WORKLESS AND LIBRARIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 259, 2 November 1933, Page 6

WORKLESS AND LIBRARIES

For those who know how to make use of enforced leisure even unemployment has its compensations (says the That a very large number of workless men and women have resorted to the solace of reading is shown in some remarkable figures quoted at the annual conference of the Library Association. It appears that in the six largest industrial cities of Britain the annual number of books issued increased from 18,300,000 in 1926-27 to 27,500,000 in the last completed year. The county libraries show an even greater increase —from 11,981,000 to 34,831,000. Slost of this extraordinary development is officially attributed to the more general use of libraries by persons unemployed. Dr. Hetherington is" probably right when he suggests that the habit of reading which has been developed among so many workless people in this period of depression will not be broken when normal times return, and that the libraries will find themselves with a permanently larger reading public. In the development of this salutarv reading habit many social agencies have taken a part. The proposal that a joint committee should be formed representing the Library Association, the National Council for Social Service and c..~ -vitish Institute for Adult Education is worth pursuing.