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For me the earliest number of The Library Assistant still has upon it the silver glow which in middle age belongs to remembered dreams. To our Bournemouth Library in 1898 the modest bantling came, its pale blue cover crowded with advertisements, on the front of binder and bookseller; of the Cotgreave indicator and magazine racks on the back. A simply‐printed affair of twelve pages, as unpretentious as a country‐town bulletin, but a veritable window into life for many, however, and, in my sober judgment, a chief influence in the making of the library spirit of to‐day.

In LIBRARY REVIEW, Autumn, 1952, Mr. A. R. Hewitt considered the illegality of fines for overdue books. The present writer examines recent trends in respect of fines and other charges, with emphasis mainly on questions of principle rather than of law.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

THE LOOMING MASS OF BLACK COMBE, and the sky‐line of the central fells that he can see from his window—Scafell, Scafell Pike, Great End, Harter Fell, Bowfell, Crinkle Crags, Coniston Old Man—are among the great shaping influences in the work of Norman Nicholson. The fells, the rocks that make the fells, the becks and the rivers that flow down the fells all speak to him and through him. The other great influence on his writing is his religious belief. As he himself said recently in a radio broadcast: ‘The universe is not just a huge mechanical coffee‐grinder, ticking over and over without aim or purpose. It works to a pattern; it works to a plan. And part of the sheer enjoyment of being among mountains comes from our sometimes feeling swept up in the plan, where every end is a new beginning and every death a new birth.’

From whichever point of view we consider it, Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries is a remarkable work. Its two volumes provide a total of two thousand pages of text It is at once a history of libraries—and a history on a world scale—and a manual of library administration. It can, of course, be criticised on that score. Would it not have been better to have issued the history separately, in two still sizeable volumes, and to have presented the practical manual as a separate work? As published by Trubner in 1859 the manual occupies the second half of the second volume which itself consists of rather more than 1,100 pages. But to Edwards the history and the administration were by no means so clearly divisible. The practical chapter on book‐binding, for example, approaches the subject historically; prints a small selection of Roger Payne's bills; and is illustrated, inter alia, with lithographs of sixteenth century bindings.

WHILE MIGUEL DE CERNANTES SAAVEDRA languished as a guest of King Philip of Spain in a small noisome cell of the Madrid prison, he had time to do two things. He wrote each day at a rickety table with the quill and parchment he had bribed his jailer to supply. His manuscript concerned an old gentleman farmer, grey, lean, and weatherbeaten—like Cervantes himself, then fifty‐six—who had read so many books about chivalry that ‘his brain had dried up and he had gone completely out of his mind’. The old man was obsessed that he must leave his farm and ride out as the knights of old had done into a world of giants, maidens in distress and deep enchantment. Nearly four hundred years later the name of the old knight‐errant is still world famous, for Cervantes chose with care the name of his run‐down hero, Don Quixote. (Cervantes spelt it Quijote.)

Our symposium published in the Winter number has raised much interest among readers at home and in Canada and the United States. Now we have pleasure in publishing comments by James Brindle, County Librarian of Fife; Daniel Hay, Librarian, Public Library, Whitehaven; J. G. O'Leary, Borough Librarian, Dagenham; and Paul Sykes, City Librarian, Peterborough. There is also a contribution from an ex‐teacher reader who has used libraries much in his own career.

THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE between the larger German and English libraries is that, whereas English libraries like the British Museum and the Bodleian are not lending libraries, the German state libraries are. Hence the difference of emphasis in structure and organization or—put another way: the extreme simplicity of English set against the extraordinary complexity of German libraries. In the Bodleian one is still a person with a name. In the Bavarian State Library one is a computerized number. In the Guildhall Library in London uniformed assistants bring the books to one's place. In the New York City Library small boys dart about on roller skates in the magazine to fetch the books from the stacks. In Munich the books are delivered along rollers controlled by some magnificent robot to one of the five counters to which as a Reader one has been assigned—that is, if the books which one has ordered are present. Often they are not, which is obviously the disadvantage of allowing readers to take them home. Yet even to have obtained confirmation of their absence is an achievement which may have taken days!

‘An education which is practical, realistic and vocational must send boys and girls out into the world literate and able to perform simple calculations with confidence and accuracy.’ So says Half Our Future, the Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) which was asked by the Minister to advise him on the education of pupils aged 13 to 16 of average and less than average ability. The pupils who were the subject of this Report constitute approximately half those in secondary schools; those who will become eventually half the citizens of this country, half the workers, half the fathers and mothers.

TODAY the northernmost community library in Britain is the County Library of the Shetlands, with its headquarters at Lerwick, the county town, which was preceded by a series of vigorous organizations for more than a century. But for over a hundred years the Publick Bibliotheck at Kirkwall was not only the oldest but the farthest north in all Britain. The founder was William Baikie, member of a leading family and proprietor of the estate of Holland in the island of Stronsay in the Orkneys. Born about 1638, he probably attended the very old Grammar School in Kirkwall, he was a student at the University of Edinburgh in 1656 and proceeded m.a. in the next year. A relative, Rev. Thomas Baikie, minister first of the ‘second charge’ of Kirkwall and a zealous student, apparently influenced the young man toward a life in the church, but the opportunities near home were few. Orcadians were loath to move to the mainland, and besides William's inherited properties were substantial. So he spent his life as a respected heritor and collector of books.