PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 51, 1 March 1935, Page 5

PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

SYSTEMS ABROAD. WHAT AMERICA HAS DONE. LESSONS FOB NEW ZEALAND. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIN, this day. "It is in America that one sees the fullest development of the public library as a social institution," said Mr. A. G. W. Dunningham, librarian of the Dunedin Public Library, who has just returned from a nine months' tour under a Carnegie Fellowship. "It has been found valuable to plan the work of primary and secondary schools around well staffed and excellently stocked school libraries," he added.

Separate services, said Mr. Dunningham, had been developed to piovide information readily to business men, and art. and music societies found spocial departments covering their interests and committee rooms for their meetings. The lecture hall of the public library was available for the showing of valuable cinematographic material for the encouragement of the Little Theatre and Children's Theatre movements, and libraries also served to invite and introduce persons whose views or experience might be of interest to the public social and cultural centre.

"In an old country such as England, with its wealth of established and traditional institutions, the public library has perhaps a more limited and less socially varied function, but even there the provision of lecture facilities in that direction is being undertaken. It is in the new countries that a convergence of music, drama, art and other social and also business and technical interests tends towards a more economic centralisation, such as is possible within the public library. The parallel developments of interests within such a community tend to fiwl natural co-or-dination, and an obvious meeting ground at the place where the literature or these various interests is being made available.

Reason For American Success. "The present success of the American library as a social and cultural centre is the outcome of public confidence in a careful and conscientiously administered library policy. Every effort is made to ensure that material which is of use or of value within the city should be freely available, and always with this there is available also a reasonable supply of recreational reading. It is in this way that the very valuable social function of American public libraries has been established. Also in this way the American public library has earned in public respect generous fiifts of fine buildings and endowments, which have become almost general."

The establishment of the National Central Library of Great Britain made book holdings of important and specialised English libraries available to every person within Great Britain. The need for the development of the National Central Library arose comparatively recently, with the problem of providing out-of-the-way material in newly formed county libraries or England Their service was chiefly to rural districts and their stock was new and U adPouate It was undesirable as well a" i to buy stock to satisfy the non-recurring demands of. the serious reader, who might require a book °n some unusual topic. of that sort came to be forwarded to the National Central Library, which undertook the task of locating the volume needed and sending it when availoutcome of Mr. Ralph Munn'fl recent survey, made possible by the Carnegie Corporation, of New York, concluded Mr.Cunningham, was to find the means for a similar organisation «f library resources within New Zealand and to discover also in what way a library service could most economically be provided to country districts. The outstanding success within comparatively recent years of both those aspects of library development in England made one Sent that the problem m New Zealand would not now be over-difficult, £d Sat economy would result from the consolidation which would be brought about within the Dominion 6 own library movement.