WHEN I began hospital library work, just over a year ago, I was one of the first British public library‐trained librarians to take up full‐time hospital library work, and I started with the feeling that sick people read much the same kinds of books as healthy people. I felt it was important that their minds should not be cut off from their normal exercises or diversions just because their bodies were diseased. It has to be remembered, of course, that very ill patients do not usually read at all, while they are very ill, and that when they are at the convalescent stage they are able and anxious to resume their normal interests and occupations.