The Library World Volume 20 Issue 12

The necessary disadvantages contingent upon a time of war grow in emphasis, and one of these is undoubtedly the infrequency of the gatherings of the Library Association. As a result there has been so far no means of ventilating the question of a Library Association Conference for 1918. We have turned in vain to the pages of the official journal for any record of the intentions of the Council in this direction; and the complaints which were justly made last year as to the delay in making arrangements or at least preliminary announcements seem to have been without effect. This is a state of affairs which the profession should not endure calmly. No conference held in September or thereabouts can be expected to succeed unless it is announced before June. It may be that the Council works in spasmodic fashion, and is under the comfortable delusion that everybody else does. It should be disabused of this notion speedily. Many librarians have already made their arrangements for the summer, and will not be turned from them by the tardy decisions of Caxton Hall. As for the general question of whether a conference should be held or not, it must be clear to most of us that all the arguments that weighed for a conference in 1917 are equally weighty in 1918.