Calendar: 1969-1970 Page 402

xl Annual Report of the Delegacy reading rooms where they can incidentally supervise and help readers this latter practice must inevitably be extended even at the expense of some seats for readers on the ground that it is pointless providing accommodation for readers who cannot be offered the service they are entitled to expect Many of the functions of an academic library are necessarily unfulfilled or filled inadequately at King's owing to the shortage of staff in particular the typing of catalogue cards is much in arrears and the production of regular accession lists abandoned the reclassification of the Library is at standstill proposals for longer hours of opening cannot be entertained the recall of overdue books is not carried out promptly and much clerical work particularly in the interest of the Centre for Military Archives remains undone Yet the Library is called upon to meet ever-increasing demands for services by academic departments and individual readers accessions have in- creased by 56 per cent and demands for inter-library loans by 165 per cent over the past five years Proposals have been put forward for the appointment of additional catalogue typists juniors for general duties and senior assistant librarians-a grade hitherto not represented at King's-for descriptive cataloguing and the supervising of borrowers' records these last-named to relieve assistant librarians of routine work to enable them to concentrate on duties requiring the application of their specialised academic knowledge One additional catalogue typist has in fact been authorised to operate the second Ultronic tape type- writer acquired to help overtake the backlog of catalogue typing but it is clear that other appointments at the non-academic level are essen- tial if the service offered by the Library to the College is not to grind to halt The Librarian took part in an international seminar on university libraries at Birmingham in April organised by the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries under the auspices of UNESCO He was elected secretary of the university libraries sub-section of the International Federation of Library Associations for period of three years and as such attended the meeting of the Federation's general council at Frankfurt-am-Main in August he also undertook the duties of secretary of the Federation's national and university libraries section for twelve months Mr Harvey attended seminar on the train- ing of scientists in the use of libraries at the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and Mr Jones attended workshop on law librarianship organised by the Leeds College of Commerce Mr Grant the archivist in the Centre for Military Archives