The Editor Visits Burgess Library                    31

established, these new sciences also start to change. Anthropolo¬
gists who once measured the heads of "primitives" now measure
the marital and job satisfactions of the American white-collar
class, and the change is faithfully reflected on the shelves of
Burgess.

John Berthel, in charge of Butler Library (of which Burgess is
a part), added some comments of his own. He reminded us that
Burgess in term-time has to meet the daily reading requirements
of four to five thousand students. Its 20,000 volumes are thumbed
over many times in the reading-rooms, besides which each book
is borrowed an average of ten times during the year for outside
reading. He compared the ebb and flow of students, with sudden
influxes at the end of each lecture hour, to the violent rise and
fall of the tide in the Bay of Fundy. "We try to run Burgess," he
said, "with the streamlined efficiency of a factory assembly line.
At the same time it has to be flexible, compact, and sensitive to
changing interests; an epitome, not of the ivory tower, or of the
contemplative scriptorium of the Middle Ages, but of a great
modern university in action."

On the way out we were checked by a conscientious student for
contraband. Our battered notebook was passed. We had to aban¬
don our idea of returning and smuggling out some of the books
which had especially attracted us: the Skira Etruscan Painting,
Lloyd Morris's Incredible New York, Mills's White Collar. The
sequel to our visit to Burgess was another and more expensive
visit—to a bookstore.