PLURAL OR SINGULAR?

Recently, when six professors put their heads together in an attempt to select the ten most useful and interesting books in the world, two of them made a radical departure from precedent by failing to include the Bible in their lists. Of a possible sixty volumes, there were more than thirty different single choices, showing that even professors cannot always agree in a literary ballot. One of the men is said to have voted for a volume written by himself.

As with the selection of ten books, so even with a collection of a million everyone cannot be satisfied. All the books which have ever been printed could never be assembled in a single spot even if a library could be built large enough to contain them. In the official report made by Professor Coolidge, Widener Library's collection is described as "better rounded out than almost any of the great European libraries," although it contains fewer rare books than many others, and only a limited number in many special fields. Its selection, however, is calculated to satisfy the varied wants of a university such as Harvard.

The report further points out that very few duplicate copies have been bought, because there are fewer men who want to read the same book at the same time in a University library, than would be the case ouside. In another clause the statement is made that "we do not do as much for the students as we should." And at is here that the Willener authorities have made their choice between popular books, and volumes which are more important to graduate students in research work. The more common text-books are present only "by ones and twos."

At first glance, this choice would seem to be due to shortsightedness. It may well be argued that many students, undergraduates particularly, are hampered in their studies by the shortage of some of these every-day volumes and by the difficulties of securing them at the desired time. But most of these are texts which the majority of students are able to purchase for themselves, or to secure in other libraries such as that of the Union; and all of them may be had at Widener with a little care in the arrangement of study-time. There is no place so appropriate to a collection of varied and representative books as a university library such as Widener, and as long as funds are limited, it is right that they should go to acquiring scholarly additions to the collection, rather than to duplicating volumes that are now readily available except at times of unusual demand. The University's debt to the general cause of learning is greater than to the personal convenience of a few students.