Book Return Plan Is Not Attracting Many Customers

Business has not exactly been booming for Richard H. Atkinson '52, proprietor of the Lamont Library book-returning service. But he is planning to keep his service going at least until hour exams, in the hope that increased reading will result in more business.

Atkinson has installed boxes in each of the seven Houses, in which students can leave their Lamont books at night and have them returned to the library before the 9 a.m. deadline.

Right at the beginning of the term, his total turnover was one or two books a day. It has crept up gradually so that he now collects an average of six or eight books in a morning's run, but that is still not a very encouraging total.

Atkinson blames the lack of business on two factors besides the obvious one that no reading is being done. First, most of the people he has spoken to "have never even heard of the service." Second, he fears that his ten-cent-per-book charge is too high for the students who take out several books in one evening, and who should be providing the major part of his income. He is thinking of reducing his price to five cents a book, in the hope of attracting some new customers.