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The method of dealing with the proposed additions varies in different libraries. In the Battersea Library, the librarian makes an author‐entry on a cataloguing slip for each book he proposes, with name of publisher, price, and, if necessary, a note as to the review of the work, and its suitability for addition to the library. Before each committee meeting these are arranged in alphabetical order, and at the committee the librarian calls them over and marks on each the decision arrived at. Afterwards the slips can be sorted into “rejected,” “postponed,” and “ordered,” and dealt with accordingly. The “ordered” slips can again be sorted into two lots, one for books to be purchased new, and the other for those whose purchase is deferred until they can be met with second‐hand. When the books are received from the vendors, the number of copies, and the branch libraries to which they are allocated, are marked upon the slips. By this means a rough record is kept of the additions to the library, which is of great use to the librarian.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.

The Daily Telegraph has recently published several articles and a considerable amount of correspondence relating to malt whisky and the tricks of the whisky trade. As is usually the case when a daily newspaper takes up a subject of this kind, a number of well ‐ meaning people make a variety of suggestions as to what ought to be done to secure the purification of the particular Augean stable under discussion and to ensure the reception by the purchaser of the article which he really desires to have. But what ought to be done and what can be done are two very different things, and the question of what it is possible to do in the present state of scientific knowledge—and under the existing law as it is at present administered— is, as a rule, avoided by the writers referred to. It has been suggested, for instance, that it should be made compulsory that all vessels in which spirits are sold should bear a label distinctly stating the exact nature of the contents of such vessels. This would be an excellent suggestion if it could be effectively carried out, but, before this can be done, it is necessary to devise a method of compulsion. A man who sells as malt whisky an article mainly or entirely composed of spirit to which that title should not be applied would not have any very serious scruples as to the truth of the statements which appear on his labels. He must be compelled to act honestly by some sufficient force, and, short of a law which would permit the manufacture and “blending” of whisky to be carried out by certain persons only, according to specified rules, and under strict Government supervision in every case, no legislative enactments whatever would have the effect of preventing the various forms of this particular fraud. At present there are no legal definitions whereby the composition and characters of the articles described as “malt whisky” and “whisky” are laid down, excepting the definitions which may be held to be implied in the application of the 6th section of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 to the case. This section requires that an article shall be of the “nature, substance, and quality demanded by the purchaser.” On the strength of this section it is quite unjustifiably assumed that the compulsion referred to can be effectively secured by the operation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. According to our legal system it is essential under the criminal Acts— and the Food Adulteration Acts are criminal Acts—for the prosecuting authority to prove beyond all possibility of question that a person charged with an offence is guilty of that offence, and, in regard to the matter under consideration, it would therefore be necessary to absolutely prove by scientific evidence that any given mixed spirit, for the sale of which as malt whisky a prosecution had been instituted, was not of the nature, substance, and quality of the article demanded. Under the present conditions relating to sampling under the Acts this would be impracticable, except, possibly, on very broad lines; and, assuming that scientific investigation resulted in the possibility of fixing clear and definite points of distinction between the true and the false, there would still be the enormous difficulties and the heavy expenses attending the proving of offences of this character to the satisfaction of the Courts—difficulties and expenses which local authorities cannot fairly be expected to face. If, after the lengthy and expensive investigations that would be necessary, and which could only be properly carried out with Government aid, by a scientific Commission appointed by the Government, it were found possible to establish working definitions and standards, these would necessarily be only applicable to a limited extent, just as is at present the case in regard to milk and butter; while the question of quality can never be dealt with under repressive Acts of, Parliament of any kind. Assuming the establishment of standards of some kind we fully admit the possibility, under altered legal conditions, of checking the grosser forms of whisky sophistication by the employment of legal machinery, as is done with various other products; but vast amounts of various spirit mixtures could still be sold under false names with impunity. We should still have with us the legalised inferiority and the legalised adulteration of comparatively minor type which we have in the case of milk and butter. What is required and what alone can be effective, in dealing with sophistications which the law can never reach, is the provision of adequate and entirely independent guarantees which are based both on permanently‐applied analytical investigations carried out upon quantities of material which are not absurdly limited, and on a system of permanent and independent inspection,—both being supplied by some authority or authorities of sufficient standing. While the statements made by a reputable firm ought to carry weight, and ought, no doubt, to be accepted as valuable so far as they go, there is always necessarily and obviously a great element of weakness in the declarations put forward by a firm with respect to its own products. Particularly in view of modern commercial conditions something very much stronger than a personal asseveration as to the purity and excellence of one's own goods is now in reality required. That this is the case is shown by the fact that the demand for independent guarantees has recently been repeatedly voiced in the general press. The public are badly in want of education on all such questions and the Daily Telegraph is entitled to the thanks of the community for having initiated a discussion which can only be productive of good results in this direction.

THE completion of the sixth volume of the Library World may not be a very important or remarkable occurrence in the annals of journalism, but when one considers the meagre and spasmodic support which is generally accorded to professional magazines, it may be allowable for us to indulge in a little self‐congratulation on having lived so long, on little more than the minimum encouragement usually bestowed on literary ventures connected with librarianship. For some reason, which it is very difficult to understand, librarians will not buy their own professional literature, whether offered as books or magazines. An author may reckon on a possible circle of purchasers ranging between 200 and 300 in England, and perhaps thirty in the United States, for any library book which is not more than 5/‐ or 10/‐ in price; and an editor may be certain of a constituency, perhaps, double those numbers, if his journal is not too dull and overpowering. But this is practically the limit of encouragement which anyone can expect for non‐official library publications. The Colonies, the United States, and all the European countries are collectively hardly worth counting in any estimate of possible supporters of an English literary venture in librarianship, and what is even more discouraging, only a few British libraries, and hardly any library assistants or committee‐men, ever buy professional books of any kind. In these circumstances we may be allowed a little pardonable jubilation at having survived at all under such adverse circumstances.

ONE of the subjects which will probably come up for discussion at the Brighton meeting of the Library Association is that of instituting a Register of qualified librarians. This has already been talked about in various connections, and has now become an inevitable topic for discussion at meetings of branch associations owing to Messrs. Jast and Sayers having imitated the peripatetic method adopted by Mr. G. T. Shaw for securing a larger hearing for his scheme of improvement. A brief examination of the whole situation may not come amiss at this particular juncture, as most librarians have only a hazy idea of what is meant by the registration of Messrs. Jast and Sayers, and that proposed by the promoters of the Institute of Librarians; and wherein both proposals differ from the legal and effective registration secured to other professional bodies by statute or otherwise.

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.

The recent resolution of the Aberdeen Libraries Committee to stock shilling books, which was commented upon somewhat acidly by our contributor “Eratosthenes” last month, has aroused rather widespread interest. In particular it has given rise to an article in the Newsagent in which it is argued that the admirable policy of certain publishers in recent years of publishing standard works at cheap prices, has completely demoralised the argument for the lending department of public libraries as at present organised. As anybody can buy whole sets of books at a shilling a volume, the supposed necessity of a public institution providing books vanishes. The public library, if it is to retain its utility, ought to eschew such works and confine its function to more expensive works not attainable by persons of ordinary means; and much else. This is an example of the rather cheap trade reasoning in which a certain type of journalist delights to indulge. The aim of the public library, in his view, is so to adjust its activities that it shall not spoil the chance of a book‐seller selling one or two copies of a work in any given town. In actual fact its business is nothing of the kind; it is to supply the representative literature, first of this country, and then of the world, so far as its limited means permit, and price is an entirely secondary or tertiary consideration. It would be as reasonable to exclude daffodils from public parks because bulbs are cheap, and every man who wants them can buy them for himself, as to exclude any great book from a library because it happens to be cheap. Writers often enunciate good principles from low motives, and the principles which should determine the librarian against the cheap book are the qualities of fragile paper, poor type, poor sewing and poorer binding, which must necessarily accompany cheap books. Cheap “libraries,” which parade in the guise of text books or manuals of knowledge, should be excluded for reasons already given in these pages; they pretend to do what in most cases it is impossible to do. Bishop Mandell Creighton, in addressing library students at the London School of Economics, stated as a postulate of reading, that the student should always go to the largest book on his subject, and that in an equal amount of time he would gain more knowledge from the large book than he would from any brief conspectus of his subject. The fact that a journal should presume, from obviously inadequate knowledge, to question the utility of public lending libraries, in which shilling books form but an infinitesimal fraction of the stock, is surprising only to those among us who do not know that every journalist imagines he has been divinely inspired by Providence to expatiate upon libraries.

Liverpool Conference was amongst the largest, as it was amongst the most successful, of recent years. In all but the weather it excelled, and there were fine intervals even in that. We publish the “Letters on our Affairs” by our well known correspondent, Callimachus, so far as it covers the first three days; the conclusion will follow next month, with what futcher comments seem to be necessary. The Annual Business Meeting was a little less rowdy than that at Scarborough, but one thing emerged from it and that was the determination of the A.A.L. to survive independently. There is more in this than meets the eye, and discussion on it may be postponed until a calmer mood prevails on all sides.

OUR new volume opens in a grave moment in national history and it remains almost a marvel that libraries are Still not only able to persist, but even to expand their book‐work. Is it because of the truth in some admirable words of Charles Rupert Sanderson, in the Toronto Public Libraries Annual Report for 1941: “Whoever believes in democracy must believe in public libraries”? He goes on to say: “Unless any formal education period is to amount to little more than writing on the sand, it must be continued by a lifelong use of books—engendered in childhood, fostered in youth, and built into an adult habit.” Amongst the young people the need for books was never greater, and the difficulty of getting new books for them was never more marked. It is a time when older books should come into their own again. Another feature has been the desire for small collections of “lending books” in munition works, training centres, canteens, clubs and the innumerable other meeting places of men and women. The problem of the day is “time and again time.” There is none of it for travelling, even to libraries, although in the said centres men and women have often to Stand by for hours when they could, and would, read. Librarians have used the opportunity and may be called upon for more of these “dispersal” activities. Otherwise, with all our problems, of which as the writer on Letters on Our Affairs suggests, the greatest is books, although the staff problem is acute, our work flourishes so far as book‐use is concerned. Librarians have faith that a culture so based on books will outlast present cataclysms. People who can read can endure and people who endure can fight, both directly and indirectly, and keep on doing it.