again, score in hand and reference works at his side, thanks to the
record library which he will find only in a first-class specialized library.
Some of these large libraries anticipate his wishes still further by
undertaking in co-operation with other specialized bodies the publi-
cation of the principal unpublished musical works in their collection,
or by arranging concerts of contemporary music, often consisting of
works commissioned for the occasion or already in their possession.
This brings us to the problem of contemporary music. Obviously a
novice cannot be asked to buy all that interests him, all that he has
heard or would like to hear, particularly in the case of modern foreign
music which he will not often be able to obtain in his own country.
All national or central music libraries-which are maintained by depo-
sit, voluntary gifts from publishers or purchases on very favourable
terms-should possess the whole of the current musical and musico-
logical publications of their respective countries. They keep up to date
by a system of exchanges or by purchasing, with care and considera-
tion, a balanced selection from the best foreign musical and musicolo-
gical productions. The reader is kept informed of all these additions
by his current national general bibliography, by a bulletin of new
acquisitions published by the libraries themselves and sometimes, also,
by permanent exhibitions of the new acquisitions.
The field that can and should be covered by a specialized music
library is considerable, extending from the music of the Far East
through the music of antiquity, the Middle Ages and the centuries of
classicism, to serial, concrete and electronic music. The range is so
wide that it is absolutely essential to entrust the care of these libraries
not to musicians 01: general librarians, but to a team of expert musico-
logical librarians. This necessity, combined with the size of the collec-
tions themselves, means that all these libraries inevitably become un-
rivalled centres of live documentation, for it is not the expert or the
scholar who needs constantly to seek information during his efforts
to educate himself, but the amateur or novice, who is soon over-
whelmed by the wealth of material offered him.
The non-expert or non-professional reader who comes to us and
whom we call an amateur or a novice is, moreover, rarely in fact at
that stage of his development, that is to say, at a moment when he
feels the need to put himself in the hands of the musicological librarian
of a large public library. It seldom happens that the ignorance or
naivety of a new reader makes his future guide despair. As a rule, the
reader is concurrently using or has already used a popular music library
at a university or academy of music, and comes to us with adequate
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