The Library World Volume 1 Issue 2 Available to Purchase

WE have received a number of communications for the most part cordially welcoming The Library World and promising support. Among these are several appeals in favour of maintaining, in a crisp, brief manner, the practical side of the magazine to the exclusion of long papers on professional subjects written by cranks or conceited persons. We value this advice the more that it jumps with our own intentions, and also because experience has proved the folly of making a general journal of this kind a vehicle for the propagation of the tenets of any one school of librarianship. At the same time our columns will be open for the fair discussion of any Library problem, provided it has the ordinary qualities of interest and practicalness. It is only by the frank, frequent, and impersonal discussion of important questions that perfection can ever be attained. We do not agree with the opinion, so often heard, that every point, in Library administration has been discussed ad nauseam. If certain subjects crop up with much frequency, it will generally be found that a new aspect is presented at each repetition. Many experienced Librarians and other observers are of opinion that librarianship is at present in its infancy, and that great developments are looming in the near future. The air has been so greatly cleared in recent years that additional means may be looked for at any time as an act of governmental policy. With increased means will come enormous advances in Library policy and administration, and it shall be our endeavour to help towards this result by gathering and spreading information of a practical nature which will make for improvement. We shall neither ignore cranks nor the strictly orthodox Librarian, but give equal justice to both. So many useful and valuable ideas have come from the so‐called “cranks,” since history first commenced to chronicle their doings, that we shall be chary of rejecting any novelty because it may seem a “cranky” departure from established practice.