published: March 2008

A few years after my Wanderjahr among the libraries which I have described it fell to my lot, as part of my duties as Lecturer in History at Jordanhill College, to undertake the work of introducing students to the fascinating task of exploring libraries and of employing books as instruments of research. This work was undertaken not primarily with the view of producing specialists in History but mainly from consideration of the fact that to a student trained in the constructive work of the historian the teaching of History to children becomes invested with an interest altogether unknown to people whose acquaintance with History has been limited to the laboured conning of mediocre text‐books.
Russian Libraries since the Revolution
Authors: EGOROV DMITRI N.
Published: March 2008

IT will be remembered that at the revolution of 1917 innumerable collections of books, many of them brought together by wealthy members of the bourgeoisie, fell into the possession of the state. Leningrad district alone secured twenty‐five million books, and other populous areas benefited similarly! These rich inheritances created the problem of preserving the collections—an extraordinarily difficult problem in view of the conditions created by the civil war: the horrors of famine, disease, and cold. A state organisation, “Book Funds,” was created with branches and local departments, and these, with the excellent aid of voluntary bodies and library societies, did especially good work in remote areas.
Oxford Reading
Authors: HIGHET GILBERT
Published: March 2008

LOST CAUSES.—They find a home in Oxford, we are told: “lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties.” Every bookcase is haunted by some antic ghost, which peers fleetingly from your friend's shoulder as he talks of literature, and cannot be exorcised by aspersions of laughter. Here sits a phantom Galsworthy, toying with a gold albert; there flit the twin spirits of Mrs. Woolf and Miss Sackville‐West, and “like smoke vanish away, twittering”; my own room is beset, as you see, by the sober shade of Arnold; and the banshee shriek of Shaw is still loud in the land. These survivals have a piquant inconsistency, and we take a perverse pride, like Pater's Marius, in murmuring old rites and feeding the hoary Lar which drags its slow colubrine length about our hearth But not every author becomes a private deity. Millions now living are already dead: often, indeed, they themselves make it difficult to diagnose the continuance of life.
A Review of Reviewers
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

“I LOVE the great despisers,” said Nietzsche, “for they are the great adorers.” If my attitude towards Mr. Squire, Mr. MacCarthy and the other grandees of contemporary criticism appears to be lacking in respect, let me, at the outset, give as my explanation the fact that I happen to cherish good criticism and am grieved to see the art falling into disrepute. For no interested observer can fail to be impressed with the circumstance that the delicate process of literary criticism, in latterday hands, is fast becoming tarnished and stale. Gosse and Walkley, whatever their limitations, were the last of a noble line; passing from us, they left, so far as I can see, no inheritors of their tradition. This is a serious loss. For criticism, despite Whistler's scoffs, may be necessary if the arts are to exercise their maximum influence upon the mind of the nation. Art is an apocalypse; but without the intercession of the critic the artist, so far as the majority of mankind is concerned, is a Memnon casting his music upon the desert. Moreover, criticism, at its best, has an independent and quite precious value of its own. “The adventures of the soul among masterpieces”—the definition may be jejune, but it holds at least a kernel of truth. We are not, perhaps, considering the full implications of the phrase, an artistic nation. The fates have denied us that integrality, that great continuity of achievement which distinguishes the literature of, say, France and Russia. But we have had our moments. We can point to periods of an intense national flowering of the impulse. And if we can boast of no critic with the gesture, the amplitude of a Taine, “we have at least a perceptible if frequently broken lineage of good criticism. Dryden, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Gosse: these were, in the finest sense of the word, critics, men equipped with rich sensibilities and with minds that waxed radiant at the contact of literature: interpreters, illuminators, in whom criticism was itself a centre of creativity. And now?
Landmarks in My Career
Authors: FEUCHTWANGER LION
Published: March 2008

THE question is frequently being raised: Why did the greatest historical event of late, the European war, not essentially inspire modern fiction ? That this colossal drama of homicidal glory and appalling horrors, but also of bravery and heroism, gave birth but to a few epic and dramatic creations, seems in fact surprising.
The Blairs College Library
Authors: HAY OF SEATON MAJOR
Published: March 2008

ST. Mary's College, Blairs, the Catholic seminary on the banks of the river Dee, five miles from Aberdeen, celebrated in 1929 its centenary. Few people, however, realise that the college has roots reaching far back into Scottish history, and that it is linked by many historical associations, but especially by its library, with the oldest of all Scottish educational establishments, the Scots College, Paris, which was founded under the auspices of King Robert the Bruce.
Books for Young Readers
Authors: NOWELL CHARLES
Published: March 2008

IT is customary with a certain type of critic to compare most unfavourably the taste of the reading public of to‐day with that of former generations. The great novelists of the nineteenth century are being neglected, we are told; the cry nowadays is for the sensational story; the great books in literature are losing their attraction. Although the standard is low enough, it must not be forgotten that far more people are able to read now than was the case fifty years ago; and I suggest that Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, and other eminent writers of the past are being read by more people than ever before, though the proportion—in comparison with the total number of books read—is doubtless lower. Let us grant that, like the standard of the jokes in Punch, the reading of to‐day has never been so good as it used to be.
NOTES ON Mr. KEENEY'S ARTICLE
Authors: BUSHNELL GEORGE H.
Published: March 2008

THE problem of providing adequately for the accommodation of graduate students and others engaged upon research work has long exercised the minds of British university librarians. Mr. Keeney has very clearly shown us, in his article, the solution which has been found to the problem at Michigan. Wisely, from his point of view, Mr. Keeney has not attempted to generalize but has confined himself to methods of which he has personal experience. British university libraries, more perhaps than those of the United States, differ very considerably in many ways; not least, perhaps, in the variety of the attempts which they have made to deal with this problem. Hence I feel considerable diffidence in essaying a more or less general statement on British methods or on the applicability of the methods of Michigan to Britain. Probably, at the outset at least, I had better confine myself to the two university libraries of which I have considerable practical knowledge, St. Andrews in Scotland and Birmingham in England. Situate in different countries, both British, one old, one young, both progressive, one (St. Andrews) containing 100,000 or so more volumes than the other, both using the Library of Congress Classification Scheme,—here we have two libraries with certain affinities but in many respects poles apart. It may be useful to look at their solutions, or attempts to solve this problem, in the light of what Mr. Keeney has written. Later it may be possible to glance at other British university libraries.
Picnic in Bloomsbury
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

LITERARY cliques come and go. It is inconceivable that we should ever be without them. Sheep calls unto sheep; boobs of a feather flock together: the principle needs no elaboration. They appear from nowhere, they mutter among themselves in a strange hieratic jargon, they burgeon with aesthetic theories, and then lapse back into obscurity. There were the Imagists, who dug up one or two rancid theories from the French, wrote little pamphlets of the sort of verse long beloved by Magazines For Young Ladies, and passed away. There were the Vorticists, who presented the world with the munificent gift of an assortment of isosceles triangles. The Georgians put straw in their ears and held conversations with academic sheep and cows. More recently the London Aphrodite group insisted upon being both obscene and heard; and appointed themselves, as it were, a sort of Cook's Tourist Agency to a corybantic paradise whose sole recommendation was a profusion of bosoms and beer. And there have been others too numerous to mention. United they stand, derided they fall: and indeed it is ridicule that kills them off. The Bloomsbury Group, however, have had a long reign, and are by this time rather firmly entrenched. They cannot merely be disregarded. They cannot, like many other cliques, be laughed out of court. They are not clamorous. They do not make a parade of absurdities. Their influence is all the more potent for being, as it were, subterranean.
The Scottish Advocate
Authors: MALCOLM THOMSON GEORGE
Published: March 2008

THE condition of the Scottish Bar would not matter a tinker's curse to anyone but the unfortunates who are compelled, or the misguided who are induced, to litigate, if it were not for the fact that a great deal in Scotland derives in tone and temper from the Parliament House in Edinburgh. What this tone and temper may be becomes an affair of some national significance since we are obliged to seek the explanation of various Scottish phenomena among the wigs and gowns that cluster behind St. Giles, in a degree which would be quite unjustified in the case of the Inns of Court and the Temple.
Literature Without Letters
Authors: BOSTWICK ARTHUR E.
Published: March 2008

THE very word “literature” indicates the belief of our linguistic ancestors that ideas must necessarily be recorded through the use of an alphabet. Yet the letters of an alphabet signify not ideas, but sounds. Their assemblage into a written word corresponds to a spoken word, and to an idea only indirectly through the latter. And yet the inventors and first users of our letters intended them for ideographs—their employment to mean elementary vocal sounds came later. In some quarters of the world this modification was not made, and an ideographic system still obtains. This is the case notably in China.
Time‐Spirit in German Literature
Authors: ZWEIG ARNOLD
Published: March 2008

DURING the period previous to the war the German stage took its inspiration from the contemporary dramatists; the theatre and literary production were almost one. Authors like Gerhard Hauptmann and Wedekind, at that time both representatives of modern dramatic art, wrote plays for the five main theatres such as the Deutsche, Hebbel and Lessing Theatre, whilst Ibsen and Strindberg were well introduced on the German stage. Reinhardt frequently availed himself of the plays of Stucken, Schnitzler and Eulenberg, the most popular dramatic authors of that period, whilst the Konigliche Schauspielhaus (Royal theatre) was marked by performances of a more antiquated taste inspired by the Kaiser's conservatism in art. On the whole, it may be stated that the repertoire of all the leading theatres in Berlin was rich and carefully selected. Classical plays, chiefly Shakespeare, were performed and interpreted in the most perfect manner; the same refers to the Russian drama, Stanislawski, Chechow, Tolstoi and Gorki being at that time introduced. Thus the German pre‐war theatre fulfilled a high cultural mission because the author was interpreted in the sense and spirit of his works, plays being selected for the sake of art, and not of sensation or monetary profit.
The Future of Public Libraries
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

TO‐DAY, when so much is astir in the library world, it is desirable that we should try to envisage the future possibilities of public librarianship. For if we have not a fairly well‐defined objective and clear ideas of what a real service should be there is a danger that we may do things which will need to be undone, that we shall miss something vital, or stop too soon.
A Scottish Causerie
Authors: POWER WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

THE Scot, I have noticed in international gatherings, is peculiarly liable to be chaffed about his country. One reason is the association of Scotland with whisky and the kilt. Another reason is the Scot's self‐consciousness about Scotland. When he hears it derided, he gives a wry smile, or enters on a flustered defence. Praise of Scotland specially annoys him, because it is generally praise of the wrong things,—and he is not quite sure what are the right things.
A Busy Woman's Choice of Reading
Authors: CRUICKSHANK HELEN B.
Published: March 2008

THE problem of the busy professional woman who, willy‐nilly, has to turn out to business every day in the week, lies not so much in deciding what books she shall read, as in finding time to read anything at all beyond the necessary daily newspaper. So many women have to start another day's work—woman's work—on returning home in the evening after the nominal day's work—man's work—is over. In the writer's case, between running a house, snatching time for shopping, gardening, taking the dog for a run, entertaining friends occasionally, and being entertained, the evenings fly with astonishing rapidity, and the only time for reading is time when one ought to be in bed. When one adds a hobby which entails a lot of home correspondence, there can't be much spare time for serious or any other kind of reading.
Literary Circles of the 'Nineties
Authors: MALCOLM BULLOCH JOHN
Published: March 2008

MR. Frederick Niven's recent references in these pages to the Canterbury Poets anthology of ballades and rondeaus suddenly reminded me that a rondeau of my own was printed in the little book. Although the year 1887, when the book, which is now rather difficult to pick up, appeared, is a long way off, I do not in the least feel like Methuselah. What, however, does lend a sense of the passing years is the change in literary taste, and the humpty‐dumptying by one generation of critics of the heroes of an older group. We have had a good opportunity of witnessing the process on a wholesale scale in the belittling of the Victorians, and Henley himself is a peculiarly ironic example of the process, for, having bludgeoned many literary reputations, his own has slumped, for the collected edition of his work which appeared a few years ago left the younger school of critics cold, while the influence of his rather truculent “young men” on the Scots Observer has faded.
Personal Librarianship
Authors: HILTON SMITH R.D.
Published: March 2008

IN his Books: their place in a democracy, which ought in course of time to become a kind of bible to all those concerned with the production and distribution of books and which should give any young librarian a clearer conception of his job than a dozen formal textbooks, Charles L. Duffus usefully defines public libraries under two heads: the first, a mechanism for buying and circulating books; the second, a means of bringing individuals into touch with the good things which good books contain. To‐day, when a variety of causes has brought about a demand upon library resources which is at once the delight and despair of administrators, libraries are in the paradoxical condition that the more success they achieve as mechanisms for mass‐circulation, the less chance have they of performing their real task of getting the “right book to the right reader.” The proper relationship between these two functions of a library has been turned topsy‐turvy by overwhelming public pressure, and organizations whose main duty it is to establish a contact between live book and inevitable reader are in danger of becoming institutions for the mere dissemination of bundles of paper and print.
The Library Association: Recollections of Tedder and MacAlister
Authors: STANLEY JAST L.
Published: March 2008

HENRY R. Tedder was an outstanding example of the extraordinary hold the Association has had on the devotion and affection of its workers. From 1877 to his death he was actively engaged in its service, first as a joint honorary secretary with Nicholson, and afterwards (from 1899) as honorary treasurer, except for the year (1897) in which he was president; that was the year in which an annual meeting and the second international conference were held in London. As treasurer Tedder was careful and conscientious, but he had no imagination. Treasurers rarely have, and perhaps it is a dangerous gift for persons to possess who have charge of other people's money! MacAlister, when in association with Tedder as honorary secretary, had too much for Tedder's peace of mind. “Safety first!” was always Tedder's motto in administering the Association's financial affairs, and many promising developments—promising at all events from the promoters' point of view—were disposed of by Tedder's proverbial “can't afford it.”
“Files‐on‐Parade”
Authors: MALCOLM BULLOCH JOHN
Published: March 2008

WHEN the Editor, always fertile in ideas, suggested that I should write an article on “a literary man's files,” by which he meant my “reference aids,” I felt very much like Files‐on‐Parade when he queried the worried colour sergeant over the fate of Danny Deever.
Indian Library Reminiscences
Authors: MOHUN DUTT NEWTON
Published: March 2008

I HAVE been asked by the Editor to give my reminiscences of the modern library movement in India. H. H. The Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, the pioneer of that movement, was responsible for arousing my interest in the subject. In an interview which I had with him in London in 1910, learning that I was keenly interested in education, and had for twenty‐five years been in the service of eminent English publishing houses, he informed me that free and compulsory education had been in existence in Baroda for some years, and that he had recently engaged an American library expert to inaugurate in his dominions a system of public libraries. Three years later the Maharaja asked me to join his Library Department, and I arrived in Baroda in December, 1913. Mr. W. A. Borden, the American librarian, had returned home, and Mr. J. S. Kudalkar, his designated successor, had been sent to study library conditions and services abroad.
A Round‐Up of Anthologies
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

THE vogue of the anthology is a peculiar and depressing symptom of contemporary taste. There is a wry significance in the fact that during the past ten years, when poetry has almost ceased to count as a cultural influence, anthologies have appeared in flocks. An anthology is a hold‐all, and value‐for‐money has a sure appeal in times of economic and intellectual bankruptcy. It is pleasant and convenient to have several hundred (in one case a thousand) pages of verse in handy compass and at a low price.
When I Began
Authors: BERWICK SAYERS W.C.
Published: March 2008

DURING arithmetic I filled an exercise book similar to the school's property one with one of the redskin stories which with my beloved verse were to bring me fame and immortality; thus—“With bursting lungs Harold strove to throw off the glistening swarthy arms that embraced him like the folds of a boa constrictor; but the redskin's strength was irresistible.” Lost in my Edward S. Ellisian forests, I did not see the Head's movements until he pounced, appropriated my masterpiece, took it to his desk, and read it while I waited for the familiar arm‐reach towards the too convenient cane, accompanied by his utterance of my name. But he read on, turned back the leaves, considered, and then called me. “No,” was all he said, “I don't think irresistible is the right word there.” I am unable to recall anything else except that there was no reference to arithmetic and no cane; but I loved him all his life after.
The Artist as shown in Books
Authors: PROUDFOOT ALEXANDER
Published: March 2008

THE artist whenever he has appeared in fiction is almost invariably portrayed as a native of a mystical Bohemia, a country whose historical pattern perhaps is found in Judea of old, in the days when there were no kings in Israel and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. He is the natural man cutting athwart the conventions of society and living the life of his own spirit. In a world ruled by balance sheets of debit and credit he has no security and no interest except as in such of the crumbs from the credit balance which may fall to his share to enable him to live.
A Word from Canada
Authors: NIVEN FREDERICK
Published: March 2008

THE Editor of LIBRARY REVIEW asked me, some time ago, as a Scot abroad, to write something for his readers at home regarding books, and the reading of books, in the land where I am at present—Canada.
When the Novelist Looks at Life
Authors: DE BANZIE ERIC
Published: March 2008

IT seems to be the belief of many of our novelists that only through fiction can the truth be told. A practice so rare and commendable as truth‐telling should certainly be encouraged, but unfortunately in its literary aspect the method adopted is not ideal. Fiction and fact are becoming indistinguishable; the one is increasingly masquerading as the other.
Public Library Law.
Authors: HEWITT ARTHUR R.
Published: March 2008

RELINQUISHMENT of powers under the Acts to the Council of the County is permitted in England, Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. In England any library authority, not being a county borough may, on such terms as may be agreed upon and with the approval of the Board of Education, relinquish their powers and duties to the county council. In Northern Ireland the council or commissioners of any urban district or town may, on terms agreed upon and approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs, relinquish their powers and duties. In the Irish Free State the council of any urban district may, on terms agreed upon and with the approval of the Minister for Local Government, relinquish their powers and duties. In each case all property, rights and liabilities are transferred to, and become vested in, the county council. Relinquishment of powers to county councils in Scotland is not provided for in the Acts and, as has already been mentioned, those authorities occupy a different position with regard to libraries from counties in England and Ireland.
The London Critics
Authors: MACNAIR REID J.
Published: March 2008

TO news‐editors, trained in the new technique of “splashing” information or events, a book has value according to its newsiness. But even the word “news” has limitations nowadays. The book's subject must be topical, be of “wide appeal.” If a literary critic mentions that Mr. A. P. Herbert's book Holy Deadlock is a vigorous attack on the matrimonial laws, the news‐editor gives his readers a thrill by telling them all about it in the headings, and economising in space thereafter by cutting down his critic's copy ; for comment, not criticism, is the first purpose of the journalist to‐day as seen by the news‐editor. Inevitably, then, book reviewers must meet the demands of their editors; and publishers, those people who pay liberally for space in newspapers, have been converted to the faith of the news‐editor. The result is that book advertisements are frequently as chatty and “bright” as the news columns that surround them.
The B.M. To‐day
Authors: ESDAILE ARUNDELL
Published: March 2008

IT has been said that the ideal library, or for the matter of that, the ideal museum, theatre, hospital or any other building serving a special purpose, should be so constructed as to have to be pulled down and rebuilt every half‐century, in order to accommodate the practice of new ideas. Normally, of course, the new wine has to be insinuated into the old bottles gently enough to avoid disaster.
Libraries and the Individual
Authors: McCOLVIN LIONEL R.
Published: March 2008

LIBRARIANSHIP has its own laws of supply and demand and we cannot afford to ignore them. Firstly, granted adequate publicity, libraries will, in the long run, attract those for whom they cater. Secondly, those for whom they do not cater will stay away. How obvious they sound! Yet it is certain that many of us, and many of the authorities upon whom we depend for funds, have failed to appreciate their blatant simplicity. In most communities there are sections of the public we would very much like to serve, yet do we always seriously and sufficiently set out to serve them?
First and Latest Impressions
Authors: CRAIG ROBERT
Published: March 2008

ACCORDING to the best‐informed, there is coming a time when we will all quite literally outsoar the shadow of our night, to descend, each of us, as a spent rocket—Out, out, brief candle!—in an adjacent parish. Yet the human spirit is tough enough to plan its own perfections, even in face of the swifter preparations for the air‐raid. While aviators pay Daedalus a fitting veneration, hopeful humanity need not forget the fate of Icarus.
Behind the French Novel To‐day
Authors: EDBROOKE EDYTH
Published: March 2008

THE custom of grouping works of literature, art and science in decades may originally have been arbitrary. But the influence of numbers on the human mind is such that, as we look back, French post‐war novels seem to fall quite naturally into two groups according to whether they were written before or after 1930. The novels of the earlier period are quite distinct in purpose and outlook from those which have appeared during the last seven years.
Young Poets Paraded
Authors: SNAITH STANLEY
Published: March 2008

WHEN Mr. Auden writes: “Me, March, you do with your movements master and rock With wing‐whirl, whale‐wallow . . .”
The Fiercest of Bibliomaniacs
Authors: PHIPPS HEMMING H.
Published: March 2008

JUST over a hundred years ago began what was truly described as the “slaughter” of the hoards of books collected by Richard Heber, whom Thomas Campbell called “the fiercest and strongest of the bibliomaniacs.” The thousands and thousands of volumes were treated by Heber's executors simply as property to be promptly turned into cash in the auction‐room so that the estate could be wound up. They were dumped on the market and, naturally, prices slumped.
Novelists and Nonsense
Authors: SPENCE LEWIS
Published: March 2008

FICTION has never been “original.” It is not in its nature to be so. But as that fact became apparent at least some two hundred years ago it seems a trifle unnecessary to dwell upon it. The dreadful thing is that, like the other arts, fiction now finds itself at the edge of the world of invention, staring into an abyss of nothingness, a Ginungagap of emptiness. It can conceive no new situations or conditions, mental or spiritual, its inventive powers are bankrupt, its fashions and expressions of dialogue are fast becoming matter for public jape, food for the flighty interludes of the wisecracker and the Smart Aleck. Its general aspect has become fantastic because of an obliquity to the life‐plane, a tilt almost as extreme as that exhibited by recent painting or music. Its folk are often monstrous and as unrelated to the actualities of existence as the shapes of nightmare. In short, it is the workshop of a guild or trade caste. And just because man is what he is, castes are the worst enemies of Art, and when, by accident or misfortune, they succeed to its functions and become its “bureaucrats,” Art is in mortal peril.
A Bookish Inquiry
Authors: WEIR JOHN L.
Published: March 2008

Several years ago, while grubbing in an antiquarian bookseller's basement, I came across a slim little volume in half morocco, lettered up the back Les Mutinées Royales—1863. The title conveyed nothing to me then, but the shabby elegance of the binding prompted me to pull it from the shelf, and for once my zeal was rewarded. First of all there was, within the front board, the bookplate of James Maidment, a notable Scottish bookman, the friend of Scott, and the father of a long series of curious little reprints and literary oddities. On the flyleaf was a note in his handwriting regarding the book; while before the title‐page there was exposed to my delighted gaze a collection of autograph letters from the publisher, Frederic Norgate, dating from the years 1865 and 1866. The title‐page itself read, Les Matinées Royales, ou L'Art de Regner. Opuscule Inédit de Frederic II. Dit Le Grand, Roi de Prusse. The publishers were Williams and Norgate, of Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and the volume saw the light, as I'd already gathered, in 1863. On all counts, I decided, this was a volume worth having, I carried it upstairs to the comparatively pure air of the outer shop, feigned indifference as to my interest in it, and nailed it for, as far as I can recall, just half a crown. I hurried home, to gloat, perchance to read. The letters I transcribed without delay; the book itself I glanced through hastily, reserving it for future leisure. Before that came, sad to say, I was in the Army, and it is only within the past few weeks that my thoughts have kept turning to the dicta of the Prussian, a train of thought set in motion, no doubt, by a reading of Froude's Carlyle.
Lucky Words
Authors: PROUDFOOT ALEXANDER
Published: March 2008

I had little thought when I chose “words” for this article that I had such a large project before me. I soon found that I had embarked on an ocean and that soon or late I would find myself swamped and sunk if I did not limit myself and keep within territorial waters. This paper will reveal no erudition in etymology or grammar. Neither will it pretend to be an exemplar of the King's English. “The choice word and measured phrase beyond the reach of ordinary men,” as Wordsworth puts it, will only be evident in quotation. The warning of Ecclesiastes, “Let thy words be few,” hangs over me, for, as Pope, a veritable huckster in words, says: “Words are like leaves and where they most abound much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”
Libraries I Love
Authors: POWER WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

I doubt if any book‐lover likes to read out‐of‐doors, unless, in snatches, at a book‐stall. The glare is painful, there are the quivering shadows of leaves, you either fry or shiver, and “things that creep or fly” explore your book and your person. There are people, mostly women, who can devour books anywhere. But they are not book‐lovers. They are fiction‐addicts.
Books in the Service of Youth
Authors: GREEN EDWARD
Published: March 2008

The introduction of the new Education Act and other agencies for continuing education, including the Service of Youth movement, is an appropriate time for considering an extended use of books and libraries. In this connexion it is most gratifying to note that since the war started and the black‐out and other restrictions have been in vogue there has been a great increase in reading, as measured by the circulation of books from public and other libraries. So great has been the demand that, with paper and other shortages, it has been difficult to replace worn‐out stock and acquire sufficient new volumes. Perhaps, though, this scarcity has turned readers to some of the older and neglected books and revealed sources of interest hitherto over‐looked.
Some Old Scots Bookmen
Authors: WEIR JOHN L.
Published: March 2008

There is no more fascinating type of bedside book than the catalogue of a great private library. “Bedside book” I say: but that is hardly just, for I would willingly retire to a desert island (as all the best people appear to be prepared to do these days) with a comfortable handful of such records of greatness. These can conjure up visions for me as no other books can. I find the Abbotsford catalogue as spell‐binding as The Three Musketeers, and old Kirk‐patrick Sharpe's curious collections as intriguing as the adventures of young Waverley. Are there others who share my taste? I hope so, though I admit that it is not everyone's meat. Might I be pardoned for trying to suggest why I like this bye‐way? Bear with me while in the manner of Hill Burton I summon up a few of the famous bookmen of a former day. And pardon me again if it be found that they are all Scots.
Books and Bombs in Barsetshire: a War‐time Commentary
Authors: TROLLOPE ANTHONY
Published: March 2008

WHY did I ever become a County Librarian, and in Barsetshire of all places, when I might have been a rond‐de‐cuir sitting on something nice and cushy in the Civil Service? Oh, well, it's too late to think of that now. Too late.
No Foreign Entanglements
Authors: GARDNER FRANK M.
Published: March 2008

One aspect of the British character that has been changed fundamentally in this war has been the habit of mental and physical insularity. The phrase “The Englishman's home is his castle” expressed something more than a simple desire for privacy; it expressed an attitude of the individual towards the world at large. The aeroplane, with its train of effects in evacuation, incendiary bombs, air raid shelters, destroyed the lesser conception of privacy, and the aeroplane too, with its destruction of all our 19th century conceptions of space, has made our slightly remote attitude towards other nations out of date for ever. However much we may recoil from our wartime community spirit, however quickly our street savings groups wither, the W.V.S. uniforms gather dust in the wardrobe, and the fireguard reunions be held at ever greater intervals, there will never be again the utter disregard of our neighbours that was typical of town life before 1940. And in international relations though we may not, after the war is over, evince the same interest in the reconstruction of the Chinese cabinet or the latest utterance of an Anglophobe senator, we shall never again class all lands beyond the English Channel as inhabited by foreigners, with a small exception made for the Empire and the U.S. as peopled by remote cousins.
Democracy and the Public Library
Authors: POWER WILLIAM
Published: March 2008

I AM glad to give what support I can to the movement for improving and extending Scotland's library services. It is disappointing that Scotland should lag behind England and some other countries in a matter so important to a nation so dependent on the mental calibre and equipment of her sons and daughters. The lag is the more curious when one recalls that Carlyle (who declared that the best university is a collection of books) took the initiative in the founding of the London Library, and that Andrew Carnegie was the first millionaire to devote a large part of his fortune to the founding of public libraries.
Carlyle and the Twentieth Century
Authors: MUNFORD W.A.
Published: March 2008

WHEN librarians meet and talk “shop,” it isn't usually long before someone is trying to argue about the provision of lighter material— the ephemeral novels, travel, and biography, the stocking of which none of us is prepared to justify on their merits, but for which there is steady, and heavy, public demand. It is, perhaps, a pity that “shop” is much less often concerned with the old than the new. The omission may be due to the fact that many librarians have become unduly obsessed with new books. We are told that a public library is judged by its service of new books. It might be better, I think, to judge it by its service of books.
Youth Libraries: A Moscow Experiment
Authors: POLYAK B.
Published: March 2008

During the grave war years the greater part of the burden of factory and field work lay on the shoulders of women and young workers. Thousands of young people were compelled to leave school so as to take the places at the bench and lathe of their fathers and brothers who left for the front. Therefore, every young person who did not finish his education on account of the war, must now fill up the gap.
Library Education and the Schools
Authors: HUTCHINGS F.G.B.
Published: March 2008

NATURAL aptitude, training, experience: these are the three factors necessary for competence in any vocation. But having stated the ideal, what is the reality? Recruitment to libraries is quite as haphazard as it is to any other job. It is best when unemployment is rife. It is poorest when full employment is achieved. The assistant arrives more by accident than design. He is usually an amenable, adaptable creature, ready enough to learn and make the most of the estate to which he has been called. Thus it is that training becomes paramount, and education in librarianship the prime duty of the Library Association.
Hospital Library Readers
Authors: MARGARET H. FORSYTH.
Published: March 2008

WHEN I began hospital library work, just over a year ago, I was one of the first British public library‐trained librarians to take up full‐time hospital library work, and I started with the feeling that sick people read much the same kinds of books as healthy people. I felt it was important that their minds should not be cut off from their normal exercises or diversions just because their bodies were diseased. It has to be remembered, of course, that very ill patients do not usually read at all, while they are very ill, and that when they are at the convalescent stage they are able and anxious to resume their normal interests and occupations.