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So true! I made several of the librarians at UCSD very angry because I insisted on checking out books that they had decided to send off to store or dump because no one read them. One refused to check out Grammatica Celtica to me because in was in Latin about Irish grammar and no one read Latin or cared about Celtic grammar. I was loud enough in my objections that another librarian intervened; however, when I had to turn it back in, they dumped it immediately and would not say where. I had offered to buy the book (it was only one volume of a two-vol. set (the other had been lost), but they had refused to sell it to me. The university libraries can be just as bads as public libraries. At least the public libraries sell books in open sales in lieu of disposing of books furtively. Scott Catledge -----Original Message----- From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Trevor Ogden Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 3:28 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [EPNL] In defence of Pei (WAS RE: [EPNL] Hillhillhill Hill) At 08:09 20/09/2010, Richard Coates wrote: >Scott gives me a good opportunity to add that much of my interest in >language was stimulated by the holdings of the Grimsby Public >Library Service, including books by Pei, Ernest Weekley, Simeon >Potter, Anthony Burgess and similar unfashionable writers whose work >in making philology and linguistics accessible to an English >teenager I wouldn't dream of denigrating. The library also held >"Teach Yourself Samoan" and Bloomfield's "Language" on the open >shelves. Anyone know such a rich public library in a small town? The problem is that today public libraries do not hold such books for long, but sell them off, even if they had them in the first place. In the early 1970s I read a lot of old books from Morningside library (Edinburgh), as I know from the notes I took from them I looked in the library a couple of years ago and all those books were cleared away of course. If we know what we want these days the internet makes it much easier to find, but the days of serendipitous browsing of dusty shelves in unfrequented corners of local libraries are over. Trevor Trevor Ogden Abingdon, Oxfordshire [log in to unmask]