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A LIBRARIAN not very long ago made the pertinent suggestion that public libraries were run upside‐down. In brief, his point was that a library assistant's life was something like that of a monk or a nun, in that as he passed successive grades in his qualifications, so he became more and more remote from the outer world, until he eventually was finally and completely immured behind a door marked private, there to commune in silence with the Times Literary Supplement and the 13th edition of Dewey. The idea was, of course,—and it had ingenuity and great truth,—that in fact the more knowledge and experience he accumulated, the more he was required to be at the vital point of contact between the public and their reading matter.

For a matter of 20 years a Mr. C. S. Forester, better‐known, one understands, as a novelist, has been editing and publishing at intervals the memoirs of a British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. For some reason known only to himself, Mr Forester has presented these memoirs as fiction, though it is possible that having in mind the known aversion of the public from any form of technical literature, he has thought that the memoirs, assuming as they do a working knowledge of seamanship and naval tactics, might appear more palatable and more commercially profitable in this form.

You only realise the value of something when you haven't got it. That simple truth was brought home to me during my recent sojourn in India as a Unesco Consultant for the Pilot Public Library in Delhi.

ON the library front generally we have no event to record of what may be called bibliothecal importance for, our readers will readily understand, the induction of Mr. Cashmore as President for 1946, which took place at Birmingham under the chairmanship of the Lord Mayor on February 13, happened too late to be included in these pages. An account will, of course, be in our March number. It is, however, a singularly gracious matter that it should have occurred to the Council to hold the ceremony in the second greatest English city, which also happens to be the home and work‐field of the new President. Only rarely does a man receive such honour in his own place, as we have divine warrant for mentioning. Probably in other ways also Mr. Cashmore is an exception, because we have ample evidence of the regard in which Midlanders hold him. The presence of the Lord Mayor was perhaps to be expected when an Association holding the Royal Charter visits his town officially, but we are assured that it is also a tribute to the esteem in which Mr. Cashmore is held.

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

THE Birmingham Induction on February 13th was in every way satisfactory to those who participated. A writer in our “Letters on Our Affairs” has given in brief the substance of the event. It fulfilled the anticipations we made in our last number: the attendance was really representative; and there was an agreeable meeting of many of Mr. Cashmore's older and younger contemporaries, as well as a large concourse of his neighbours, to share in the dignified ceremony in which Dr. Esdaile initiated the President into his office. We ventured last month to refer to the quality of the retiring President's occasional speeches. That at Birmingham was a masterpiece of apparently unstudied ceremonial speech‐making. No doubt it will be available elsewhere. Those who spoke—from the Lord Mayor, who chaired the meeting, to Mr. Duncan Gray, who returned thanks for the Lord Mayor's hospitality— rose to an occasion on which all was pleasant and unjarred by any slip or inharmonious note. It was a happy augury for the year to come.

DONCASTER'S new Central Library was formally opened on 29th December 1969 on precisely the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first public library in Doncaster. Conforming to tradition, the Library was opened by the Mayor of Doncaster, Councillor Marcus Outwin. The President of the Library Association, Mr. Wilfred Ashworth, addressed the assembled guests, his last official appointment before relinquishing the office.

THREE years of the new age are coming to an end, and the cynic may feel that it is not achieving much. In the greater outside world, perhaps not, but the necessity of all who believe in life is to keep on trying to realize our hopes. In libraries there could be no spectacular material progress in 1947 because the conditions were worse for building, for the production of fittings and even for substantial internal library development were worse than in 1946. Yet we cannot help noticing here and there active signs that our work is not stagnant. The publications of libraries that reach us, and especially the revised and in many cases, their greatly improved annual reports are one encouraging sign.

THE BBC's television services have a longer history than is generally realised. Experiments were going on in 1925 and 1926, broadcasts were being put out as early as 1933 or 1934, and on 2nd November, 1936 the BBC gave Great Britain the world's first regular television service, operating on the 405‐line standard in the Very High Frequency channels.

THIS issue opens the new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD and it is natural that we should pause to glance at the long road we have travelled. For over forty years our pages have been open to the most progressive and practical facts, theories and methods of librarianship; our contributors have included almost every librarian who has held an important office; and we have always welcomed the work of younger, untried men who seemed to have promise— many of whom have indeed fulfilled it. In the strain and stress of the First World War we maintained interest and forwarded the revisions in library methods which adapted them to the after‐war order. Today we have similar, even severer, problems before us, and we hope to repeat the service we were then able to give. In this we trust that librarians, who have always regarded THE LIBRARY WORLD with affection, will continue to support us and be not tempted because of temporary stringency, to make a victim of a journal which has given so long and so independent a service.