TRAVELLING LIBRARIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 177, 13 December 1912, Page 4

TRAVELLING LIBRARIES.

The Clyde Quay School in Wellington has been experimenting this year with a library scheme adopted from the United States. The idea was suggested by the Public Librarian, Mr. 11. Baillie, who had found during a trip to America that the public libraries were in the habit of lending books to the schools in groups arranged to suit the needs of the various standards. If there were sixty pupils in a class, a box containing sixty books would be supplied, and at the rate of a book a week for each child it took sixty weeks to complete the round. Then the box would be sent to another school- and a fresh one secured to take its place in the first school. The committee of the Clyde Quay School was ready to test this scheme, and Mr. Baillie supplied the necessary books from the Wellington Public Library. The result has been very gratifying. The children have taken the books eagerly and the teachers have been enabled to direct their pupils' reading into right channels. "It has been an entire success," the headmaster told a representative of the Wellington Dominion. "It must be beneficial to the scholars, for not only were a very fine lot of books selected, but the teachers were given the privilege of selecting others which they deemed suitable. It has been going now for six months, and the scholars are as keen as ever. They look well after the- books— I have noticed that if-a book goes out with a brown cover it invariably comes back with it on, showing that the boys and girls are exercising' care in looking after the books. The gain to the scholar, of course, is the wide variety of suitable literature the scheme opens out. which could hardly be secured to State school children by any other means. In former years we had our own school libraries, but one lot of books amongst 700 or 800 children did not go far, and owing to the expense we could not keep freshening it with new purchases." The cost of the scheme is very small, and the other Wellington schools are expected soon to share its benefits. There seems no reason, indeed, why a system of travelling, libraries should not be so devised capable of serving all the New Zealand schools in town and country.

A BANKER'S WARNING. Some wholesome advice against prodi : gality in public and private expenditure during, years of prosperity (says the Melbourne Age) was offered by the chairman of directors (Mr. Agar Wynne, M.P.) at the half-yearly, meeting of the Colonial Bank of Australasia in Melbourne recently. He pointed out that while in the Commonwealth Budget statement the expenditure for 1907-1008 was £5.008,000, the Estimates for 19121913 were £10,000,000 more, an increase of 178 per cent. "When is this going to stop?" asked ' Mr. AVynne. "It is quite evident that both Governments and individuals, owing to the years of prosperity, have got into habits of prodigal and wasteful extravagance, and that they have forgotten that good years will not always continue." After giving the assurance that, although there was a certain stringency in the money market, in his opinion there was no cause for alarm if Government and people realised in time the necessity for caution and economy in public and private 'affairs, Mr. Wynne pointed out that in view of the fact that they had to meet £45,000,000 of debts during the next few years, it was necessary to show creditors that they were not reckless spendthrifts. Present values were not inflated to anything like the extent they were in the land boom in the late 'eighties, and business was on a more solid foundation. Mr. James Moloney, another director, considered there was no doubt that there was a threat of harder times, and people would have to go slower, but he felt sure they would come through the struggle.