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THE influence of wireless on libraries is marked. As a method of publicity it is unmatched. On April 20th the new secretary of the Library Association, Mr. Guy Keeling, joined the number of library broadcasters with a talk from 2 LO on “What Your Public Library can do for You.” The announcer said he regarded the talk as a fresh mark of the co‐operation between the B.B.C. and the public libraries which had been so fruitful in the past; and Mr. Keeling made his first real public appearance as Secretary with a clearly Stated account of our ordinary activities, enlivened with humour, and delivered in excellent manner. Together with all those who have any vision in the matter, he looks forward to co‐operation between all libraries.

Containing as it does many of the finest books published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Garrison Library of Gibraltar is no ordinary services' library. Its founding was due to that perceptive Captain (later Colonel) John Drinkwater, author of one of the most famous histories of the Great Siege of Gibraltar which lasted from 1779–1783, the History of the late siege (Spilsbury, 1785). Having suffered from a lack of reading material during the siege, Colonel Drinkwater saw the need for a good circulating library and club as a means of saving the officers of the garrison from “having their minds enervated and vitiated by dissipitation”. His appeal for books, shortly after the seige, attracted nearly 500 gifts which enabled the library to open pending the arrival of the 674 volumes on order from London, there being no bookshop in Gibraltar at that time.

Some 20 or 30 years ago, embarking on a managerial career was a safe and secure option. You could reasonably expect to join a company, work your way up the ladder, hit top management level and retire with a golden farewell as thanks for your loyalty. Not any more. As a result of the downsizing and restructuring of companies in the 1980s and 1990s, relationships between employer and employee are no longer so sturdy. These days very few can be totally confident their job is safe.

I AM one of those optimists who do not believe that there is anything very seriously amiss with the modern theatre. It is certainly very much alive, and has triumphantly confounded the critics who predicted that the advent of the “talkies” would deal it a death blow.

THE question is often being raised—why is it that there has been no outburst of art as a result of the period of stress through which Europe passed in the Great War? But this question seems to me to be based on an assumption which is entirely erroneous. A period of stress never does produce great art. To start with, the artist is not subject for his mental excitement to any extraneous occurrence: he is dependent on the impulse within him, not on external excitement. It is there. In any other condition of life and in any other period of history the artist would still be an artist. Take Wordsworth for example. At the time when he was producing the great bulk of his philosophic poetry, he was living the life almost of a recluse at Grasmere, watching but not participating in the march of events in the outside world. The poetic spirit in him was self‐nourishing, and did not need any such adventitious stimulus as was to be derived from playing a part in the stirring events which were going on in the world at that time.

THE vogue of the anthology is a peculiar and depressing symptom of contemporary taste. There is a wry significance in the fact that during the past ten years, when poetry has almost ceased to count as a cultural influence, anthologies have appeared in flocks. An anthology is a hold‐all, and value‐for‐money has a sure appeal in times of economic and intellectual bankruptcy. It is pleasant and convenient to have several hundred (in one case a thousand) pages of verse in handy compass and at a low price.

World War I is the pivot of twentieth century American history because it transformed the United States from a regional into a global power. As the fiftieth anniversary of World War II winds down, we remind ourselves of the first “Great War” and its continuing importance to American self‐conception and memory.

AFTER more than thirty‐three years THE LIBRARY WORLD appears in a new and, we hope our readers will agree, more attractive form. In making such a change the oldest of the independent British library journals is only following the precedent of practically all its contemporaries. The new age is impatient with long‐standing patterns in typography and in page sizes, and all crafts progress by such experiments as we are making. Our new form lends itself better than the old to illustration; we have selected a paper designed for that purpose, and illustrated articles will therefore be a feature of our issues. We shall continue as in the past to urge progress in every department of the library field by the admission of any matter which seems to have living interest for the body of librarians.

OUR fifty‐ninth volume is opened by this issue of the Library World, which has survived longer than any other independent library periodical. Some reflections, which may indeed seem repetitive, seem to be natural in the circumstances. We have a sense of gratitude to the number of readers, who as writers and subscribers have sustained us so long and will we trust continue to do so. From the first we have adhered closely to the thesis that our business was with the conduct of libraries and the activities, even personal ones, of librarians but not with their private affairs. We have endeavoured to initiate and to describe methods many of which are now commonplace in their acceptance. Thus J. D. Brown our founder and first Editor published in this his series on charging systems; Louis Stanley Jast his serial on his own cataloguing methods; Dr. E. A. Baker made known his views on the annotation of books; J. D. Stewart and Berwick Sayers wrote for those pages their study, afterwards published as the book The Card Catalogue—these are a few examples. The lighter forms of librarianship writing may be said to have been initiated in this country in our pages, for example the reports of the Pseudonyms' meetings which, it must be confessed, have a vague relation only to what actually took place at them; and the over‐thirty years' serial, Letters on Our Affairs, initiated in 1913 by one who became a world famous librarian, established, especially in its first decade, this style of critical writing which has had so many imitators.

EVERY time we have occasion to compare the work of different libraries or to obtain exact information about certain of their activities we wish once more that some standardised form and method could be generally adopted for statistics. We would like to see the Library Association take up this matter, which is at least as necessary as the Standardisation of Accounts. The L.A. Outline for Annual Statements is very useful, but it does not go far enough. Not only should it be decided what information should be presented; it should be laid down exactly what should be included under the different headings. The most necessary definition is what shall be embraced and excluded under the heading “fiction.” Some librarians, rightly or wrongly (personally we think wrongly, because it leads to confusion and ambiguity) classify (as literature, or according to subject matter) and count as “non fiction” a varying proportion of the novels issued. Consequently, they are able to boast of a large non‐fiction percentage. Probably the practice has the reverse effect to that intended, since once it is realised that any novels are included in the non‐fiction percentage doubt arises as to the amount of “real” non‐fiction issued. The librarian who openly asserted that his non‐fiction percentage was so and so, but that it did not include a single work of prose fiction, would surely be in a stronger position. A more serious objection, however, is that comparison is impossible, and misleading. The librarian who keeps strictly to the old practice of calling a spade a spade is placed in a very unpleasant position if he is asked why another town, where he knows the non‐fiction issues to be on a par with his own, records a much higher non‐fiction percentage. Few reports, again, show what part of the juvenile issues are of non‐fiction. In fact, in every part of our statistical work we all follow our own methods and so make comparative studies impossible.