Show great elbr iry in distress an appeal for help has recently been made by the library at ox-ford which is the largest university library in the corid and is by only five national libraries th naattiioonnaallsee at paris the british museum the imperial library at st petersburg and the royal libra-ries at munich and berlin it receive for all durpos forty five thousand dollars a year and needs money to sup-port its staff toc prepare its catalogue aich is now years behind the time to heat the portrait gallery to repair the building alie finest public edifice of the time of james I1 and to provide shelves for books in the museum which has just been put at its disposal the contains over half a million volumes the separate titles in the catalogue to a million and a half the new accessions of books and pamphlets are nearly sixty million a year it has the second largest numismatic collection in the british empire books and coins are declared by the librarian to be in a state of chaos owing to the lack of funds the library needs at least seventy five thousand to be kept ef-ffiicciieenntt and he calls on the public for assistance as oxford owing to the agricultural depression is too poor to support its own library |