LIBRARY CONFERENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 44, 22 February 1939, Page 9

LIBRARY CONFERENCE

POLICY OF INSTITUTIONS IMPORTANT ROLE IN COMMUNITY ( Per Press Association.] PALMERSTON N., Feb. 16. With 70 delegates the New Zealand Library Association conference opened yesterday, Mr. T. D. H. Hall (Wellington) presiding. The delegates, who included Misses A. M. Blackett and K. Glenn, of Wanganui, were given a civic welcome. In his presidential address Mr. Hall stressed the importance of the librarian as a teacher rather than as a keeper of archives. That the association take steps to promote an exchange library personnel within this and other countries was a remit carried. The council was instructed to consider the possibility in New Zealand of making use of the interest and sympathy of people outside the library profession on the lines of the English and American Friends of the Library Movement. The tendency in many quarters to consider that the provision of light recreational reading was alone sufficient to justify the existence of a public library, thereby observing the necessity for a constructive policy, resulted in a remit emphasising the social responsibilities of libraries. The conference authorised the council to permit experimentally a special type of institutional membership for semi-public bodies whose library activities are of importance to libraries as a whole. The aim is to include such bodies as the Royal Society, Government departments, and research institutions, which do not normally join the association.