NATIONAL LIBRARY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 14

NATIONAL LIBRARY

Concern At Delay

“It is disappointing to record little visible sign of progress on setting up a national library,” the president of the New Zealand Library Association (Mr A. G. Bagnall) said when presenting his report at the association’s thirty-second annual conference in Christchurch yesterday. When the appointment of a national librarian was announced last March the Prime Minister reaffirmed the Government’s intention to press forward with the setting up of the national library organisation and it was understood that the inter-departmental committee appointed to work out measures required had been meeting, said Mr Bagnall.

Concern at the delay, at the apparent lack of progress and at reports of opposition to the administration of the Alexander Turnbull Library being included in the national library, caused the association in December to write to the Prime Minister seeking information, said Mr Bagnall.

“It is a matter of the gravest concern that important State libraries should be deteriorating for lack of proper staff, and in some cases by reason of accommodation which is little short of scandalous. The results of the Government's apparent unwillingness to pursue its accepted policy on the national library with any degree of speed or vigour threaten to be disastrous,” he said.