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HIS MAJESTY THE KING is winning new admiration, if that were possible, as the speaker of words on libraries which are memorable. At the opening of the University Library at Cambridge on October 22nd, he described that great new library as “both a power house and a testing station of educational activities,” and went on to say, “It is a workshop of new knowledge and a store‐house of seasoned wisdom.” It is difficult to think of phrases which convey more fully the work and aspirations of a great national library. We cannot refrain from mentioning again the significant fact that within one year His Majesty has opened two libraries, which together have cost £1,000,000 to build. If any have doubts as to the national attitude towards the library movement, they will probably be resolved in favour of the future of libraries by thinking of this. Of course, the Manchester Public Library was built out of the sum accumulated from the sale of a previous central library, and we know that one half of the £500,000 spent at Cambridge came from the International Education Board; but in the first case, the good will of Mancunians was required for the spending on the library of this large sum of money, and in the second case, £229,000 was obtained by public subscription from friends of Cambridge. These are works of faith which must have a very great effect upon the future of education and culture of England. If they were alone, however, they would have been significant, but when we remember that Leeds University and the City of Sheffield have built great libraries, and even in smaller places such as Dover a new library has been established, while there are many new branch libraries at Birmingham, Bristol, and elsewhere, and renovations of older libraries, as at Coventry and Croydon, and Nottingham, we realise that in a time which is thought to be one of depression, the public library has made strides which are almost as great as those of the early Carnegie days.

Literature is the word that comes to one's lips when Arundell Esdaile's name is heard. He wrote only a few general essays nd a little verse, in Autolycus' Pack, and a volume of verse, Wise Men from the East, but he had fine taste in letters, and he was an artist in lucid, pure English, at once light and fluent, dignified and impressive, even when his subject was bibliography or his “recreation,” librarianship.

WE are confident that our readers will approve our use of the amount of space we have given this month to the memory of Dr. Arundell Esdaile, whose death we announced briefly in July. As Mr. Berwick Sayers writes, there must be many of his old Students who revere his memory, and many others who have directly or indirectly benefited from his work for our profession.

This year the Library Association Record is 100 years old. The author, who has been a regular recipient of the journal for two‐thirds of that time, and who has contributed articles, book reviews, obituaries and letters to it, surveys its progress over the period. He comments on the different approaches of its editors, from Henry Guppy in the 1890s, through such outstanding figures as Esdaile and Walford, to the present day. The journal has survived many difficulties such as financial constraints, shortages of paper in two world wars, accusations of dullness and changes of editorial approach. In this historical sketch the author also mentions alterations in its design, and praises the way the editorial board and its staff have coped with producing a journal for 600 members in the 1890s to one for over 26,000 in the 1990s.

THE relinquishing of the Presidency of the Library Association by Dr. Arundell Esdaile must of course receive the attention it deserves. This will probably be when the new President, Mr. Cashmore, is inducted into the office at Birmingham—an event which we understand will take place early in February.

IN recognition of his services to the library movement in India, H. H. the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, G.C.S.I., was the guest of honour at a dinner given at Claridge's, London, on 30th May, by the transitive circle called THE LIBRARY REVIEW AND FRIENDS. Those present included Mr. E. Salter Davies, C.B.E., President of the Library Association, Mr. L. R. McColvin, F.L.A., Hon. Secretary of the Library Association, Mr. P. S. J. Welsford, F.I.S.A., Secretary of the Library Association, Mr. W. C. Berwick Sayers, F.L.A., Chief Librarian, Croydon Public Libraries, Mr. J. H. Roberts of the New Statesman and Nation, Dr. Modak, the A.D.C. to H. H. the Maharaja Gaekwar, Mr. Newton M. Dutt, F.L.A., formerly Reader to His Highness and State Librarian of Baroda, and Mr. R. D. Macleod, F.L.A. (who presided). Apologies for absence were received from Colonel J. M. Mitchell, C.B.E., Professor C. N. Seddon, sometime Dewan of Baroda, Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe, Mr. M. H. Spielmann, F.S.A., Mr. William Will, Captain L. Cranmer‐Byng, and one on behalf of Mr. Arundell Esdaile, Secretary to the British Museum, who was at Madrid.

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.

Before I arrive at discussing the fundamentals of music bibliography I think we should take a very close look at the word ‘bibliography’ and make sure that we know what it really means. In countless books and dictionaries I have looked up the definition, and the general consensus of opinion is that it may have two meanings. Firstly, a list of books relating to a given subject or author and, secondly, the careful and accurate description of certain books, either by an author or on a specific subject, with literal transcriptions of the title‐pages, sufficient information for identification between one edition or issue and another, size, gatherings, pages, measurements, and so forth. This is a fact of which I need not remind a company of librarians, but I want to make a clear distinction between the two forms that a bibliography may have. Personally, I do not care for the first meaning at all and can never stretch my imagination so far as to flatter a mere list of books by calling it a bibliography. It is not a bibliography at all, it is a checklist, a simple list of books for guidance to the reader wanting to refer to other books on the same subject or, alternatively, by the same author. In Mr. Arundell Esdaile's A student's manual of bibliography (Allen & Unwin, 1931) all such are called ‘List of Books’, and this, I maintain, is the correct heading. A bibliography is something far larger, more involved, intricate, and detailed. The new Grove uses the word ‘bibliography’ for a list of books about a composer, and a list of works composed by the composer is designated ‘Catalogue of Works’.

The fly on the wheel said, “Lord, what a dust do I raise!” As Secretary of the B.M. I was the fly on the wheel, and conscious that the dust was none of my raising. Dust there was in plenty. A place of such national—and international—standing is constantly straining not only its own resources but also those of its friends to make vital and correspondingly costly acquisitions. Such was the purchase, with the generous help of John Pierpont Morgan, junior, who would have liked them for the Morgan Library, of the Bedford Hours and the Luttrell Psalter; the latter being one of the chief sources of our knowledge of English farm life in the Middle Ages. But during my fourteen years in the Office the Museum was faced with four great opportunities, quite out of the ordinary; and in all four it was successful.

In writing in the May number of LIBRARY REVIEW of some of my memories of my early days in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books there was much which I had perforce to pass over. I mentioned some of my contemporaries in the Catalogue Room in 1903, but I said nothing of my colleagues and good friends who arrived a few years later. One of these was that learned cartographer (as he became) and delightful Irishman, whose death we have only recently had to lament, Edward Lynam; in his charge the Map Room acquired a new importance, as rather earlier the Music Room had under Barclay Squire. Another, happily still with us, was Arthur Ellis, long Superintendent of the Reading Room, and now, though retired, still about his old haunts and still helpful to all. And, to mention no others, in the year or two before the War of 1914–18, the present Librarian of the National Library of Scotland would brighten the Catalogue Room on Saturday mornings by appearing in London Scottish kilt and sporran and a', in readiness for the afternoon's parade.