THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “ Public Service.” MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943. LIBRARY SERVICE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3298, 9 August 1943, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “ Public Service.” MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943. LIBRARY SERVICE

In the annual report of the Country Library Service figures are given which indicate that in spite of difficulties due to the war progress continues to be made in extending facilities for reading to rural districts where opportunities for culture are more or less limited. The organisation of the Service has also been harnessed to the task of providing books for the armed forces under the aegis of the National Patriotic Fund Board, and a development of the past year has been the inauguration of a school library service incorporating 500 schools with juvenile readers totalling some 28,000. The cost to the country for the year ended March 31 last was £15,847, the expenditure coming under the heading of the vote for the Education Department. As the demands on this service seem likely to increase considerably as time goes on, and the cost likewise, it may be hoped that due attention will be given by the Education Departs ment in revising the courses of instruction in the schools to the importance of teaching children how to think clearly, so that, when they grow up, and find themselves so well provided with reading matter of a serious as well as of a lighter kind, they will be able to study with intelligent discrimination. In increasing volume a tremendous flood of literature of all kinds has been pouring out from the world’s printing presses since the last war, and a not insignificant proporation of this has been in the form of disguised propaganda in support of particular theories or ideologies of questionable merit. Totalitarian States have taken the course of banning literature opposed to their special policies, but the most effective counter to much of the arrant rubbish that comes to the public in pretentious covers and intriguing titles is a trained habit of. discrimination on the part of the reader.