A NEW UNIVERSITY PROSPECT: II ACCOMMODATING The LIBRARY IN The NEW UNIVERSITY Available to Purchase

‘THhis,’ wrote Mr Mackenzie a few weeks ago, ‘is the first formal report on the working of the Library; it covers a period of rather less than a year—from 16th September, 1963, when the Librarian arrived in Lancaster with half a dozen books in his brief‐case, until 31st July, 1964, when an effective library was in operation with a stock of over twenty thousand volumes.’ There, if we forgive Mr Mackenzie for his poet's licence, is the essence of the accommodation problem with which each new university is being faced. We are not being asked to expand existing book and reader accommodation, or to replace it by new building. We have started with nothing and we have to be operational a year or eighteen months afterwards.