Plate Glass Perpetuity

For eight years, ever since Lamont Library opened its plate-glass doors back in 1949, a chaste little exhibition of printing techniques has reposed in the showcases of the First Level. There, an offensively well-proportioned "Specimen of Fairfield Type" has untiringly announced its vital message to the daily passers-by: "Consult the Eyes as Sovereign Judges of Form."

The exhibit has become a perennial shrine for bored and procrastinating First Level habitues who may refresh their tired imaginations by pondering the relative merits of the wood-engravings and relief-printing processes, or by reflecting on the mysteries of a print entitled Reincarnation du Pere Ubu.

If the exhibit stays up much longer, the pressure of alumni sentiment will probably make it as permanent a fixture as Memorial Hall. Lamont librarians must act fast in removing it; its benign presence is fast becoming as pernicious a part of the library's spell as the bright oak wood-work and the hum of the fluorescent lights.