GREETINGS

The principal purpose of Books at Iowa is to inform our friends, past, present, and prospective, about the collections and services of the University of Iowa Libraries. Students and scholars, on and off the campus, should become familiar with our many fine groups of materials, and these will be described in the pages of this biannual periodical. In the descriptions of the books and manuscripts in our collections, known and unsuspected gaps will receive attention, and notices of these should help us to acquire pieces which rightly belong on our shelves.

Books at Iowa also will inform Friends of the University of Iowa Libraries of activities of this new organization, and it should serve as an inducement to membership. Membership is available to individuals and to firms who contribute annually five dollars or more to the University’s Old Gold Development Fund earmarked for the University of Iowa Libraries. This issue could not have appeared without the financial assistance provided by the Fund. The editorial staff of the periodical and the administrative officers of the Libraries are grateful to the Council of the Fund and to the Executive Director of the State University of Iowa Foundation, Mr. Loren Hickerson, for indispensable help.

Although Books at Iowa will appear but twice a year and future issues will approximate the size of this one, the venture possesses large possibilities for the University Libraries. The periodical, under its competent editor and assistant editors, enjoys an auspicious beginning, and it will have a bright and useful future if not less than 300 persons contribute through the Old Gold Development Fund at least five dollars a year to our organized Friends of the University of Iowa Libraries. Members of the editorial staff, the Council of the Friends, and the staff of the Libraries invite every person interested in the development of collections of notable books and manuscripts at the University of Iowa to play an active and continuing part in this enterprise.