UNIVERSITY TEXT BOOK EXHIBITION

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30738, 30 April 1965, Page 8

UNIVERSITY TEXT BOOK EXHIBITION

The largest exhibition of university text books ever assembled in New Zealand will open in the Students’ Association building at Canterbury University on June 28. It will be open for a week. Organised by the British Publishers’ Association in cooperation with its New Zealand representatives, the exhibition will display 2000 books from 83 British publishing houses. They will be mainly on scientific and technological subjects, but there will also be books on such general subjects, as economics, geography, sociology, politics and current affairs. Most of the books will be textbooks for undergraduates, although there will be many recent publications for postgraduates and research students. Display panels will tell the story of the tremendous leap forward Britain has made in recent years in providing higher education of all kinds. Mr G. W. Moore, a publishers’ representative who Is organising the exhibition In

New Zealand, said an important aim of the exhibition was to find out from the university teaching staff and from students just what sort of textbooks they wanted. He said publishers' representatives would be present and visitors would be invited to comment frankly on the books and to say how far British educational publishers were meeting the needs of university departments in New Zealand. “In Britain, 25,000 new titles of all sorts of books are published each year,” said Mr Moore, “and it would be impossible for bookseller! to stock them all. A certain amount of selection is inevitable.

“On top of that, there is the fact that text books, particularly on scientific subjects, become out-dated in a very short time. “Because of the rapid changes taking place, it is often difficult for people to discover where they can obtain the sort of book they need.”