INCREASING THE UTILITY OF OUR LIBRARIES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 260, 3 August 1928, Page 10

INCREASING THE UTILITY OF OUR LIBRARIES

CLOSER CO-OPERATION ‘ URGED That greater use could be made of the General Assembly, Turnbull, Victoria College and Civic Libraries under a scheme of co-operation is stressed in a report which the City Librarian, Mr. J. Norrie, has just submitted to the Library Committee of the City Council. In his report Mr. Norrie points out that the need for co-operation betweenlibraries, whether under Government, municipal, or university control, has been recognised for a considerable period, and is a commonplace of library discussion, but the practice of it has made.little progress. It was in organised co-operation, ami in this alone, that the full development of the libraries system in Wellington was to be sought. It was abundantly evident that no one library can become possessed of all the literature that an educated public needs. “The municipal’library can meet most of the requirements of the general reader; it can do much for scholarship, industry, and commerce, but it cannot do all,” says Mr. Norrie. “By a system of fraternal co-operation between adjoining libraries—e.g., the General Assembly Library, the Turnbull Library, the Victoria University College Library, the libraries of the departments of Agriculture and Forestry, and other specialised libraries, the library service would go froward and become of the utmost'benefit t the community. This can take the form of inter-loans of books, which can only become fully effective if a union cotalogue of all the libraries can be brought into existence through the deposit in a central bureau of duplicate cards from each library. It can also be promoted by interchange-ability of borrower’s tickets, enabling any resident to borrow from any library. But the details of co-operation are best arranged between the parties concerned. stereotyped system of co-operation as applicable to all the libraries can be laid down here; but co-operation in some form is vital to the progress of the library service, and I think that every library committee should seriously consider how it can help or be helped by its neighbours, and should be prepared to enter into relations of mutual service, without too nicely calculating which party is going to profit most therefrom.” Mr. Norrie makes the following recommendation to the Library Committee :--- “That an effort should be made to adopt a scheme of organised co-operation among a number of libraries in Wellington, including the General Assembly Library, the Turnbull Library, the Victoria University College Library, the Wellington Corporation libraries, and the libraries of the departments of Agriculture and Forestry.