Communications.

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON:- Doubtless the managers of the Library do as well as they can to make it serve the largest number, but occasionally they fail. Here is an instance of incongruity: I wished to take out a volume of Sparks' "Life of Washington." The card catalogue states that there are three copies of this work. I was told that two copies are not allowed to be taken from the Library, and that the third is reserved. Why, in the name of common sense, is not one of the two copies which may not be taken out put on the reserved shelf, and the copy now there allowed to circulate? Certainly, it seems ridiculous that two out of three copies should be useless, and that the third should be reserved. If a student wishes to make a study of Washington's speeches he must go to the Harvard Library, though all the rest of his materials-except this one book-are in his own library.

I had another experience two years ago of the abuse of the reserved book system. When wishing to use a text of the "Nibelunger Lied," I found that some instructor had put all the texts on the reserved list. It seems to me only fair that, where several copies of a work are in the Library, one at least should be kept in circulation. Instructors are too apt to reserve indiscriminately everything bearing on their subject, and thus to prevent readers who do not happen to take their courses from getting as much benefit from the Library as they have a right to expect. Cannot this be remedied? '81.