Calendar: 1972-1973 Page 415

Annual Report of the Delegacy xxxiii unsupervised outlying libraries There was therefore no cause for complacency for further accommodation was needed to enable the libraries to be given necessary expansion space for books and to provide the desirable ratio of readers' places to student numbers The urgent need for additional accommodation for the Library was indeed seized upon by the University Grants Committee during its visit to the College in May 1971 and as result the Librarian was called upon to put forward schemes which might be included in the Univer- sity's building programmes for 1972 75 to alleviate the situation Such temporary improvement as might be envisaged as result of the implementation of these schemes was however no substitute for the completion of the rehousing of the Library as unit whether through expansion eastwards in future stage of the present new building or in an entirely fresh purpose-built Library such as was proposed in last year's report Rationalisation of the science libraries welcome contribution to the improvement of the Library services to the College was to be found in the initiative of one scientific department which led to the setting up by the Library Committee of working party to consider how the Library's resources in the scientific and medical fields might be rationa- lised when the hitherto scattered subject libraries had been concentrated in the new building This working party representative of all the academic departments in these fields recommended that the entire resources of the Library in the scientific and medical fields should be pooled and reorganised in single classified sequence irrespective of the departments by which particular titles had in the past been recom- mended The working party further proposed that the books in all scientific and medical subjects should be housed in single reading room while the corresponding periodicals should be shelved together in second reading room the planning of the New Library not permitting the two categories of material to be accommodated in one room Steps were taken to fill lacunae in the Library's resources in those fields which had been neglected while each department concentrated on theimmedi- ate needs of its own staff and students and also to improve the collection of books of broad scientific interest The working party also urged that the senior staff to administer the science libraries should be augmented The proposals of this working party were implemented as far as was practicable in the reorganisation of the Library and the Library Com- mittee was gratified to receive authority to advance to 1971 72 the appointment of an additional Assistant Librarian for the science libraries