Personalities in the Columns:
The First Decade
 

DALLAS PRATT
 

Columbia Library Columns was

ten years old in the fall of 1961

and I, too, completed my tenth

g—*«J ^f^^   ^^B*^"^   ' anniversary as Editor. Some per-

J"^ ^j*            ■«*   '   Jj* ) sonal  impressions   of  this  first

T" I '^A   '-"iS"    -*'"'' decade are, perhaps, in order. But

know how we put the magazine
together! Three times a year, Roland Baughman, Charles Mixer
and I lunch together at the Faculty Club and plan the next issue.
Sometimes a coming exhibition gives us an idea, sometimes a recent
gift to the Libraries. Rarely does an author come with an article
on a silver plate; we usually have to conceive the idea and then
think whom we can persuade to write about it. I am surprised at
how rarely we are refused, even though we sometimes leave things
too late and have to name an importunate deadline. In this issue,
for instance, our busy and distinguished authors have had to
complete their assignments between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
but they have done so uncomplainingly.

When the articles are at last in our hands, we have another
conference to choose the illustrations. We feel these make an im¬
portant contribution to the readability of the magazine. On the
day of the conference, piles of books with possibly usable pictures
clutter A-Ir. Mixer's office. Many are called but few are chosen.