The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30. THE UTILITY OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 350, 30 March 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30. THE UTILITY OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Conferences are good for many purposes. The latest conference is taking place in Dunedin, and the delegates represent pubiic libraries throughout the Dominion. Like other delegate# to other conferences these particular gentlemen feel that their work is of immense importance It may be, of course, but the iacts do not prove that this is bo. It may be doubted if the contention of an Auckland delegate that "libraries are important as educators to the muss of the people" is a just one. The preponderating argument in any public library in New Zealand is the fiction room; this is where the business is done, and this is where the public gather. Upwards of ninety per cent of the books hired from public libraries' are works of fiction, and about this percentage of subscribers are -women, r* may be contended that the ladies of New Zealand have reached the goal of female suffrage by their avidity as readers of novels, and .that they, being part of "the masetes," have been vacated by Marie Corellij Hall Caine, Victoria Cross and other eminent for whose books house room is found by that great and glorious emancipator, Carnegie. As an educatot the public library of New Zealand is not to be Tory largely considered. As a pastime the fiction department of all libraries is «. boon to thousands of ladies, and to some men. It is all very well foi solemn librarians to suggest an association which would try to control putrtio reading. You may drira a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. You may suggest that Mrs Brown read the Aercopagitica, but you cannot prevent her absorbing "The Yoke if she desires to absorb it. And there seems to bo no reason why the UOTernment should expand the scope of public libraries, considering that they »r* used merely for pastime, any more than they should expand the scops of croquet, football or oricket. How on earth the few librarians of New Zealand hope, by a union, to form "a national opinion" in regard to 'bookSj cannot be seen. The librarian of the Parliamentary Library was particularly quaint when, he suggested that a librarian should have every latitude in the selection of reading matter for the public The librarian might be a confirmed entomologist and insist that the public he catered for should have the world's best selection in this department, 'when they were pining for Nat Gould or Hawley Smart. Education is nowadays almost as necessary as food, and some of the finest works ever .produced may be purchased for the price of two loaves'. The real student uses public libraries, but if he could not use them he would necessarily purchase the books he wanted. Then, again, tlie educational system of New Zealand is! open from the primary school to the University. The "masses" do not subscribe to libraries; the public reading rooms of city libraries are generally odorous places where .persistent unemployable meet to loaf, and one of the chief reasons why many places ;n New Zealand have a library at all is that its local bodies can fill a vacant place with a Carnegie building, in order that the Steei King may not "die rich and disgraced."