TAKAPUNA LIBRARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 116, 18 May 1936, Page 6

TAKAPUNA LIBRARY.

It is about time an effort was made to bring the Takapuna Public Library in una with other suburban institutions of this tjpe. At the present time it looks as if it is use as a dump for condemned rubbish from tie combined Auckland libraries. The greater par of the reading matter is in a deplorable state, pages torn and tattered, roughly replaced or completely missing, bindings are ragged an titles illegible or non-existent. Books ai© jumbled anywhere, anyhow. Few of the more modern authors' names appear on tne shelves (some of which must be a good twelve feet from the floor), and even the well-known novels by New Zealand authors are quite unheard of. "New" books also are something of which we occasionally hear, but do not see in general circulation. It is sad, but true, that • hundreds of the books are long overdue at the destructor, and could be replaced by fiction, which has been published within the last .twenty years. After all, the majority of us did read "Little Women.," "Coral Island, etc., in. our schooldays. Is tliorc any reason why there should be such a difference in this library, and, say, Devon port's or Grey Lynns. The hitter particularly is a model of all a library should be. while this, to which we so unwillingly subscribe —or dfm't—is best described as being "over the odds." Intending subscribers pay six lrtonths' '•subs." before they realise that they would be ashamed to bc> seen reading the majority of the books on the bus or boat, and more than a slight readjustment is required before they are likely to be other than DISGUSTED.