GREAT LIBRARY

Evening Post, Issue 99, 24 October 1934, Page 10

GREAT LIBRARY

OPENED AT CAMBRIDGE

ROCKEFELLER GENEROSITY

THE KING'S TRIBUTE

(British Official Wireless.) (Received October 24, 9 a.m.) RUGBY, October 22. The King, accompanied by the Queen, opened the new Cambridge University Library today. It is probably the most up-to-date library in the world and has cost moro than £500,000. The library possesses 1,500,000 books, in addition to innumerable magazines and papers, as all publications are sent thero under copyright law. Miles of book shelving are already filled. It has been possible to open the library today owing largely to tho munificence of the International Education Board founded by Mr. John D. Rockfeller, Jun. An appeal for funds had started when this foundation offfered £250,000, if a like sum were collected in a given time. The money was duly raised. The Rockfeller Foundation also mado an offer of £450,000 for the advancement of biological research at Cambridge under similar conditions, -and magnificent new laboratories were publicly .opened today. In his address the King said:— In the long history of your University there have been many notable gifts, but the tradition .of the past has been unequalled or excelled by the generosity and public spirit manifested in our own day. .The magnificent gift from the International Education Board reminds us not only that there are special ties of friendship and kinship between this country and the United States,' but also that education knows no national frontiers. The pursuit of knowledge draws together tlie peoples of the world in fellowship of co-opera-tive effort. A library such as this is both a power-house and a testing station of educational activities. It inspires and helps the work of specialists in every field of research and it provides from generation to generation standards of truth and sound learning by which the fresh products of science and scholarship are tried. It is the workshop of new knowledge and the storehouse of seasoned wisdom.