Calendar: 1974-1975 Page 410

Annual Report of the Delegacy xxix 47-83 per cent on serials as compared with the London average of 36-98 per cent and the national average of 32-41 per cent this seemed to indicate that too little money was being spent on books as opposed to serials and the Committee therefore decided that real attempt must be made to explore the ways in which the expenditure on serials could be reduced in the interest of general redistribution of expenditure as between books and serials given the premise that no substantial in- crease in the overall grant could be expected To this end faculties and departments were urged to reduce their commitments on sliding scale inversely related to their actual expenditure on serials ranging from 2-5 per cent to 10 per cent and further to consider how second reduction of the same order could be made in their serials commitments if the final quinquennial grant proved to be inadequate to maintain proper ratio as between serials and books as indeed has proved to be the case Detailed consideration of the resulting proposals would take place in the session 1973-74 Library Committee The election of Dr Davies to succeed Professor Cock- ng as Vice-Chairman of the Library Committee from the Lent term saw reversion to the pattern originally established some fifteen years ago in which the Chairman and Vice-Chairman represented between them the humanities and the sciences The adoption of rotation system for membership of the Committee led to the appointment of the immediate past Chairman and Vice-Chairman as ex officio mem- bers so that they would be available for re-election to office irrespec- tive of the number of years they had been in membership of the Committee At the end of the session the Committee took leave of Professor D'Silva and recorded its appreciation of his services during fourteen years' membership including four years as Vice- Chairman and four years as Chairman it was particularly sad that his untimely death during the long vacation while still officially in harness denied him well earned retirement in his Wiltshire cottage Purchases The total of 427 volumes and 713 pamphlets purchased during the year including 701 volumes and 531 parts of periodicals re- fleets the financial stringency to which the Library was subjected until the final weeks of the financial year No new commitments for stand- ing orders were entered into during the session initially because of the