Abstract
THE adjournment debate on September 27 in the House of Commons on the licensing of the import of books brought no hope of early relief ; but it is at least satisfactory to find that protests are still being made against the handicap which the licensing system place on scientific technical work. It has since been announced in the Press that the Economic Co-operation Administration has approved the purchase of American technological books and publications costing 22,500 dollars for use by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and by affiliated industrial research associations. It may be true, as the Secretary for Overseas Trade stated in the debate, that the balance of payments situation prevents the abolition of the licensing system at the moment ; but his reference to the present allowance of 200 per cent by value of the pre-war imports of learned scientific and technical books took no account of the fact that prices had already approximately doubled even before the devaluation of the pound further increased them. Still less did it have regard to the fact that an allowance roughly pre-war in quantity has to serve the needs of workers on whose activities in research and development and at the universities the Government is now spending at the rate of more than £100,000,000 a year instead of £4,000,000, quite apart from the expansion in private industry.
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Scientific and Technical Books in Great Britain. Nature 164, 677–679 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164677a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164677a0