From Monday to Friday a Librarians' Conference has been held
in the theatre of the London Institution, and it has been attended by about 150 representatives, the great German librarians being, however, mostly conspicuous by their absence. Many useful sub- jects,—like the best method of book classification, the best method of rendering free libraries useful to the people,—were discussed, tut perhaps at the present moment the most interesting theme de- bated was the proper development of University libraries, which was raised by Mr. Roberts, formerly librarian to All Souls, in a very able paper. His chief proposal was that the College of All Souls, with revenues likely soon to amount to £24,000 a year, should become a sort of staff for the administration and develop- ment of the Bodleian, the valuable law library of All Souls being -treated as a library supplementary of the Bodleian. He pro- poses that there should be six sub-librarians of the Bodleian, Fellows of the College, to whose salaries £3,000 a year would be 'devoted ; and as these would usually be men specially versed in particular departments of literature or science, the endowments devoted to them might be fairly considered as not unlikely to be in some degree a trial of the principle of the "endowment of research." Without a first-rate and carefully-classified library, a University 'must soon cease to be a fit place for original research at all, for all profitable investigation must now proceed from a minute know- ledge of the past. If Mr. Robarts's conception is worked out, we shall have it officially acknowledged in the new form of All Souls, that the modern recipe for the intellectual stimulus of all -souls is to give them easy and methodical access to all books.
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