Library Session

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 410, 2 May 1947, Page 8

Library Session

IRST comers are_ proverbially timid. The first snowdrop of the year hangs its head, and the first guest to arrive at the party spends a long time powdering her nose. Station 2YA, we are told, is first off the mark with its Winter Course Talks, so it is perhaps not to be wondered at that the new series, The Library To-day, is inclined to be diffident in its approach to its audience. Usually the Winter Course Talks are prepared and delivered by one person, an authority’ on his subject, who pours his facts and theories into the waiting emptiness of the listeners’ minds. But The Library To-day is different in presentation and in effect. The second talk in the series, "The Large Feed the Small," took the form of a discussion by three members wf the New Zealand Libraries Associaion on the inter-relation between the various types of library; incidentally conveying to the audience that there’s been a lot of unsuspected activity going on in regard to the country’s library system, and that New Zealand is almost as honeycombed with libraries as Central Otago with rabbit-warrens. The three speakers were young, but their familiarity with their subject largely cancelled out their lack of familiarity with the microphone. The fiction that the audience was merely overhearing an informal little chat among the experts was well fostered, and the manner of presentation helped listeners to feel that they were learning from the inside how things were run, rather than being treated to a quarter-of-an-hour of "blurb" about the National Library Service.