LIBRARY BOOKS MISSING

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27750, 30 August 1955, Page 10

LIBRARY BOOKS MISSING

Maori Dictionary And Gazetteer

USE FOR NEWSPAPER COMPETITION

The Canterbury Public Library’® stocks have suffered because of a newspaper competition involving place names of New Zealand. A gazetteer, the biggest and best of the whole world available, although of limited use for the competition, and H. W. Williams’s dictionary of the Maori language, disappeared from the library shelves. The first costs £l6, but the Maori dictionary is out of print, and' no adequate substitute is available. In addition to the missing books, a “Citizen’s Atlas of the World” (price £7 Us 6d) was damaged when the map of New Zealand was torn from it. "When it was realised that these losses were occurring the reference department immediately restricted access to other works which were relevant in firtding answers for the competition,” the City Librarian (Mr R. N. O’Reilly) said in his report to the City Council last evening. “Such works, for the duration of the compe* tition. are available only on request. We regret that because of the irresponsibility of a handful of persons, who obviously do not know how to use a library, the general citizens of Christchurch have to be inconvenienced in this way. “We are delaying action towards the replacement of the missing items until the end of the competition, in the hope that those who have ‘borrowed’ them may think fit to let us have them back.”