Two Librarians Buy Second-Hand Books in N.Y. to Stock Lamont

The University Library, in pro Christmas shopping spree, went on a buying trip last week and bought up 800 secondhand books in seven days.

This is all part of a project that library officials are working on to make sire that undergraduates will be able to find the sort of reading material they want in the new Lamont Library.

The books were bought by Herbert Kleist and F. N. Jones, on trips to New York and Philadelphia as well as in the second hand shops of Boston.

When the new library opens next term, its stacks will contain some 8,000 books. Among this collection will be about 8,000 volumes which are out of print and cannot be bought new. The librarians are still scorching for these important items.

During the war, many of these books were printed in limited quantities because of the shortage of paper. Therefore most publishers and not bring out now issues of sold-out books. Today the Lamont staff is combing all nearly second hand book stores looking for the rare items.

"We went no fast we're not sure how many bookstores we visited," the two men reported on their return. "But we covered most of those we knew and several we'd never heard of before."

In all their excursions the two librarians bought more than 2,000 out of print titles for the stacks of the new library.

At present Widner Library is designed mainly for graduate students and men doing research work and the system does not allow ordinary under graduates to browse freely in the stacks.

The open accessible shelves of Lamont will be stocked with a wide variety of volumes so all students will get a chance to look over the books without the trouble of the stack pass cards now used in Widener.