UNIVERSITY LIBRARY IS THIRD LARGEST

The University Library, which passed the two-million mark last winter, is the third library in point of size in the country. Its present extent in number of volumes and pamphlets is 2,100,200, according to the annual report submitted by the Librarian, Mr. W. C. Lane '81, in the absence of Professor A. C. Collidge '87, Director of the Library. Only two libraries in the country, the Congressional Library at Washington and the New York Public Library are larger, and no other university collection rivals it in size.

Of the two million books, somewhat more than a million are housed in the Widener Memorial Library Building, while the others are distributed in 55 special and departmental libraries elsewhere in the University. The Law School Library alone, for example, contains nearly 250,000 volumes, while the collection at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the Medical School follow in the order named. The total number of volumes and pamphlets added to the collection during the course of the year was 92,834, a decided increase over the figures last winter.

According to the records of the Loan Desk, 121 159 books were lent for home, reading room, study, or stall use during the year 1920-21, in addition to those used for overnight reference work in the general and lower reading rooms, which amounted to over 25,000 volumes. These figures do not include the unrecorded use of books in the reading rooms and the stacks, which cannot be computed.

"The conditions still remain highly favorable for book purchases abroad", writes Mr. Lane in his report. "At the beginning of the year, we had, beside our normal income of about $42,000, an accumulated balance of $38,000 available for buying books, due to diminished purchases during the years of the war. We were, therefore, in the fortunate position of being able to spend freely our total expenditures for books amounting to $73,396, of which $62,775 was for the College Library, and $10,621 for the special libraries which buy for our Order Department--a large increase over any previous year. Other departments of the University, especially the Law School, have profited by the same unusual conditions, so that the total expenditure for books for all departments of the University has been a little over $107,000, and the total accessions about 93,000 books and pamphlets".

Among the various purchases of the year are a valuable collection of Savonarola tracts, a companion collection of Florentine Rapresentazionl; the library of the French archaeologist and scholar, the late Abbe Thedenat, comprising several thousand volumes; and an extensive collection of German pamphlets relating to the war