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THE Conference of the Library Association may be described as one without a press. The greatest dailies had the barest references to it, a fact which is surprising and lends us matter for reflection. If an admittedly national service, almost universal in application, can be completely ignored in its annual gatherings, what is to be thought? Is it that libraries are now so normal a part of the social landscape that they may be taken for granted? Are they so insignificant that they do not merit notice? Alternatively, were our proceedings too dull for the dramatic necessities of the reporter? Or, finally, was it because the general publicity of the L.A. is not aggressive, is indeed inert? These questions every librarian and library authority may ask and have a right to the answer.

TO some, Annual Estimates this year may have a nightmarish quality. Not perhaps so much in the safe areas to which many who had the means to do so have gone with those means and no doubt are contributing part of them to the local exchequers; but in the so‐called “dangerous” areas which have lost them and their means and have, because of their liability to air raids, huge expenditure on A.R.P., the librarian may have a severe battle to get what he needs to maintain his work. Our own policy would be to concentrate, so far as is possible, upon the book fund and on salaries. If these can be retained at a fair amount much good will ensue.

OUR publication date precludes more than the beginning of our study on the Library Association Conference which, from the point of view of numbers, has been one of the largest. We shall continue in our next issue such comment upon it as the importance of the subjects under discussion would seem to warrant.