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Examines the impact of foreign currencies on the purchase of library materials, with particular reference to Brown University Library. Describes the importance of discovering the foreign exchange exposure, projecting costs, and keeping a record of changes. Covers ways of lessening the impact of foreign exchange on the library budget.

Fiscal support from endowments is a longstanding tradition in many institutions of higher education. The first known endowment in an American academic library resulted from a bequest of £500 from Thomas Hollis to the Harvard College Library in 1774. The number of endowments grew steadily in the 1800s, and by the turn of the century there were significant endowments in many libraries, including Yale, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, the University of Virginia, and the University of North Carolina. Some institutions came to be heavily dependent on trusts for library funding. Between 1928 and 1956, for example, endowment supplied the total budgetary allocation for acquisitions at the Dartmouth College Library. Similarly, as late as the early 1950s, all of the book funds for the Harvard College Library came from its endowment.

Towards the middle of The Name of the Rose Adso of Melk realizes that “not infrequently books speak of books.… In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries‐old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” With these thoughts in mind Adso asks his mentor William of Baskerville “what is the use of hiding books, if from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones?” William replies that “over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use.…” To which Adso, dumbfounded, asks “and is a library, then, an instrument not for distributing truth but for delaying its appearance?”

The task of the financial manager of a library is a formidable one. Wacht defines a financial manager as a person who manages the resources of an economic entity for the purposes of influencing the future outcome of its operations. The financial manager plays the major role in planning and measuring the organization's needs for funds, raising the necessary funds, and making certain that the funds acquired are properly employed. A financial manager must also estimate the future cash flow associated with individual projects, in addition to the funds necessary for the total operation of a library. Other duties include the evaluation of prospective new investments and programs on the organization's operations.

As I once again go through the end‐of‐year analysis of my acquisitions accounts, it strikes me how much time I (and many others on the library staff) spend on accounting related to the acquisition of information. The library profession, like most, has developed a specialized language to help its members talk to each other. The information acquisition staff has to be adept at translating library terms into terms used by the business community they deal with. There are a number of accounting contact points in the acquisition process which are critical for almost every level of staff in the library.

In the library community no issue in recent years has been so contentious as the rising price of serials. Managing a serials collection in libraries has always been a difficult task—challenging in terms of definition, and in terms of tracking and keeping records. Lately, however, justifying increasing costs has become even more difficult. The publication of journal articles with titles such as “The Journal That Ate the Library” and “Periodical Price Escalation: A Library Response” dramatize the cost crisis that librarians face.

Many libraries have been affected by the proliferation and price inflation of serial publications in recent years. Academic libraries have been especially hard‐hit since they are trying to cope with increasing subscription prices while facing budget reductions or very small increases. Although requesting additional funds and freezing new subscriptions help as short‐term measures, some libraries have undertaken serials evaluation and cancellation programs as a more permanent solution. Our university library conducted a comprehensive serials review, which is described here. This article explains the justification for the review and describes the methodology used and the problems encountered in canceling serials subscriptions.

In 1912 Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins reopened the whole question, and investigated again the effects on animals of a synthetic diet. Again he demonstrated the importance of the addition of milk, and in addition he pointed out the importance of the proteins and that some were capable of maintaining life whilst others were inadequate so that animals failed to grow when fed on them. Through this work he systematised previous work and also added an important contribution to our knowledge of nutrition by his discovery of the essential amino acids. These have been extensively studied in recent years, and the following are now regarded as being essential, according to a table by William C. Rose:—