PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18370, 1 May 1925, Page 9

PUBLIC LIBRARY.

TO THS IPITOB Of "THB ISMS."

Sir,—The librarian of the Public Library seems to be proud of the fact that subscribers cannot get the books they want to read without standing in a queue of excessive dimensions whenever he is good enough to allow them to do ao. Surely a strange matter for 3elfcongratulation! A more ludicrous—and incidentally unfair—method would be hard to devise. Many of the subscribers, and the ones who read the moat, are old and not too strong. Are they, to stand in a queue for hours to get the books they want! And what about people who are busy! Under the present bright system they have practically no chance of ever getting the book they want. Might I suggest a less painful, less conspicuous, and, I venture to think, more fair and efficient method, namely, that subscribers may put their names down for books they want, as they used to do, only without the payment of 3d, which apparently, though why I know not, has been vetoed by the authorities. As things arc, unless you spend your days at the library, waiting to pounce on the coveted book the moment It appears, or else wait in your hundreds — or was it thousands I—on the pavement, you have no reasonable chance of getting a book less than ten years old. —Yours, etc., SUBSCRIBER. April 29th, 1925.