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A Loan Service in Lantern Slides' Dr. Carlos E. Cummings Director of'Visual Education, Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences AS far as we know, with the ex- ception of state controlled ser- vice, the Buffalo Society of Natural Science was the first museum to institute a loan collection of lantern lides, basing its service on the ac- cepted plan of a large public library. Other loan collections have been established to meet the specific de- mands of schools or technical organ- izations,, but we have arranged our material and our system to irfclude any one in the City of Buffalo who wishes to make a legitimate use of lantern slides. The department deals exclusively in slides. The writer has been associated with moving picture projection for a good many years and is a licensed op- erator in the City of Buffalo. Such being the case, I feel that I am entitled to my opinion on this matter; in my own experience, the loaning of films has proven very unsatisfactory and was discontinued after a year's trial. I do not in any way wish to discourage or deprecate properly selected educa- tional film shown to properly selected audiences in a properly equipped hall by a properly qualified operator, but in my opinion the time is not yet ripe for loan service to be practical. To make clear my position, let me briefly explain one or two specific points which developed in my own experi- ence. Buffalo is a city of more than a half million population and the auditoriums equipped with proper booths and op- erators, outside of the paid moving picture houses, can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Under the State Law, standard film must be pro- jected from a booth by an operator licensed by the Mayor. As all our material is loaned with the definite understanding that no charge can be made for admission, the theatres are eliminated. The ordinances of the City require that film shall be stored in a fire-proof vault, properly venti- lated, subject to the inspection of the Fire Underwriters. In this connec- tion, I simply mention the fact that I was assured by the representative of one of the big insurance companies that moving picture film "throws out a vapor that can be ignited by a man lighting his pipe in the open air, fifty feet away from the film." In the next place, while much is being done along the line of suitable films for educa- tional purposes, there is still much to be done. Some of the so-called "edu- cational films" are far from being educational. A very beautiful presen- *Read before The National Academy of Visual Instruction in Convention at Lexing- ton, Ky., April, 1922. 135