University of Virginia Library

No Excitement On 5M

By Steve Grimwood
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Last fall, the Liquifactionist
Party announced that one of their
campaign objectives was to open
Floor 5M of the Alderman Library.
This announcement raised the
curiosity of several students
sufficiently so that they journeyed
to the library where they
discovered that floor 5M was
indeed not open, but was shut off
by a box-like affair of chicken wire
that contained one door, which was
locked.

The floor was unlighted, and
only several shelves could be seen
through the wire by the dim light
from the stairway. They contained
books whose titles were unreadable
by the vast majority of the curious,
in that they were in Arabic. Since
this was the only information that
anyone could obtain about the
mysterious floor, many rumors
about its content circulated, the
gist of most being "that's where
they keep their porny books."
Upon asking the correct people, it
was discovered that the
Liquifactionists and the curious
were wasting their time.

The only material that could be
deemed "pornographic" is a very
small collection of Esquires and
Playboys, the latter consisting of
only a few dozen issues at most.
These magazines were moved to 5M
because, according to Miss Land,
the Circulation Librarian, if the
whole issue itself didn't vanish, the
"interesting pages tended to
disappear."

Selling Wheat

The majority of books on floor
5M are there through Program PL
480. This was begun by the U.S.
Government about 10 years ago. It
involves an agricultural wheat loan,
in which our government sold
wheat to certain countries and they
paid for it in their respective
currencies, which in turn could
only be spent in that particular
country. Our government decided
to use this money to finance U.S.
embassies in the countries, and to
buy everything of scholarly interest
published in the nations
participating in the program. The
scholarly material is then sent to
the Library of Congress and also to
selected libraries across the
country, among which is Alderman
Library. When these materials are
received, they are placed on 5M,
where they wait to be catalogued.
The books are printed in some
forty different languages from
countries such as India, Pakistan,
the U.A.R., Yugoslavia and Israel.

Attracting Faculty

Mr. Martin David, who works
with these materials says they are
instrumental in attracting desirable
faculty to the University. The
books are sent directly from the
separate countries to here by sea
mail. Alderman has received, for
example, over 10,000 titles
(including newspapers) from the
U.A.R., and some 12,000 English
language volumes from India. "PL
480 is growing with the faculty,"
he added.

No Prudity

Floor 5M is obviously not the
last bastion of Virginia prudery.
Any student searching for erotic
material is advised to look in the
card catalogue, in that every
volume in the Library is listed
there, and all are available, except
for some rare books which are
available on a restricted basis. This
means that material on 5M is open
to anyone who can show cause for
needing it, and at the moment, very
few students have reason to do this.