As the long-heralded Reading Period draws near and the undergraduate says his last farewells to his tutors before removing himself to a literary hibernation, there is but a single jarring note in all this harmony of preparation. In the majority of courses the reading lists, seemingly the most essential feature of a Reading Period, have failed to appear.

It is not important to place responsibility for the delay, shared alike as it doubtless is by professor and college office. The unpleasant fact is, however, that the effects of this sluggishness have been such as to make a repetition of the error next year undesirable. It is only natural in a university whose intellectual life centers so about its library that any sudden pressure on this nerve center sends radial waves throughout its sinews.

Instead of having the entire fall to prepare for an innovation so directly dependent on its cooperation, the Library has been obliged to make preparation in a matter of days. The nuisance has been passed on to the student, who cannot learn what books he will be obliged to buy until he is told what books the Library will be able to supply him.

Such delay, a particularly familiar growing pain in education, is excusable in this first year of experiment. It is to be hoped, however, that, in the event of a Reading Period in 1929, the University will see fit to anticipate such an annoyance and that the reading lists for that period will all be issued by at least December first.