THE IDEAL LIBRARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22546, 13 April 1935, Page 19

THE IDEAL LIBRARY

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —Professor Thompson's dream of an ideal library in yesterday's Daily Times makes good reading, but as it remains a dream it is worth considering a more practical method of improving the Otago University library. On the supposition that there is a substantial sum set aside for the purchase of books, the University should obtain the catalogues of books published by the Oxford University Press, the Cambridge University Press, the Glasgow University Press, and say, half a dozen of the catalogues of the great London publishers as Macmillan, Longmans, Smith and Elder, Allen and Unwin, Murray and Blackwood and, out of this immense lot to choose from, the University Council and professors might select books to the amount specified. On this simple method the University library would become enormously enriched as the years went by, without the unnecessary expense of erecting a new library building and paying heavy salaries to assistants. .... . , . America is famed for its libraries, but I rather fancy we British, in the matter of intellectual output, are to the Americans what the Greeks are to us.—l am, etc, An Old Librarian. April 11.