NOT FOR JUST A DAY

In some of the Houses the feeling has arisen that the House libraries should extend the customary overnight loan privilege to cover a more generous interval. The first practical stop taken in line with this feeling came recently when Adams House decided that unreserved fiction might be kept out by House members for a period as long as a week.

While it is true that such regulations are purely matters for each House to decide for itself, still they are not for that reason completely removed from the category of University interest, especially when, as in the present instance, the regulation concerns a vital part of the House Plan, and is such a one as other Houses are considering for their libraries. Hence before the Adams House Plan is accepted by other Houses it might be well to consider some of the objections to the proposal. This caution is doubly necessary, for these objections are too likely to be overlooked in the first enthusiasm which attends the launching of the plan.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of the House libraries is their convenience. On the one hand this convenience dispenses with the major reason for wanting to take books out by the week. When the library is a mile away, there is some excuse for reserving books over a long period; but when it is just around the corner this excuse is entirely removed. On the other hand, the proposed policy would tend to destroy this great virtue of convenience, for the books of the library would no longer be always readily accessible, but many of them would be scattered to all parts of the building. With these books stripped from the shelves, the House library would become as disappointing a place as Widener, where only too often the desired book "will be back December 4." Many a time when a student will want to relax of an evening in the "Omnibus of Crime," that worthy work will be lying untouched in the darkness of some bureau drawer.

It is no adequate protection that these books may be called in at any time. Since nothing but fiction is concerned, the student will rather put up with the inconvenience than set the requisite machinery to work to recover the book. In any case, the operation of the system would mean increased ransackings of students' rooms, together with increased work for the librarians. To keep track of the books out and their dates due, and to run down books at the request of students entail an amount of work, inconvenience, and expense which stand as serious objections to the plan.