* * * .* The Bodleian Bodley's famous library has
long been overcrowded with books. When rival plans for its extension were rejected, the Rockefeller Foundation made a grant for a commission of five to inspect the great libraries of Europe and America. - The majority—Sir Frederic Kenyon, Sir Henry Miers, Sir Edmund Chambers and Mr. G. N. Clark—have now proposed that the old quadrangle shall be used for reading and reference rooms and that a new book store for 4,000,000 volumes shall be erected on the north side of Broad Street, facing the Sheldonian. The minority of one—Mr. H. R. F. Harrod—holds that readers should- have access to the shelves, and desires to intersperse numerous small studies and compartments among the stacks in the new book store. Mr. Harrod's scheme would cost £168,000 more than his colleagues' estimate of 1944,000, and would also be extremely difficult to work, while its advantages are at best hypothetical. The British Museum library has served the scholars of the world most efficiently for generations without giving them• access to the shelves.
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