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BY NOW, many readers of NLW will have made a pilgrimage to Birmingham to see the new central library, and many others will have resolved to do so at the earliest opportunity.

IN DECEMBER 1969, I reviewed for the Library world the library literature of the 1960s'. I remember hoping, when I wrote that I might have the chance to perform a similar office for the library literature of the 1970s. The opportunity has come. But note: I have not used it to nominate the best publications of the decade. I would certainly like to think that I knew the best, and therefore also the worst, when I saw them, but after a swift reconnaissance of the decade's offerings I was appalled at what I had missed. There was a time when I could recite the names of every British librarian who had published at least one book on librarianship, and a fair number of American librarians besides. Who could do it now? Who would want to?

IF YOU should ever have a mind to experience the flavour of life in the British public library service during the early decades of this century, you could not do better than turn to the contemporary files of the periodicals of librarianship. Apart from its beastlier aspects, to which only a George Orwell could have done justice, the library journals reflected pretty well the public library world as it used to be: impoverished and imperfect, but optimistic and resilient.

THE BOUNDARIES have been set now and re‐organisation has come upon the public library world at its set date, approaching, occurring and passing on, like a lunar eclipse.

THE RECENT CLOSURE of the last of Boots' Booklovers' Libraries has seemingly brought us near the end of a long and fascinating chapter of library history. I call it a ‘chapter’ strictly in the figurative sense, as the story of the commercial circulating libraries remains virtually untold, largely because much of what we would like to know about them has been irretrievably lost, or else lies buried in the archives of the firms which operated them.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

ANDREW Carnegie stands apart from all other library benefactors. No other man has given so much, or given so widely, in the cause of library progress. Although the United Kingdom was not the main recipient of his bounty, it received from him, personally, about £12 million, and considerable sums, in addition, from the Trust which he founded. It might well be expected, therefore, that his name would always be in our minds and that we would remember him more kindly than any other library benefactor. But it is not so.

WHILE SO MUCH remains to be done on the lives of librarians who were truly eminent, it may seem perverse to explore the career of a librarian who was in no way outstanding. But the character of an age may sometimes be revealed as well by the lives of the obscure as by those of the great, and that is my main reason for returning to the life of Henry Bond.

A question of size THE Committee set up by the Minister of Education in 1957 to “consider the structure of the public library service in England and Wales, and to advise what changes, if any, should be made n the administrative arrangements, regard being had to the relation of public libraries to other libraries,” was the first such since the Kenyon Committee which reported in 1927. One of the most controversial aspects of the Roberts Committee's deliberations was the consideration of the minimum size (in terms of population) of an independent library system.

I PAST IMPERFECT At first there were rumours, inevitably. Then came an official announcement: as from January 1975 the Library Association record would appear in a new guise. (For various reasons, the transformation has been postponed for a year, until 1976).