INVITATION TO INERTIA

It is encouraging to know that the library authorities are investigating undergraduate suggestions for the limitation of book borrowing to two weeks. Widener this year has been buffeted by criticisms of its poor lighting and the exclusiveness of its stack privileges. But while its guardians may find it difficult to correct structural faults---to cast aside inefficient desk lamps and supply the kind of competent over-head lighting system that delights the denizens of Langdell Hall---still the library overlords can eliminate the blight from borrowing.

Widener is one of the few libraries that permits loans for a months and this privilege is less a stimulus to study than an invitation to inertia. The normal student who has four weeks in which to note a few chapter headings, will ignore the work until about three days before the book is due. All but the more conscientious students of the more intricate volumes can complete the appointed task in two weeks. Those who cannot, may renew the book in the absence of demand. Their long and perhaps unnecessary trek to the delivery desk may be inconvenient, but this inconvenience must be balanced against the irritation of those who have to wait unnecessarily long periods.

The present system should be changed, because under it the raw material situation in Turkestan may remain unexplored and the forest laws of medieval England may lie forgotten beneath the silt of centuries while the student who would burrow for such knowledge is balked by the carelessness of other Widener patrons. No longer should the four week privilege obstruct the channels of knowledge.