OUR LIBRARIES.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 January 1926, Page 4

OUR LIBRARIES.

NEED FOR BETTER BOOKS. DUNEDIN, January 13. At the conference of public libraries, Air John Barr (chief librarian, Auckland), in an interesting address, said that our libraries were not responding satisfactorily to the demands of education—general, scientific and commercial—and were not catering adequately for the requirements of the student, the research worker and the mail of business. The reason for this was that they were limited by law to a library rate of Id in the £. New Zealand, libraries, with one, or two fortunate exceptions, had been starved of the means of development, and, speaking as a comparatively new chum, he had been astonished at the results which had been attained oil the slender resources which generally obtained. To meet the position in the cities and the larger towns, lie suggested that all that was required was increased rating power to provide the necessary .money. In the United States libraries had been looked upon, not as a questionable luxury, tint as a necessity ; hence tho enormous success attending library work there. And this view of libraries as a necessity had been growing, with the result that both in England and Scotland legislative limitation of library rates had been removed. If thnt limitation were abolished in New Zealand, the larger libraries would he independent of subscribers. They would not then be compelled to provide so much, fiction as subscribers now demanded, and the. better class of literature could lie provided. Technical, art. music, and other students could lie catered for. CULTURE CENTRES. Libraries could also he developed as community centres, which had become more and more necessary, and lectures in connexion with the AV.E.A. and also

hook lectures for children, which had proved so successful in America, could he held in them. He suggested that the Now Zealand Parliamentary Library could readily ho transformed into such a national library as t-liat in New South Wales, and the organisation of a rural circulating library could tlien be entrusted to it. A special Parliamentary grant, made anually for the purpose, would soon provide good stocks of the three classes of hooks required, viz: (a) Good, wholesome works of interest and literary value, (li) reference books for students in the country, not- limited merely to agricultural books, lmt general in scope, and (c) collections of books for children which could conveniently be circulated through the schools. Smaller libraries, too. could be assisted, ns in the New South AVnles schemes by loans of special books, which could be exchanged at intervals. By means of such an organisation every individual in the community, rural or urban, old and young, could be catered for. Tt should not be necessary to add that if the whole of the citizens of the Dominion were catered for in respect of their reading in this wav, the community would be improved socially anl economically.

A long and interesting discussion followed, in tho course of which the suggestion as to a national library met with considerable support. Afr Barr was heartily thanked for his paper.