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THE provisional programme of this year's L.A. Conference at Southport on September 20–23 is now in our hands. The theme, the library and the community, is the perennial one for our conferences and, in that, is blameless ; everything will depend on the handling of the subjects. No one who considers what is promised can accuse the Council of the L.A. of a partial view of the field, because whole areas are given representation in general sessions and if, as we expect from such writers as Messrs. R. O. MacKenna, W. S. Haigh, D. J. Foskett and F. C. Francis, the papers have the requisite range, the Proceedings will prove to be a comprehensive Statement of library practice today. All are well‐tried speakers and amongst them we anticipate, for example, a model paper from Mr. Haigh, who was frank in his view of the endurance required of the listeners at Hastings. The gifted Editor of The Assistant Librarian, Mr. A. C. Jones, who, unfortunately for us all, is relinquishing that office, is to occupy the A.A.L. with the assistant librarian in the community, and county libraries are to be represented by papers by Mr. B. Oliph Smith and Mr. H. Thompson at their own Section meetings. University libraries again come into the picture at theirs with a discussion opened by Dr. L. W. Sharp. Mystery is suggested by Mr. B. C. Vickery's “Tower of Babel: the language barrier in science” which seems to indicate some form of Interglossa or, possibly, since he is an enthusiast for Dr. Ranganathan, that teacher's Meta‐language. It certainly would be an achievement if whenever a scientist used a word it could be made to convey the same thing in every reader's mind. The Youth Section will listen to that practical teacher and thinker, Mr. J. F. Wolfenden; and the Annual Lecturer on Wednesday, September 21, will be by Mr. J. L. Longland, the chief education officer of Derbyshire, whose co‐operative sympathy and support was no doubt of great service to Mr. Edgar Osborne in the organizing of the most fully co‐ordinate county service in this country. Five British “internes” will render account of their experiences in America, under the chairmanship of Mr. J. C. Harrison, we hope to the encouragement of others of us “to go and do likewise.” Nothing better for the creation of fresh enthusiasms and for a high international level of library practice in all its variants can be imagined than this prolonged employment in the libraries of other countries ; every librarian should encourage it to the limit of his means and feel, as we do, gratitude to Messrs. Sydney and Harrison for acting as the selection committee so far as British candidate “internes” are concerned.

DURING the past few years interest in the drama has been quite as strong in the countryside as in the towns. This activity in the years following the war is a remarkable feature, and can hardly be attributed to economic prosperity. It is, however, well‐known that there are some movements that do not always synchronise with material prosperity, and it appears that the drama can be included with these. Another factor bearing on the revival in this vital form of art is the increased interest taken in adult education. Courses in literature and drama are general throughout the country, and these courses have, naturally, stimulated interest in the drama as a mode of artistic expression. The fact that people are showing pleasure and aptitude in dramatic art is proof that it is deep‐rooted in the instincts of the nation, and under right guidance can be an instrument of artistic and intellectual progress.

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.

Librarianship, the comprehensive title Mr. R. Irwin has given to the small, concentrated series of discourses recently published by Messrs. Grafton & Co., is a sort of landmark in our thinking. It is a valiant attempt to establish some sort of arena for librarians ; not, indeed, a “philosophy of librarianship”—that, Mr. Irwin asserts, is not feasible as the term philosophy can be applied correctly only to subjects which are part of philosophy itself, although he admits a philosophy of religion, of science and, tentatively, of history. In spite of this precision, the book is what we ordinary librarians call a philosophy of librarianship. Like all good books, it will be the cause of considerable discussion and probably a good deal of argument, some of which the Editor of a library journal thinks it appropriate to indicate, for the book goes to the roots of current activities. But, in the first place, the author Stands apart as it were to get a comprehensive view and then asserts that librarianship is a word for “ applied bibliography ” and that definition covers every activity, book‐selection, bibliography popularly named, cataloguing, classification and the general exploiting of books. Librarianship is one technique, not several, and he implies that it has suffered from the tendency to teach library subjects as separate techniques, for example, cataloguing and classification which are actually one process. This separation was the result of part‐time and other fortuitous forms of teaching. Since the advent of library schools the tendency of the training and examination courses of the Library Association, and as a consequence of the schools themselves, has been to create a unity of Studies which is the perfect librarian's soundest equipment. That is the briefest Statement is the purpose.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

BOURNEMOUTH fulfilled some of the high expectations of those who attended it. The welcome was cordial, the local arrangements good, as we were entitled to expect from so proved an organizer as Mr. Charles Riddle and from his committee and staff, and, when fine, the town was most attractive. The weather, however, was bad, and too warm at the same time for most of us. One thing that certainly emerged from this experience was the real need to change the time of the conference. Only librarians among similar bodies appear to meet in the summer season. The accountants, engineers and other professional people confer in late May or in June, when they do not compete with holiday‐makers for accommodation and attention. The Council might well consider the re‐arrangement of its year with such a change in view.

EVEN if library work with the young is the most written, and over‐written, subject in librarianship as is sometimes alleged, it still is the foundation of all library activity and must therefore come under continuous review. To some the subject is as dull as the essay questions set in the Entrance Examinations were alleged to be by a writer in The Library Assistant. To which we reply that all things have a certain dullness to those without sufficient imagination to look at them in other than the most conventional darkness. A Chesterton discourses entrancingly on a piece of chalk and brown paper, an empty train, a piece of string. So with our subject. We therefore make no other apology than this for a number of THE LIBRARY WORLD in which it is our main interest. Our children's libraries are, as yet, far from perfect; they issue too many drivelling books written by authors whose first essays in writing are children's books because they think them to be the easiest to write. The difference between a Ransome and—well, a thousand slush children's books—is as great as the difference between The Vicar of Wakefield and worst railway bookstall novelette. There is a great field being examined here by the more progressive children's librarians. There are many other questions, administrative and personal that have been and are under discussion. The writer of Letters on Our Affairs this month deals with some of these although, we may at once say, his views are not wholly those of THE LIBRARY WORLD.

ALL the auguries for the Bournemouth Conference appear to be good. Our local secretary, Mr. Charles Riddle, seems to have spared neither energy nor ability to render our second visit to the town, whose libraries he initiated and has controlled for thirty‐seven years, useful and enjoyable. There will not be quite so many social events as usual, but that is appropriate in the national circumstances. There will be enough of all sorts of meetings to supply what the President of the A.L.A. describes as “the calling which collects and organizes books and other printed matter for the use and benefit of mankind and which brings together the reader and the printed word in a vital relationship.” We hope the discussions will be thorough, but without those long auto‐biographical speeches which are meant for home newspapers, that readers will make time for seeing the exhibitions, and that Bournemouth will be a source of health and pleasure to all our readers who can be there.

THAT THIS YEAR sees the fiftieth anniversary of the Public Libraries Act of 1919 and the consequent birth of county libraries in England and Wales is a fact that has not gone unnoticed. At the Southport Public Libraries Conference the County Libraries Group of the Library Association invited Miss L. V. Paulin to deliver a paper entitled ‘County Libraries: Half a Century's Achievement’ and also arranged a jubilee dinner at which the principal guest and speaker was Miss A. S. Cooke, who was county librarian of Gloucestershire when the Act was passed. The Library World for May marked this event by the inclusion of a symposium of five relevant articles and in the Journal of Librarianship for July F. A. Keyse has written an excellent account of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust experiments of 1915 to 1919, which were to shape the administrative pattern of British county libraries.

IN December, 1964, Messrs. A. G. Sheppard Fidler and Associates, of Epsom, were commissioned by the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council to prepare a project design for a new building on a six‐acre site in Ewell, to house:—