tial library activities, is considerable enough. The result of attracting members of the kind would be an influx of new blood into the body of the Association, a new policy making for advancement might emerge, and a move made possible in the interest of unification of the library service, or at least of its ideals. What the American Library Association has done, the Council of the Library Association should be able to do; and that under considerably fewer difficulties.

It

In order to win and retain the interest of men of the kind, it would be necessary that the outlook of the Association, as expressed in its works in the past decade, should be broadened. cannot be said that much consideration is given in the Association's work to the problems which directly concern the large body of librarians out with the municipal libraries. This is quite unfortunate, and a change is desirable. Lacking the interest and help of librarians of every class, the Association cannot be regarded as representative. The Association is conspicuously weak as regards bibliographical activities. This side should be strengthened, and problems of research exploited.

The whole problem of the British library service is ripe for discussion, and we venture to think that the municipal librarian stands to gain by open discussion. The Association appears to lack momentum mainly because it is not representative. Moreover, it sadly lacks initiative. May we ask the Council to consider the facts of the case? (i) The Association failed regarding the provision of camps' libraries during the war; (ii) it appears to take no part in the great movement for providing libraries to the mercantile marine; (iii) the Central Library for Students, which should have been a great interest of the Association, knows it not; (iv) the adult education movement, which has to do with the finest student type, has not received its active support.

Meanwhile, there is a new field opening out for all engaged in university librarianship. One cannot always build with safety on a Government document, but the " Report of the University Grants Committee (Cmd. 1163) is so full of possibilities for university libraries that it deserves close attention. The University Grants Committee was formed on 14th July, 1919, with Sir William McCormick as chairman. Two of its members (Sir F. G. Kenyon and the late Sir William Osler) were intimately in touch with library needs. The secretariate includes Mr. A. L. Hetherington, whose first-class thinking on library problems is remembered by all librarians. The Committee disbursed the sum of £1,304,000 in the year 1919-20; and the sum at their disposal for 1920-21 was £1,196,000. The past year was devoted by the Committee to a visitation and a gathering of facts at universities and colleges in Great Britain, and the report now presented to the Treasury is in the nature of a preliminary survey of the university situation on its administrative side. Much ground is covered in the report, but we are mainly concerned with the library policy embodied in it. It is of so much significance that we recommend every reader of THE LIBRARY WORLD to get a copy. The first sentences of Section 10(a) give a key to the

policy: "The character and efficiency of a University may be gauged by its treatment of its central organ the library. We regard the fullest provision for library maintenance as the primary and most vital need in the equipment of a University. An adequate library is not only the basis of all teaching and study; it is the essential condition of research, without which additions cannot be made to the sum of human knowledge." This is first-class thinking, if we may say so. Although the Committee's Report is provisional, there is little doubt that the logic of it will carry with the foundations, as the Committee appear to be in the peculiar position of combining advisory and administrative functions,-two entirely distinct and not easily compatible operations. It is in nature an inspectorate; but few institutions will look askance at the recommendations of so distinguished a body. We wish the Committee strength in the interest of University libraries and librarianship.

LETTERS ON OUR AFFAIRS.

DEAR ARISTONYMOUS,

THE CONFERENCE.

I address you with deference, as an interloper into your correspondence, but you have always urged me to say a few words,” and, here, on the threshold of the Library Association Conference, I am foolish enough to comply with your request. Eratosthenes is holidaying in Scotland where I trust he will meet a wit as nimble, if not as sardonic, as his own; and Callimachus is cooling his fiery humour by the waters of the Wye where I hope he will absorb some of Wordsworth's philosophic calm, for he needs it badly; and, as for you, my desire is not to be personal, and I refrain, therefore, from comment upon your holiday plans and needs. This is going to be a gentle letter. Incidentally, and as a preliminary, I must grumble, though; because my calendar tells me it is the twelfth of August, and I have not the least notion of what is to happen at the Conference.

NO PROGRAMME

Four weeks before the Conference is of course too early to expect the Library Association to provide programmes. That is because the Council, or Executive Committee (this latter war-time rump government of the L.A. is trying to outlive the Imperial Coalition Government by the way) loves the effects of surprise. Perhaps the Editor of The Library World may have the programme by the time this letter appears.

66

GHOSTS.

Once I saw a letter of Sir John MacAlister's in which that dearest of Scots said he no longer attended the annual meetings of the L.A.: he saw too many ghosts." As we grow older this becomes the lot of each of us; and I wonder if there is anywhere in the kingdom where so many shades are gathering to greet us, as at Manchester. Not shades such as that of Harrison Ainsworth, who wrote Guy Fawkes under the influence of the Chetham Library of which he vainly, as I believe, aspired to be librarian; but ghosts

of real librarians. Edward Edwards, a dour, grim man, with the fervour of the apostle, and something of the difficult temper of the evangelist who is rarely able to work according to the compromises which are the very essence of public life in England. As everyone

who is likely to read my letter knows, he became as was natural, librarian of Manchester, the first considerable public library to be established in the country, in 1851, and held office until 1858, when the inevitable differences with his Committee led to his resignation. By the way, do you know of any other public library in England that was honoured with an inaugural epic? In America they do sometimes run to poetical exercises, but only Manchester on this continent ever inspired forty-eight pages of heroic verse. George Hatton was the bard, and the late W. R. Credland (himself an honoured shade who will be in our midst) quotes nearly fifty lines of it in his Manchester Free Public Libraries. Its flights are not exactly Miltonic; but they were probably heart-felt; thus:

"This day is dedicate to you and yours

This princely palace while all time endures."

(The princely palace has, in spite of poetic prevision, evaporated, and for the nonce has been replaced by a glorified cab-shelter on Piccadilly); but to continue:

"This LIBRARY is yours! for ever! free!

Το

and how much would the modern librarian give to recapture the fine careless rapture which inspired those exclamation marks. return to Edwards. Could he revisit the glimpses of the moon what would he say, he who ruled a reference library containing 25,858 volumes at his departure, and a lending library containing 10,029, to the present great system with its 28 (or is it 29?) buildings and its stock running to hundreds of thousands? However, he laid the foundations, and let his silent spirit be honoured in our midst.

ROBERT WILSON SMILES

followed him, brother of the author of that book which may have inspired many lovers of the theory of "get on or get out," Self Help. He was an educationist and seems to have gone strong on building up an education section in the Reference Library of all sorts of stuff which ought rather to be in an educational museum than a library: class and school books, maps, diagrams, “and many kinds of apparatus useful for educational purposes (but I don't know if he included pointers, inkwells, dusters, and what the Scots, I think, call the tawse). Anyway the Mancunians. liked his work; but then, bless you, they appreciate anything that is done for their benefit. He, too, opened the first special department in 1862 for juvenile readers, with 120 books; and from this grew the many boys' reading rooms which were once a feature of Manchester. Six years later he resigned, and

DR. ANDREA CRESTADORO,

one of the most picturesque figures in bibliothecal annals, succeeded him. He was of Italian birth and did not come to England until 1849, when he was forty-one. It is curious, en passant, to remem

ber that two of our great librarians, Panizzi and Crestadoro, come from south of the Po. The latter was a complex person; like Edwards a pamphleteer at first, he became an inventor, but in 1862 Smiles apparently found the work of continuing the reference catalogue begun by Edwards to be too much for him, the Committee advertised for a competent person to carry on; and Crestadoro undertook to complete the work in two years; was appointed, and succeeded in his undertaking. The catalogue is (or was) famous, and is an author catalogue, in which anonymous works are inserted under subject, with an index of subjects. became a model very largely imitated. You will find a description of its rules in an entertaining paper by the late Dr. Axon, "The Art of Cataloguing," in his Manchester Public Libraries, a paper which ought to be reprinted. Crestadoro did much in his fifteen years of office to free the libraries from galling rules and regulations. 'What," said he, and it was his most famous saying, "is the use of a rule if it cannot be broken?" and many a student blessed his interpretation thereof. He died in 1879, and

his sub-librarian,

It

He

CHARLES WILLIAM SUTTON, reigned in his stead. For forty and more years he reigned, building up the largest municipal library system in the country, bringing love, enthusiasm, learning and unerring taste to his task. Conservative in some things, he was yet liberal in most things. inherited a tradition which was good, but limited, and he broke through it manfully on many occasions. When he died Manchester had the finest reference library in the North, the largest number of branches, and perhaps the largest issue (but of that I am not sure. To all of us who knew him he stood for high ideals and kindliness of mind. Mr. Ernest Axon's brochure, beautifully reprinted (for private circulation) this year from the Library Association Record for June, 1920, is a tribute that deserves careful study for its discriminating survey of his services. Sutton is so near to us that we shall feel his presence at Manchester.

there will doubtless be.

know.

OTHER GHOSTS

Librarians of the Chetham, the Portico, Owens, the Athenæum, and many others, whose names I do not Then, may we not expect that other shades, not of Manchester, will be with us? James Duff Brown, the greatest municipal librarian our kingdom ever produced; F. J. Burgoyne, Peter Cowell, Ogie, W. E. Å. Axon, first of the three Librarian-Axons of Manchester, Mullins and Capel Shaw, of Birmingham, all these and many more who were with us at former meetings will look upon our return.

FLATTERY.

I congratulate you on the amount of this in the sincerest form which you are receiving. In the L.A. Record a gentleman, signing himself F.B., appears to be attempting to imitate your inimitable correspondence, signing the results "Current Views.' His wit and irony are somewhat amateur, but his attempts show a good courage. You must expect such penalties of Fame.

Vale!

CUSTOS VERITAS.

[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for the opinions of the writers of LETTERS ON OUR AFFAIRS."]

OUR CURRENT VIEWS.

LONDON LIBRARIES AND SCIENTIFIC PERIODICALS. In The Times for June 21st (p. 8) we found an article on the progress of Science which was thought so good that it was reprinted to a large extent in the Record, at a cost of about 12s. 6d. This was economy, as few librarians read the Thunderer, and still fewer would have the bibliographical acumen to look up their files if we made a mere reference such as begins this View." A most provoking article, because it refers to the scientific periodicals in the libraries of London and the want of indexes to them, and yet it does not refer to our Inder to Periodical Literature. Meanwhile, let us rejoice that the article has appeared, because it proves the ignorance of yet one more newspaper scribe and throws up our own state of enlightenment.

B.F.

THE ILKLEY CONFERENCE. This, the principal event of June, was a jolly affair, as all the branches of the L.A. came together and had a regular beano of sorts. Unfortunately the railways did not offer special excursion rates. so we stayed away; but the branch gladiators passed innumerable resolutions, pulverizing the L.A. examinations, creating publicity committees, and generally sounding the keynote of cooperation. If there is another such conference, with attendant excursions and free refreshments, and if our Committee will provide the expenses we shall be there.

ECONOMY.

B.F.

This be

Focus your optics in the direction of Workington. nighted place of coal and iron rails has actually accepted the invitation of the Libraries Committee that they (the Town Council) appoint a Committee to enquire into the extravagant methods of the Libraries which require as much as 2d. (which produces the fabulous sum of £880) to run them. The spectacle of the Councillors determining how they can save some of their sacrosanct 2d. will be good for ophthalmia. They won't close the Libraries; they will merely starve them, which is an edifying and soothing way of being economical. B.F.

BOOK DELIVERY VAN.

Years ago it was discovered at Croydon that if there are tramlines running from the central to the branch libraries, and if you put a book on the tram it will inevitably travel to the required branch-that is, if, as we suppose, someone meets the tram. Soon after motors were invented, the Americans sent books all over their cities (and elsewhere) by motor; Glasgow has followed; and now Manchester. The latter imprudently says "Glasgow is the only other city where the system is in operation." The desire to be first in something is one of the characteristics of the members of the L.A., we read. In that, of course, they differ from their Association, which has never been first in anything. And the desire is an excellent one too; it makes for progress. We now add two of our inventions. (a) Bibliographical bird-lime; i.e., a fine