THE BRITISH NATIONAL BOOK CENTRE AND ITS SERVICE TO SPECIAL LIBRARIES Available to Purchase

Most librarians are well known as hoarders of books, periodicals, pamphlets, any material in fact which might be of the slightest value to the users of their libraries. Whenever sufficient space allows, a stack room contains material which is in lesser demand, but even storerooms fill, and that remarkably quickly in these days when national and international agencies compete more and more with the general publisher. Thus the time soon comes when even the most inveterate hoarder has to prune his shelves. In the past he has spent part of his very busy working time producing lists of surplus material, and after much correspondence he has usually been able to dispose of a small part of his unwanted stock. The remainder was often sent for scrap, as only a limited amount of time could be spared for finding suitable locations for it. It can be easily seen that, as far as staff time was concerned, this was an un‐economical method of disposing of duplicates. It was impossible to be sure that even half of the libraries likely to be interested had been approached, and finally a suitable return for the material offered was seldom obtained. With the formation of a national interchange centre, however, all these difficulties have been overcome and a very large amount of material which before had gone to waste has been placed in useful circulation again.