Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/342

328 PAPER READ BEFORE our members are men, not only in authority, but under it. So long as we keep to general principles and exhortations, there will be no great harm, if no great good, in our proceedings being printed. But it may be hoped that we shall often find ourselves discussing in specific detail what we should like to do, and as soon as we come to details some degree of privacy and confidentiality is very valuable. We need not make the Panizzi Club in any sense a secret society, but it is essential that we should be able to talk of our libraries and our plans for them with a reasonable degree of freedom, and this is in- compatible with any full public report of our dis- cussions. A premature paragraph in a newspaper, with the element of distortion which newspaper paragraphs seem inevitably to develop, might easily hinder an important library from coming into some scheme for co-operation for which its librarian was personally enthusiastic. It will surely be easier to secure the confidential atmosphere we need in an independent Club than in a public body such as the Library Association. If the right of the Panizzi Club to have come into existence is thus incontrovertible, its right to continue to exist must be demonstrated by its making itself useful. It seems better to use this rather vague phrase 'by making itself useful ' than to say * by the work which it does,' because it is highly probable that we shall do as much or more to help forward our ideals by acquaintanceship and informal talk as by formal debates and publications. Friendly relations between libraries will be greatly facilitated if they are preceded by friendly relations