WE are informed that a sufficient number of people have decided to participate in the visit to Paris at Easter to ensure the success of the project. We are asked to announce that further entries can be received until the end of this month, when the list will be closed definitely. The visit is a week-end one, costing seven guineas, a not unreasonable price nowadays, seeing that it covers everything. The headquarters will be the American Library in Paris, one of the most interesting libraries in Europe.

The visit comes just before the Congress of Librarians and Booklovers, which opens in Paris on April, and continues throughout the week. At this Congress the Library Association will be represented, and no doubt several members of the visiting party will stay on to it. The Library Association, we are informed, has requested Mr. Berwick Sayers to organize an Exhibition of Technical Objects and Literature illustrating the methods of British Public Libraries. This will be on view in Paris for a month. We welcome these new efforts towards extending our knowledge of the libraries of other countries and their knowledge of ours, and we hope that all who have publications, special devices, posters, or any speciality will send examples, with explanations, to Mr. Berwick Sayers at the Central Library, Town Hall, Croydon.

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There may be some ruffling of the surface of things in London soon, as a whole day's conference of the projected Metropolitan Branch of the L.A., which shall also be its Inaugural Meeting, is to be held on Wednesday, February 28th, at 11 a.m., at the Central Library for Students, Galen Place, Bloomsbury. It will concern itself with the question of the library policy, if any, to be adopted by the profession in relation to the Royal Commission on the Government of London, which is now sitting. If the Government of London is changed in any radical manner, it must affect public librariespossibly other libraries, too-profoundly. It is gratifying to find that librarians as a body are becoming aware of that fact.

Rumours have reached us that the Library Association Council has appointed a Committee to consider the question of the registration of librarians. The matter is therefore well in the region of discussion again, and we hope that our readers will send us their views and suggestions upon it.

Some happenings in the library world are ridiculous, or would be so if they were not tragic. King's Lynn Council, which spends the lavish sum of less than £600 yearly on its public library, with a full knowledge of the fact that this sum does not permit the purchase

of any books or cover maintenance charges, has deliberately resolved to starve its library. The people of King's Lynn were willing enough to accept Mr. Carnegie's money to provide this library, but it appears that they are unwilling to meet the obligations which that acceptance implied. It is a form of municipal commonsense and logic which is quite beyond us. The Dunfermline Public Library-the Carnegie library if there be one !-has been helped in the matter of its deficits by the Carnegie Trust until now. The Trustees, however, have now required the Burgh Council to carry on. This has caused much perturbation in Dunfermline, and there is talk of the library becoming a "white elephant." On the whole, however, the action of the Trustees is not without logic. They paid the deficits when rate support was limited by law, which is no longer the case. Dunfermline has the power to support its library just as Lynn has, and wailings to the contrary are not sincere. Godalming has become reckless and has adopted the Acts. It has a library of 2,000 Volumes, and to maintain this, and a librarian, is going to raise a d. rate, which produces £100 per annum. The progressiveness of Surrey local authorities is proverbial!

There will be only one Library Summer School this year-that at University College, London, for the fortnight beginning July 9, when there will be courses in cataloguing, classification, routine, paleography, and bibliography, as well as special courses and visits and excursions. This does not mean that the school hitherto held at Aberystwyth has ceased to be; it is merely postponed because of the difficulty of making adequate arrangements for this year. Hereafter we hope it will flourish, as there is ample room for a school at each end of the country. Meanwhile, we hope that every support will be given to the school in London. The Scottish Library Association announces a Library School commencing September 17th, in Glasgow, and if we may judge by the great success of last year's School there its success is assured. It is unfortunate, however, that this happens to be the week of the L.A. Conference, and no doubt our Scottish friends will alter their dates.

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For many years we have disclaimed responsibility for the opinions expressed by writers of "Letters on our Affairs." The Library World prides itself on being a free-lance journal, and therefore we allow a good deal of latitude to our Greek friends; but we must confess that sometimes their crisp remarks (to use a guarded adjective) diverge so widely from our own sense of what is due, speaking editorially, to the whole of the Library Profession in Great Britain, that we feel impelled to remind all our readers of the Editorial note which invariably appears at the end of the "Letters."

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The first number of the Book Selector has been issued on the same date as this number of the Library World. Any of our readers who have not received a free copy should notify Messrs. Grafton and Co. immediately.

COSTING DATA IN BOOKBINDING

By ROBERT COCHRANE, Edinburgh Public Libraries.

In most manufacturing establishments the value of careful costing data has been long recognised; but in library organisation very little of such calculation has been made, although its value in detecting waste and in increasing efficiency cannot be less in administration than in manufacture. The late James Duff Brown, in his factor, pluckily attempted to collect costing and statistical data; but his figures are now obsolete, and were originally collected from library reports, compiled on diverse methods, and were not soundly based upon carefully calculated details. The close relation between careful costing and efficiency may be illustrated if we cite one instance. Lending library book stock depreciates at the rate of 20% a year-a little more or less according to whether the standard of selection has been high or low-so that in five years the original stock should be written off. It is true that at the end of five years some of the stock remains; but, on the other hand, much will have been added to the original expenditure for repairs and binding, so that approximatly 20% is a fair rate of depreciation to calculate. If, therefore, a lending library of 10,000 volumes is established, provision should be made for the purchase of 2,000 volumes per annum if the collection is to increase. Had this factor of depreciation been properly calculated years ago fewer starved branch libraries would have been established.

Costing data are particularly necessary in bookbinding, if costs are to be reduced and waste prevented. From May 15th to December 31st, 1922, I have been able to compile the following figures:

All the work by binders A and B was for quarter morocco on a stringent specification following closely the lines of that given in Coutts and Stephen's Library Bookbinding. The work by binders C and G was special. The binding by F was in cloth or buckram. The cost per volume over all was 3s. 41d. This figure is rather higher than usual. It is also calculated on a smaller output of binding that usual, as some work was held up for reasons unnecessary to explain here. But the cost thus arrived at will be useful for comparative purposes in future years; and as the number of