§ 49. Sir W. Wakefieldasked the Lord President of the Council whether he is satisfied with the present arrangements for obtaining without delay and circulating as necessary in this country all Russian scientific publications of outstanding importance; or what steps he proposes to take to secure the rapid and effective exchange of scientific publications between this country and Russia.
§ The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison)A considerable number of Russian scientific publications reach this country under a system of exchanges between British scientific institutions on the one hand and the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Lenin Library on the other. Others are received by the British Council each quarter and distributed by them to scientific institutions or individual scientists. A survey of Soviet scientific periodicals received in this country has been made by the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, and is being kept up to date with the help of the British Council. The volume of these exchanges has been restricted during the war by difficulties of transport and suspensions and changes of publication. A former member of the British Council's Science Department has now been attached to the staff of His 2197 Majesty's Ambassador in Moscow, and I hope that, as a result, the exchange of publications will be extended, and supplemented where desirable by purchases.