Researcher’s Digest: January Guide to Alabama agencies and Alabama finance; libraries and government; justice of the peace courts; Flint community-wide recreational program.

T R Y I N G to find your way around Alabama state government? The

Bureau of Public Administration d the University of Alabama has provided an invaluable Baedeker in the form of an attractively and encyclopaedically got- ten up Handbook of Alabama State Agencies. Every agency is annotated with information on its legal basis, date of creation, authorization, organ- ization, method of financing, duties and status, complete with citations for everything. You can even wander over to such interesting repositories of gov- ernmental authority as the Board for Distribution and Delivery of Dead Bodies (indexed under “schools” and rightfully so, too).

The same bureau has issued another small book which explains, under the title of Alabama’s State Dollar, how a seventeen-million-dollar minus turned into a twentyfive-million-dollar plus in the course of a single decade. Chief purpose of Joseph M. Ray’s work is to explore the state’s fiscal past and fiscal future in order to throw intelligent light on present demands that the large surplus be dissipated this way and that. This he does also by discussing what he calls “the disbursement pattern,” and by exploring the sources of state money.

Perhaps irrelevant to pure govern- mental research, but not irrelevant to the amenities of life, are the attractive covers which the bureau puts on its works. The agencies handbook is done in beige and wine, with a sprinkling of agency names in pale red in the back- ground; the fiscal volume is a bluish gray and dubonnet, with darker blue gray dollar signs in the background. They are as attractive as a woman’s

ensemble, and almost as helpful to the subject.

Books Libraries come in for their share of

the researcher’s attention in two recent publications. The Bureau Oi Govern. mental Research of the University of Callionria at Los Augeles has issued another one of its exhaustive studies on governmental coijperation, Integra- tion of Public Library Services in the Los Angeles Area. Ronald M . Ketcham has explored every governmental aspect of library organization in all the com- munities in that extensive metropoli- tan area, with special attention to con- tractual and more informal arrange- ments for dovetailing of library facili- ties. He found considerable coijper- ation, but far less than the liberal legal background will permit and he issues a solemn warning that unless libraries cooperate voluntarily they may find themselves forced to do so by postwar retrenchments in local govern- ment.

The Library in the Present World Crisis was the theme of the section on public library administration a t the University ol Weshington’r Seventh Annual Institute of Government last summer-proceedings of which are pub- lished now under that title. Emphasis of the talks was on the libraries’ con- tribution to the war effort in connec- tion with propaganda, by supplying war information, and in supplying read- ing matter and library facilities at military encampments.

Courts The United States Supreme Court has

condemned, in principle, the justice of

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the peace court as it is set up in most counties of Indiana ; newspaper editors have written “scathing“ editorials: and there has been a good deal of piece- meal legislation and literary sound and fury on the subject. Now the Bureau of aOvenrment Research d In- University has undertaken to air the subject once and for all in a mono- graph on Justice of the Peace Courts in Indiana by Gail M. Morris. Purpos,e of the pamphlet is to allow the reader to understand and evaluate this peculiar judicial institution. Hence the author explains its history, statutory powers, activities, and abuses.

Children An Experiment k Community Im-

provement is what the Bureau d &v- ernment of the University of Michigan calls the elaborate system whereby a beneficent foundation has knit te gether public and private recreational and health activities in Flint, Michi- gan, into a comprehensive and useful whole. The entire program includes summer and winter recreational pro- grams for children and adults, guid- ance and job placement, children’s health services, a boys’ camp, visiting teacher service-a whole network of good works for those in need of it in Flint. Importance of the program, say the authors of the bureau’s pamphlet, is that i t developed gradually, in re- sponse to definite city needs: its or- ganization is well knit and well co- ordinated; it uses existing facilities in the community, both material and or. ganizational; and finally, it illustrates the possibility of coiiperation hetween private and public agencies, and a

mingling of private and public funds as well.

Research Bureau Reports Received

Court.

Justics of the P m e aourts in Indt. BDB By Gail M. Morris. Bloomington, Department of Government, Bureau of Governmental Research, Indiana Uni- versity, 1942. 38 pp.

Finance atebam&~ State Dollar. By Joseph

M. Ray. University, Bureau of Public Administration, University of Alabama, 1942. 135 pp.

Libraries Integratian d Public Library Service@

in the LOS Angel- Brek By Ronald M. Ketcham. Los Angeles, Bureau of Governmental Research, University of California at Los Angeles, 1942. 185 pp.

The Library in the Pmsent World Wsis. Seattle, Bureau of Governmental Research, University of Washington, 1942. 33 pp.

Public Weljare An Erperfmmt kr Community Im.

mvement. Ann Arbor, Bureau of Gov- ernment, University of Michigan, 1943. 29 PP.

State Gooernment A Handbook of Alabanue State A g m

dw. University, Bureau of Public Ad- ministration, University of Alabama, 1942. 203 pp.