Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/200

 !88 The Library. earlier issue of the volume there is a summary of contents, a list of artists, and one of sculpture and architecture ; but these all disappear in the subsequent issue of the same volume. Now the summary and lists were of undoubted importance ; but something of still greater value was omitted viz., a bibliography of the subject, which makes its appearance in the re-issued volume at the expense of the lists referred to. The bibliography is singularly comprehensive, and is of the utmost value. The publishers evidently had a keen sense of this, or they would not have inserted it by sacrificing other valuable matter which, it is to be hoped, will re-appear in a future edition. The above references and quotations prove that there have been important revisions in the " ninth " edition ; and the information which enables a book-buyer to discriminate as to the value of different sets, which appear to be identical, is a " secret " worth knowing. The examples I have furnished of variations in the text, and the addition of indexes to important subjects, very considerably increase the literary and monetary value of the volumes in which they appear, and the work as a whole. This is particularly the case when the volumes are likely to be in frequent requisition, as in a public library. I do not agree with Messrs. Black as to the injustice of making addi- tions and corrections in the ninth edition ; the injustice, if any, was in making them without a notification in the re-issue, and then in impugning the veracity of my statement by denying that the revisions had been made. EDWARD FOSKETT. LIBRARY STAFFS. SIR, The article by Miss Richardson in last month's issue of THE LIBRARY is worth some discussion, and I propose to touch on a point which threatens before long to add another problem to those already existing in an unsolved condition. I refer to the whole question of employment in public libraries. The difficulties in the way of educated men and women obtaining good positions in public libraries are likely to increase as time advances, largely for the reason that the present rate limitation makes it absolutely impossible to pay large salaries to anyone, much less those demanded by persons possessing the qualifications which both Miss Richardson and Miss James have described. The apprentice- ship system is a necessity of the financial position in which nearly every public library finds itself, and before the aspirations of well-educated and mature, but otherwise utterly unpractical college graduates are satisfied, it becomes every librarian to see to the advancement of those of his own staff, male or female, who have gone through the mill of elementary librarianship. Colleges and high schools are pouring out young men and women by the score, all with an education sufficiently valuable to rank as a marketable commodity, and numbers of these are clamouring for immediate entrance into libraries at salaries commensurate to their attain- ments. However much my sympathy goes out to these seekers of genteel employment, my idea of justice moves me to demand that before any- thing is done for them, something should be done for the small army of Subhc library assistants who have borne the brunt of the toil of bringing ritish librarianship to its present high state of efficiency, and who have in many cases spent from ten to fifteen years in subordinate positions. I know of many cases in which, on the strength of a comparatively useless classical degree, combined with inside influence, university graduates have been placed in library positions for which their training was practi- cally useless, and who prove and publish their utter incapacity by travel-