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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 287, 26 April 1913, Page 4

THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY. If we may judge from the paucity of attendance on the part of subscribers at the annual meeting of the Carnegie Institute last night, our local library is not the popular institution that it ought to be. Probably the people do not know what an admirable library it is in some respects. So far as fiction is concerned, it is really, according to those who have some experience of other libraries in the Dominion, about the best-equipped of any library of its size in the country. But when it comes to the reference library, and the general literature department, it is sadly lacking, and the selection of books for these departments appears to be undertaken in a most casual spirit. As was pointed out by a subscriber at the meeting last night, an unexpurgated edition of' Rabelais is to be found in the reference library, but no copy, of the Bible. Of course, in theory, everybody should have a Bible at home, but there are times when a copy of the Holy Writ, with a concordance", is just about as valuable for reference purposes as the Encyclopedia Britannica, for the world has never produced a more noble piece of literary work. Just why Rabe-lias--whose name has become a house- | hold word for obscenity—should find a place on the library shelves, it is hard to imagine. The explanation given was that the French decadent was "a classic." The word, of course, covers a multitude of, sins, hut it is arrant nonsense to suggest that anybody in New Plymouth would ever wish to consult the gross and objectionable history of Pantagruel and Gargantua for literary purposes. There are scores and scores of more legitimate classics that might have found a place upon our library shelves, but that are still missing, and we can only conclude that the book was purchased by catalogue rule of thumb, without the Selection Committee having any knowledge as to its contents. The fact that it is to be placed in future under lock and key is a sufficient testimony to its merits. We quote this instance | only as an illustration of the advisability of making a very close scrutiny of whatever literature is introduced into the library, and it really seems as if the Committee should appoint a small revisory sub-committee to at least scan the books that are imported. At present the ordering appears to be done in a most haphazard fashion, most of it being left to English publishers, who are instructed, so far as fiction is concerned, to forward the most popular novels of the hour. This, of course, necessarily appeals to the popular taste, but the popular taste is not always the right taste—indeed, it is often the reverse—and the result is that our library shelves are liable to be flooded with the neurotic effusions of Victoria Cross and writers of her class, to the exclusion of more healthy literature. As the chairman pointed out last night, the library depends largely for its existence upon the contributions of subscribers, and 00 per cent, of the demand is for fiction. Under these circumstances fiction must be supplied; but there is no necessity why it should not be decent fiction. Mr. Baker incidentally raised the point that the library was devoting too much attention to American fiction, at the expense of the English writers, but it has to be admitted that both the American novelist and the American magazine are incomparably superior to the English novelist and the English magazine. In curious contradistinction to their newspapers, the American novels and magazines are clean, crisp, breezy and thoroughly healthy, whilst the English ones, on the other hand, are cheap, stodgy and pathetically thin in literary texture. This may only be a passing circumstance, but wc are disposed to attribute it to the fact that America includes so many climates, so many nationalities and so many phases of life in its teeming millions as to afford a wider range of opportunity for literary versatility than pertains in our older and more sedate world. However, meantime we should like to see a little more life and a little less routine in the administration ol our very admirable library. It should have double the number of subscribers, and it probably would have if the general public could only realise what delightful literary pastures it contains upon which they may browse at a purely nominal annual subscription.