BUTTON, BUTTON ...

With the house libraries now an integral part of the educational system at Harvard and the basic stock of volumes laid in it is time to consider what new additions will add most to the libraries' usefulness. At present one of the chief faults is the relative lack of book used for outside reading in the more popular courses like Economics A, Fine Arts 1b and Government 1.

Many if not most, of those taking these and similar courses are upperclassmen, and hence the sole representative specimen of the course usually available in the houses is alternately worried and neglected by the ravenous readers, depending whether weekly quizzes are in the offing or not. Likewise the demand is further accentuated by the fact that reading in these courses is usually so extensive as to make it impossible for the average, student to acquire his own outfit. The situation is such, in short, that much time and temper are lost waiting for the desired volume to reappear upon the shelves.

These difficulties should be remedied by the prompt purchase of more of the texts required. There seems to be no good reason why the shelves of the house libraries should be further stocked with best sellers or ancient tomes of interest only to the occasional antiquarian while fundamental text-books are inadequate in number. Nor does the existence of more complete libraries like Boylston and Fogg furnish any excuse for compelling the inquiring student to wallow through several blocks of New England weather to cover his weekly reading assignments.