Curia

Duracuva plastic overjacket, which not only prolongs the life of the boards but also means that the shelves are enlivened by the original bright dust-jackets.

From a librarian's viewpoint, however, the two most interesting advances made this year have been in the subject indexes of the History and English sections. Any fool can use the author index once he has learned the alphabet : it is the subject index which really counts if the maximum information is to be gleaned from a library. The usual procedure is merely to duplicate the author-index-card in the appropriate division of the subject index. In the English section, Wightman has now taken an important step forward by cataloguing individual critical essays appearing in composite works; that is, he has separately indexed on pink cards under appropriate subject headings various collections of essays which might otherwise have been overlooked. Similarly, Collins has catalogued under subject titles all the more important essays in the back numbers of that excellent periodical `History Today' which we have collected over several years. These achievements, scaled down to the stature of a school library, are the real British Museum stuff, and these monitors are to be warmly commended on their efforts.

Last term we passed the 6,000 mark in the accession of books, but there seems little point in listing the year's purchase of books. The sections which have been most notably strengthened during the past year have been those devoted to Religion (thanks to the Chaplain), Geography (which must be kept vigilantly up-to-date), Biology, and the Elizabethan and Jacobean shelves of the English section. Finally we should like to thank all the library monitors for their stout efforts throughout the year, not least for helping us to cope with library periods for a number of forms during the Christmas Term. B.H.H.

THE CURIA

At the preliminary meeting three new members were elected to the Society, and later in the term our numbers were increased to the maximum by further elections. J. J. Rhodes was elected Chairman for the term and C. D. Ibberson Secretary.

The first main meeting took the form of two talks by members. J. 0. Armstrong spoke interestly on the planets of our solar system, and F. D. Lavender spoke wittily on Humour.

For the second meeting, the Society paid a visit to the York Film Society to see Orson Welles"Othello'. Orson Welles both produced and starred in this great film, and it was greatly enjoyed by our members.

Mr. Gailey addressed the Society on "The Science of conditioned reflexes" at our third meeting, and his interesting subject was, for the most part, new to members.