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an agency for bringing readers of every class into immediate contact with everything that is vital here and now. What, then, is the significance for the present day of an exhibition commemorating the six-hundredth anniversary of the death of a foreign | poet and scholar?

This question finds its best answer in the exhibition itself. The library's Dante-ana do not form a special collection and cannot show any considerable number of very old or rare items. The larger and more interesting portion of the exhibition consists of modern editions, commentaries and illustrations of Dante produced in the last quarter-century. The number, elaboration and costliness of these works bear eloquent testimony to the immense modern interest in the great Florentine. And when it is remembered that the publications displayed constitute but a small fraction of those in the possession of the Library and an almost infinitesimal part of what has been published during the past century, the tremendous significance of the poet's accomplishment must be evident to everyone.

In selecting the items for display, the object has been to bring together many different phases and types of Dante literature and illustration in several periods, rather than to crowd. the cases with all the available older editions, translations and commentaries. The exhibition is thus educational rather than bibliographical. To further this aim, most of the books are accompanied by brief explanatory notices, composed not for Dante scholars but for the general public.

A short appreciation of the poet and a fuller account of the exhibition will be found in the introduction to the Dante List, just published; it has also been issued as a special leaflet for distribution.

W. H. C.

THE NUMISMATIC MEETING.

At the invitation of the Boston Numismatic Society, the American Numismatic Association came to Boston this summer, and held its annual

convention from Aug. 20 to 25. There was an attendance of about a hundred, some of the members coming from as far west as Iowa. Visits, which for most were reverent pilgrimages, were made to Bunker Hill, Lexington, Concord, and Plymouth; there was a banquet at the Copley Plaza Hotel, a musical entertainment at the Faelten School, and a reception at the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Business sessions and a notable exhibition of Colonial and later paper money, and of ancient, mediaeval and modern coins, were held in the Lecture Hall of the Public Library, by the courtesy of the Librarian and Trustees, and were of much interest to the public. The Library's great numismatic treasure, the gold medal voted to Washington by the Continental Congress in 1776, to commemorate the evacuation of Boston, was exhibited to the convention by Mr. Wheeler.

The Association has about 700 members, American and foreign. It was founded in 1871 and incorporated by Congress in 1912. The Boston Numismatic Society has a membership of over forty.

H. L. W.

BODLEY'S LIBRARIAN AT

HARVARD.

An illustrated lecture on "The Bodleian Library" was given October 3, by Dr. Arthur E. Cowley, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Bodley's Librarian, in the lecture room of the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. The speaker was introduced by his host, Dr. Kirsopp Lake, Professor of Early Christian Literature at Harvard. Dr. Cowley said that he was the first Bodley's Librarian who had strayed so far; that he came not to talk but to learn. The views illustrated the library from the earliest times, showing the Quadrangle, the Radcliffe "Camera," the Picture Gallery, Bodley's bust, the clock given by Sir William Osler, and "the study less than six feet square, where the librarian was shut up and expected to study."

Dr. Cowley is carrying on the modernizing activities of his immediate predecessors. Nicholson (18821912) adopted a classification similar to that of Dewey, developed the foreign purchases and exchanges, and made the books more accessible. Falconer Madan (1912-1919) was before all a great bibliographer. His successor has extended the principle of copyright by which the library receives copies of every book copyrighted in the United Kingdom. The catalogue, till 1919, consisted of written slips pasted in folios, showing a great many titles at once. Since 1920, the slips have been printed, so that a larger number are visible at a glance. The problem of growth is to be met. by departmental libraries in charge of experts, near the main library, the head of which is to be an administrator, whose function it will be to control the whole "and restrain the experts."

"The English method," the lecturer said, "is to take a scholar, make him a librarian, and then pray Heaven he may prove to be an administrator. And yet he is expected, all in one morning, to translate a Greek colophon or the inscription on a Chinese tea-tray, to know the date of everything that is going to happen, everybody's genealogy, the title of every book and its price, but never to read; to travel widely, but always to stay in his own place when all that he is really thinking about is the price of mops." Card plans of the library were distributed, and the lecture was followed by a reception. Dr. Cowley plans to visit the principal American libraries.

L. E. T.

"THE GREAT DICTIONARY

DRIVE."

Probably never before in the history of the Library has there been such a call for dictionaries and encyclopaedias as came this summer. Two of the Boston papers were conducting extended puzzle contests, and for several weeks it was impossible to find anything in the form of an English dictionary which was not in constant use.

Indeed, people were actually sitting about, more or less patiently waiting their turn at Webster or the Standard. Hundreds of persons learned for the first time how to make use of these works of reference.

The writer happened to be in Bates. Hall on two Sunday afternoons when the rush came at two o'clock. By five minutes after the hour, every possible source of information had been seized upon and it is safe to say that nothing. was free for normal use until closing time.

The prizes were few compared with the thousands who were striving for them, but every one must have derived from the contests a certain amount of benefit, from those who learned for the first time what Lenin's real name was to those who discovered that "gob" is now in perfectly good standing in at least one dictionary. But let us hope that if any paper starts anything of this sort again there may be some advance notice, in order that the bindery may be free to devote all its time to the repair of the books involved.

MRS. GODDARD.

H. W. M.

Mrs. Frances H. Goddard entered the Library service April 11, 1892, as assistant in the Ordering Department and, with the exception of two years, served continuously until June 22, 1921. Her work, which at first was the care of French orders and accessions, gradually grew to include the charge of assigning the books for the Branches and Stations, a constantly increasing responsibility. She welcomed work, and was never so happy as when confronted by hundreds of volumes to be assigned to their proper places.

In June of this year she felt that she could no longer carry on her work and resigned to take a needed rest. She sailed for England the 17th of September, intending to make a long stay abroad. Her departure was regretted by all who knew her, especially by the associates with whom she had worked so cheerfully and faithfully for many years. T. E. M.

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THE LIFE OF THE LIBRARY.

It may be true that "corporations have no souls"; but it is even more true that an institution like the Boston Public Library has a vigorous life of its own, and a real personality.

Life develops through expression. It will be the purpose of this paper to chronicle the life of the Library, and to stimulate the growth of its personality by giving it a voice.

The spirit of an institution is a composite, enriched by the personalities of all the individuals who have a part in its work. LIBRARY LIFE Will

be a composite autobiography, to which every member of the staff will be expected to contribute his share. It will be the duty of the editors from month to month to shape this continuous story into some sort of unity, that we may be able to trace the growth in the corporate life of which each one of us is a part.

The editorial board is greatly pleased with the interest shown by all the staff, and their readiness to submit contributions for the paper. As gauged by this barometer, the spirit of the Library is healthy and eager; everyone is ready to go forward. We already have in hand much excellent news material for the next issue, which was crowded out of this one. Keep on sending it in; the appetite. of a newspaper is never satisfied.

One or two departments of the paper merit special mention. "With the Juniors," edited by Mr. Francis P. Znotas, is a recognition of the place in the life of the Library which that plucky sheet, The Library Bugle, won

for itself last spring. "The child is father of the man"; without the Bugle there might have been no LIBRARY LIFE.

"Our Neighbor Libraries" will be devoted, month by month, to the other institutions of the Boston district which help to make up the great group of which our own library is the centre. This family of libraries now has more than one hundred members, and is growing steadily; we ought to know more of our brothers and sisters. The department is inaugurated by a comprehensive article on the Special Libraries Association of Boston, written by its President, Mr. Ernest W. Chapin.

The familiar News Notes on Government Publications, the first staff paper published by the Library, now appears as a supplement to LIBRARY Life, under Miss Guerrier's editorship; the staff will not forget the debt which we owe to this pioneer for breaking the path which the new paper is to follow.

The programme of LIBRARY LIFE is a simple one: all the news that makes for a larger life. We are all proud of the Library; this paper will aim to increase our pride. We all want to help the Library; this paper will give us a chance. LIBRARY LIFE will seek to cultivate personality and to avoid personalities. It is your paper; the editors bespeak your co-operation.

Lindsay Swift is gone from among us. His forty-three years of service in the Library came to a sudden end on Sunday, September 11th. Few men connected with the Library have made a deeper impress on their associates; few have added so much distinction to the institution.

It is impossible to do justice to Mr. Swift's memory in this issue of LIBRARY LIFE; in the issue of November 15, we shall devote a considerable space to the story of his career and the tributes of those who knew him.

An admirable portrait of Mr. Swift, after the photograph by Miss Alice Austin, was published in the Quarterly Bulletin for Sept. 30. Any member of

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terested in the affairs of the Library, and inquired about her friends, wishing to be remembered to all.

JOHN GRANT MOULTON,

1869-1921.

Mr. Moulton, for many years librarian at Haverhill, had many friends among the staff of the Boston Public Library. He will be specially remembered for his spirited and delightfully informal illustrated lecture on his camp library experiences in the Le Mans area, France, given before the Staff Club' in April, 1920.

Mr. Moulton was born in Jamaica Plain, January 26, 1869, and was graduated from the from the Boston Latin School in 1888, and from Harvard College in 1892; he spent the next two years in fitting himself for his profession by study at the New York State Library School. He was successively librarian at Quincy, Illinois (1894-1898), and at Brockton (18981899), before entering upon the position to which he was to devote the remaining 22 years of his life. In Haverhill, where he succeeded Mr. Edward Capen, who was first librarian of the Boston Public Library, Mr. Moulton made the library an efficient centre of civic life, responsive to every need and interest of the community.

Though quiet and unobtrusive, he was a forceful leader in many fields of library work. He was successively secretary, vice-president, and president of the Massachusetts Library Club, and was largely responsible for its Bulletin; he helped to organize the Camp Devens library, and was later prominent in war library work, first in the South and then in France. He died July 7, 1921, after an illness of about a year.

An account of his life by his classmate, Dr. Harris P. Mosher, was printed in the Haverhill Gazette, July 28; it presents a sympathetic picture of the career of an able and devoted librarian, whom many of us are happy in having known.

F. H. C.

Departments and Branches

INFORMATION OFFICE.

CATALOGUE DEPARTMENT.

The cataloguers who deal with books for the Branches have been somewhat overwhelmed during the past few months by the unusually large purchases which the special ap

The admirable collection of material on Vocational Training, installed in the Information Office a year ago, is soon to have a companion in the file of current material on the kindred and very timely subject of Unemploy-propriation ment, now being prepared by a group of Radcliffe College alumnae, under the direction of Miss Jean Birdsall.

The enterprise originated in the desire of the Radcliffe alumnae, organized in connection with the campaign for a college endowment fund, to use their training for a real piece of public service. They offered their assistance to the delegates to the Unemployment Conference, through Mayor Andrew J. Peters, of Boston; the Mayor was quick to see the possibilities in this offer from a group of women trained in research, and at once accepted it in a letter from which we quote the following paragraphs:—

Will your organization, working under the direction of a trained graduate who has done work in research, compile in the Information Department of the Boston Public Library an information file on unemployment and allied subjects? Among other topics, treat "Seasonal Employment," "Standardization of Product," and "The possibilities of making delivery continuous in spite of seasonal demand, by adjustment of prices."

The formation of such a file will prove the training that your college gives its graduates to be of very real worth to the community.

In organizing the file, care will be taken to digest and outline the experience gained, so that it will be possible to give assistance in the formation of similar files in other libraries. The purpose will of course be to supplement, rather than to duplicate, collections of material already available. in other public collections.

has made possible. Gradually, however, the books are being taken care of and sent forward to their destinations. In these recent purchases for the Branches, particular attention has been given to supplying the demand for non-fiction, which is quite active in certain classes, notably industrial arts, biography, and pedagogy.

The Library's series of Brief Reading Lists receives frequent additions. The issues just published include one on Cookery and Preserving, compiled by Miss E. Carolyn Merrill, which returns to the field of Brief Reading List No. 2, "Domestic Production and Preservation of Food," a war-time publication, now long out of print; and one on Dante, compiled by Mr. L. E. Taylor, whose membership in the Dante Society indicates his special interest in the subject. A new edition of Mr. Conroy's list of "One-Act Plays in English," has become necessary, and will soon be off the press, and a list on Pageants is nearly ready for the printer.

To our larger bibliographies will soon be added a general list of modern works in Italian, prepared by Miss. Mary H. Rollins especially for Italian readers, with notes and editorial matter in their own language.

CHILDREN'S DEPARTMENT.

While there have been no story hours during the summer months, different members of the Children's Department have been going once. week to the children's wards in the

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