FROM BIBLES TO BULLETINS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 194, 12 March 1943, Page 8

FROM BIBLES TO BULLETINS

a seer >. « ed A NY book on any subject" is the motto of the War Library Service, which is now getting into operation after tidying up the stocks of books received in the recent drives all over the country. Vans are already on their regylar trips to military posts of all kinds-small concentrations of men who are tied tol coastal defence installations, anti-aircraft batteries, and so on.

T= Listener recently sent a representative on one of these trips, At the headquarters of the Country Library Service huge piles of books are being repaired and gradually made available for distribution. Mountains of old issues of weeklies are kept as wrapping and packing material, and most of them, ‘therefore, will be read again. Though it is still using Country Library Service equipment and facilities, the War Library Service will soon have ‘its own home and machinery. ! Long shallow boxes of five-ply, strengthened with metal bindings, and filled with an assortment of fiction, travel and general reading, plus a number of "papers"-small books bound in paper but not necessarily periodicals — were loaded into an Army truck and put in the care of two W.A.A.C’s, former library assistants, Requests Are Encouraged At each stop the cases were unloaded and placed somewhere convenient for the soldiers to gather round and choose their next fortnight’s reading. They may take one book and two "papers." A special box contains request books, usually of the "heavier" type, for those whose taste is not in the ordinary line.

One, a Bible, had been asked for by members of a unit on behalf of one of their number who was always in trouble. He appreciated the joke when it was handed to him, but soon had his nose buried in a periodical called "Better Business." ‘ Those men even whose posts provide them with some of the best views in the world, who can gaze out over hills and sea and clouds most of the day, find the need of something else to do in their spare time. At one bleak spot where, if you liked, you could get out of the sea breeze and lie on a ‘sun-warmed grassy slope and watch flocks of sea birds shifting about on the waters below, men crowded round the truck in a bitter wind-some of them without anything on above their trousers, and asked questions about Beau Geste, Cappy Ricks, Prisoner of Zenda. One asked if James Joyce’s Ulysses had turhed up yet. Another claimed his request copy of Gunther’s Inside Europe, Wherever the library truck goes, the men are told that War Library Service wants them to make all the use they can of the request service, so that,the distri- © buting assistants can help them in their choice and help the service to grow in scope and usefulness,