NATIONAL LIBRARY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page II (Supplement)

NATIONAL LIBRARY

Need in New Zealand PROPOSALS OUTLINED Proposals for a national library system for New Zealand are outlined in a statement which has been issued by the New Zealand Library Association to all its members, to counties and boroughs, and to delegates to the conference of the New Zealand Labour Party as well as to all branches of the Labour Party. The statement refers to the MunnBarr report, which revealed that the New Zealand library system was quite inadequate to give real service to the community on modern standards and left a serious gap in the educational system. The association looks forward to remedying that defect by the gradual development of a national library system which will provide the books needed for the after-school education of the people.

“In a rural library service the aim is to provide a service comparable to that given in cities,” says the statement. ‘The difficulties are the scanty financial resources of rural areas and their scattered nature. Careful inquiry has shown that these can be overcome by grouping for co-operative effort and by the granting of some financial asisstance from central sources in view of the educational nature of the work.

Local Control. “Control over their own libraries would be ensured to local bodies and library committees, but they would draw their book supplies from district headquarters and obtain technical advice and help from the librarian of the rural area. A great deal of work has been done in formulating a rural scheme, and full details will be made available. The association hopes that an opportunity of demonstrating the working of the scheme in a selected area will occur shortly. “In some cases city libraries and libraries of institutions and societies are run fairly efficiently for their own needs, but the national system involves close co-ordination, inter-library loans, specialisation in different fields, and the linking up for purposes of co-opera-tion with a national library. To function satisfactorily free service is an essential in all public libraries. National System. “A national library would involve the development of the present General Assembly Library, already thought of as the national library of New Zealand. It would retain its special functions as the library of Parliament, but would extend its usefulness as the great national reference library of the country on the plan of the Library of Congress of the United States. It would be the head of the national system, to which all the other libraries would look for advice; and it would eventually house a catalogue of all the non-fictional books available in New Zealand. As part of its functions it would develop a national lending department holding stocks of books of the more expensive kind not often required, and which could not, therefore, be economically purchased by local libraries. The national library would be available, too, to give oversight and direction to the rural service.

"In all progressive countries library service is given free—that is, it is provided for either out of local rates or out of funds from a central (Government) source, or a combination of both. The last-mentioned method should be the aim in New Zealand. It is not anticipated that the cost would be beyond our means. A service of light fiction could continue to be supplied at a charge, and this would enable the whole of the rates levied to be used for the free service in local bodyareas. ”