Calendar: 1966-1967 Page 366

Annual Report of the Delegacy xii THE LIBRARY Professor D'Silva was elected chairman of the Library Committee in succession to Professor Norman who had held this office for eleven years during which his wisdom and enthusiasm had contributed greatly to the development of the College Library Much progress was made during the session towards the detailed planning of the new Library The strictly limited space available within the quadrilateral requires the most economical use to be made of the area allocated to the Library and the Library Committee had con- sequently abandoned the idea of housing individual subject libraries in separate rooms however desirable these may be from an academic point of view in favour of providing medium-sized reading rooms each intended to accommodate number of related subject libraries The Government moratorium on public building will in the meantime bring increased difficulties to the Library until such time as the first part of the new Library can be made available for use for its principal store for less-used material has to be evacuated prior to demolition and the University's library depository at Egham to which 18 500 volumes have been transferred as temporary measure has already reached saturation point until its extension can be built In the meantime the completion of the south roof extension has per- mitted the return to the General Library of the History Music Philosophy and Science libraries which had been evacuated to tern- porary premises in the Strand and the German library has been decanted to temporary quarters in Surrey Street Although the expenditure on periodicals books and binding rose by some 14 per cent as compared with 1963-64 the number of items purchased-5 312 volumes and 372 pamphlets or parts of periodicals -rose by little over per cent This discrepancy may be attributable in some small measure to the purchase of expensive sets but the real cause must lie in the rising costs of library materials Recent figures compiled in Britain and in Germany show that book prices and periodical subscriptions increase by 5-10 per cent annually while the output of publishing grows at similar rate since an academic library needs both to pay the increased prices and to purchase constant proportion of the total published output it is clear that its financial resources must be increased by some 10 per cent each year The pros- pect of the College Library needing to function on constant grant for the remainder of the quinquennium has led the Library Committee