VANDALS IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20336, 8 September 1931, Page 14

VANDALS IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

.110 THE EDITOR OF VOZ P&ESS' Sir,—What shoiuld be.done.with thoW cidiolis vaudak who from sheer Philistinism abuse the privileges provided for a y in our free Public? Library, and i^rV. tliem a 'trml 0 f defaced

■ and mutilated volumes—unless, indeed, they go further still and steal what ( takes their fancy? Last Saturday afternoon I visited the . reference JibVafy >ahd -with' the assist- . anee of a young lady attendant, discovered th® .date, of a rather passage in New Zealand history, and was directed to the department in , which the bound files of the local papers I are stored. My intention was to read • and make notes from thcv oontemporary [ accounts of that incident: • . I. took one paper first,' ;turhed' up , the issue which should contain, the . account—and found that the page had . been torn out. I then turned.to the other paper, and found that the-van-dals had done just the same thine there ; again. Tho pag<S I wanted had been torn out., ' " • ' ' . .1 havo no words to express xnyiitter detestation of such conduct as this. It is worse than ordinary petty, thieving. . It means Ihe mutilation for iall tirtie of popular public records, -intended to serve generations of New ZenJanders. A. ; book-lover -will look , upon such a cnm<? as something aldn to murder. It not only ruins the' volumo as ; a compete record, but for thousands in Christchurch it destroys the record of that particular'incident "'as a murderer .destroys life. .. ... I imagine that this library brigandage is common to all public libraries I recollect turning up m the Wellington Reference Library Kipling's poem with the idea of reading over again bis somewhat hackneyed poem "If "" T round the poem had been torn otifc. T U P £ w ? , other volumes in which the poem had been printed. In both volumes I found the same thing—the poems had been torn out. I cannot express in language which any newspaper would; print my. utter abhorrence T.f this sacrilege. We cannot blame the library authorities or attondants. They simply cannot watch all the time the movements of the many readers. And some, of these readers, treated as gentlemen„ prove boars and thieves—no lady could ever J» SU'lty of such sacirilege. The trouble is to discover these detestable people • but if, or when, any of them is caught I hope such a lesson will be: taught tliem as will make their fellow vandals timorous of carrying on IrL m "! atlon Of public records that Y?£b,- etcf T by ' September 6th. 193L°° KLO^I? '