On universities and libraries, teaching and examination : address to the graduates in medicine at the close of the summer session, University of Glasgow, Tuesday, July 30, 1878 / by John Ferguson.

  • John Ferguson
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On universities and libraries, teaching and examination : address to the graduates in medicine at the close of the summer session, University of Glasgow, Tuesday, July 30, 1878 / by John Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ADDRESS TO GRADUATES IN MEDICINE. In the recently published report of the Conference of Librarians, held last autumn in London, there is a paper by an Oxford Fellow and librarian on “ University Libraries as National Institutions,” in which a contrast is drawn between Universities and Libraries somewhat to the disadvantage of the former. I hope you will pardon me if I select some passages as pegs on which to hang a few desultory reflections. “ If universities,” it is said—and it is plain that for the writer there are only two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge—“no longer exercise their former power, it must be ascribed in part to the extraordinary increase of printed books; partly also to the great development of wealth, which has drawn the means of cultivation to the centres of commerce and population, and in many other ways affected the ancient position of the universities in relation to learning and letters.” \ObviousIy the writer knows nothing of this University.] “The conditions and environment of modern universities have been completely changed by these causes. We now learn everything from literature, of one kind or another, and the lecture of the univer¬ sity teacher is very frequently a tedious repetition of some text-book which we could ourselves refer to with far greater ease and profit.” [Once ?nore the writer can have only Oxford and Cambridge in view.]