PAPERS DISAPPEAR

Taranaki Daily News, 28 September 1940, Page 6

PAPERS DISAPPEAR

READING ROOM LOSSES Five London papers have been removed by unauthorised persons from the flies of the New Plymouth public library reading room this week. They were copies of the London Observer, the Sunday Times (two issues), John o' London's Weekly and the Spectator, papers with an appeal only to the better educated type of person normally considered above petty pilfering. The Observer and Sunday Times are two outstanding Sunday papers, the former being noted for its editorials by J. L. Garvin, while John o' London's Weekly deals with literary matters. such as reviews of new publications. There are no illustrations in any of the papers, so that the circle to which they would make an appeal would be to a large extent limited. The thief in one case at least was very deliberate in his actions. as after rcmoving the London paper from the file, he r.eplaced it with a copy of that morning's Taranaki Daily News. There is always a certain amount of trouble through people not appreciating at its full value the benefit of the free reading room service, Mr. A. L. Low, the librarian, commented. There has, howevcr. not been a case before in which there has been such a wholesale o'isappearance of newspapers. Occasionally one has disappeared, but the most frcouent trouble is the mutilation of pa' v's. both New Plymouth daily and New Zealand weekly publications, for Ihe removal of some paragraph or picture that appeals at (he time. At times a magazine or a hook disappears. Sometimes it comes back after a while, and sometirnes it does not. , There is occasinnally a lack of appreciation shown by subscribers to the circulating library. as books are sometirnes returned with some paragraph cut out. Thc greatest trouble there, however. is Ihe person so impressed with his own knowledge or opinion that he airs it by freely annotating the margins of pages.