The Library World Volume 49 Issue 1 Available to Purchase

IT is now just forty‐eight years since, on the first page of The Library World, James Duff Brown wrote: “for quite a number of years Librarians and Library Authorities have been urging the establishment of a magazine which will reflect accurately and systematically the various phases of modern library work and progress. A demand has also arisen for a magazine of a more independent nature than anything hitherto issued, or, at least, one which is not hampered in any way by official connexion with a Society or other public body.” As then, we open the first page of the Forty‐Ninth Volume we are glad to assert that through the two generations of our existence the policy, enunciated in our first Editorial has been sustained. It cannot be greatly improved upon for our future, although library policy may and will change rapidly if all present prognostications have any substance in them. We intend, so far as we can, to promote progress, to endeavour to allow expression to younger writers, to support all the good efforts of the Library Association and any other body which energizes libraries, but never to be subservient to them or fear to ask questions.