Library Review

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012426

THE THIRD SESSION of Unesco's International Advisory Committee on Bibliography, Documentation and Terminology was held in Moscow in April and the Final Report of that meeting has now been published. It contains farreaching recommendations on the organization of libraries and documentation in Unesco.

Mackerness, E.D.

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012427

IT WOULD BE GENERALLY ADMITTED that among the various amenities of a university hall of residence, the library performs a very important function. It is that part of the building where students can be sure of finding quietness and the atmosphere in which calm relaxation can be enjoyed away from the more restricted scope of the private studybedroom. Yet the successful organization of such a library presents certain difficulties which do not occur in other institutions offering library facilities. For one thing, it is virtually impossible to enforce regulations with the same degree of strictness as obtains in, say, a public library in most cases the hall library has to be staffed by voluntary helpers, and this rules out the introduction of an elaborate checkingout system. The library can, of course, be locked and unlocked at the discretion of the tutor in charge but students always resent what they take to be restrictions on their liberty, and any recourse to prohibitive measures is distasteful in a community where a fair degree of individual responsibility is taken for granted. A certain number of regulations are obviously essential but they can seldom be observed with absolute punctiliousness. Apart from purely technical details, howeversuch things as hours of opening, general access to books, and so onthere are several other matters which the hall of residence librarian has to face up to, if he is going to make the library a congenial centre of enlightenment rather than a mere storehouse for a growing accumulation of volumes.

Hay, Daniel

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012428

WRITING on The Personality of John Scotus Fr. Vincent Fochtmann, O.F.M., says

Ottley, George

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012429

THE FUNCTION OF THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN is to conduct requests for knowledge to known or to possible sources. He can sometimes do this by turning with armlength familiarity to a bay full of familiar friends B.N.B., Besterman, Walford, Britannica, Willings and an increasing number and variety of bibliographical aids to specialized fields in current literature, but a request for wide, intensive and retrospective book coverage of a subject can set him dancing for a whole afternoon.

Holmes, W.K.

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012430

DO THE GIRLS of the Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh remember that the teaching staff once includedin the days when it was known at Queen Street Ladies' Collegea writer of considerable distinction James Logie Robertson was his name, but his works appeared with the penname Hugh Haliburton.

Hutton, M.

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012431

THE CLASSLESS STATE, considered by many to be socially ideal, is only achieved in the world of books by fiction. Rivalling the marketing boards in zeal, librarians passionately mark down eggs to the fifth place after the decimal 641.665 13 and, deaf to the entreaties of geographers, callously separate Mother Earth from her children. Why, then, should the most individualistic form of writing enjoy a sequestered Stellenbosch Is P. G. Wodehouse neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring that he must be denied a numbera privilege accorded him even in the concentration camp Must Harriet Beecher Stowe rub shoulders with Gertrude Stein and James Janeway doss down with Jerome K. Jerome It is hard luck for squares, who have moved in such different circles, to have to toe the party line, when, being immortal, they might reasonably expect to be given the freedom of the Heavenly City.

Fyfe, Janet

1965 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012432

SINCE every second Canadian one meets, be his name Taraschenko or Bobarovich, claims at least one Scottish ancestor, it might be expected that there would be some notable collections of Scottish literature or history to be found in Canadian libraries. These collections are, however, in fact relatively few in number, as I discovered when engaged recently in editing, on behalf of the Research Libraries Section of the Canadian Library Association, a Directory of Special Collections in Canadian Libraries. Only five librarians of the several hundred who kindly replied to my detailed and no doubt troublesome questionnaire mentioned in their replies any significant amount of specifically Scottish material.