Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1936. Volume 7. Number 3.

The Library

page 3

The Library

Use and Misuse

Mine of Information

You must forgive a librarian if his first word to freshmen is about the library rules. No library can get on without them. Make a point of reading them. Make a point of reading them (in the College Calendar) beore you begin to use the library. For the rest, the librarian has devoured hardly any students of recent years. Try your luck.

We have a good library, containing some 35,000 volumes of well-selected books, and you are sure to find something that you can are sure to find something that you can get your teeth into. We don't mind the teeth, but we hate fingerprints and coffee-stains and all such marks of rough usage. And once pushed off the edge of a table a big book is never quite the same again. As for marking a book with a penel-men have been disembowelled for less! We are all very proud of our library and look for your help in keeping it in shape.

Ways of Approach.

There are two ways of approaching a library and you ought to try both. First of all, you ought to approach it as a cow approaches good pasture—unanxiously, without plan, taking what comes. No amount of explanation and guidanceand bibliographical aid can take the place of browsing. And don't let your professors keep you in their own paddocks-half the fun of being at a University consists in trying other people's grass. So take an hour off occasionally just to look around. Read a page here and a page there, a chapter here and a chapter there, and you may discover a new world. The other way of approaching a library is the methodical, scholarly way; and if you mean business you must settle down to that. The only scholarly way to approach the library is through the catalogue. And a catalogue is a thing that goes by rules. Our catalogue, so far as the first 28,000 books are concerned, is unsatisfactory and will have to be done over again; but all later books are catalogued according to the code of rules adopted by the British and American library associations. If you are going to pass four years in the library, you ought to learn the chief rules.

Classification.

At present the books are arranged on the shelves according to a simple classification. You can master it in ten minutes. Unfortunately it is almost useless unless you already know what particular book you want. We intend to begin to re-classify the whole library this year in such a way that you will be ableto find all the books dealing with a particular topic on a single shelf-or at any rate on a few shelves.

There is a subject catalogue for the last 6,000 books which we have received. It is rapidly growing. A list of new books is posted on the notice-board (at the main in door) at the end of each month, and the new books are kept to gether for about a month on shelves opposite the counter. Any reader may recommend books for purchase-giving author, title, publisher and year of publication and price of the book required. We don't undertake to buy the book, but we shall consider it on its merits.