"A VERY UNSATISFACTORY ARRANGEMENT."

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 79, 5 April 1910, Page 3

"A VERY UNSATISFACTORY ARRANGEMENT."

LEGISLATORS' LIBRARY. AN AUCKLAND CRITICISM. [BY TELEG&AP& — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] AUCKLAND, This Day. The Star, in an editorial, stiongly condemns the recess privilege allowed to the "Wellington general public" in connection with the Parliamentary Library. , It considers it a "very unsatisfactory arrangement" that "several hundreds of the citizens of Wellington secure the use of the best current literature of all classes in a considerable portion of the year entirely free of cost." The papei says : — "The Parliamentary Library is provided and supported at the public expense for the convenience of our legislators, and is chiefly intended as a storehouse of works of reference for their benefit. It. is obvious that the circulation of the books among the outside public means great additional wear and tear for them, and a corresponding increase in annual expenditure. We admit that it would be a waste of good material to lock up such a library altogether when the session closes, and we can see no reason why the general public should not be allowed to use it strictly for purposes of reference under careful restrictions, but this is a very different matter from circulating the books gratis among the friends and acquaintances of members, and perhaps the worst feature of this practice is that because the- right of outsiders to use the library now depends upon the arbitrary choice of members, a privilege which, if it is granted at all, should be open to the general public without reserve, is now converted into a most objectionable form of social patronage.' A further obvious objection, in the Star's opinion, is "that while the books arc allowed to circulate in this way, the citizens of Wellington are receiving the benefit of public expenditure authorised for an entirely different purpose. We" are quite prepared to hear the gibe of parochialism launched at us from Wellington, but we can see no reason why the public money that is voted by *the people of New Zealand for thr laudable purpose of building up a rcfeience libniry for our Parliament should be wasted in supplying the denizens of The Terrace and other favoured quarters of the Empfic City with current litcratme on the cheap. In passing, we may point ont that a large proportion of the new books periodically placed on the Parliamentary Library's shelves are novels, and a still larger proportion of the books circulated among membeis ami tht-ir friends conMsts of fiction. We may well us): if it is advisable or necessary to supply the Pailiamentaiy Library with literature of this type. ... If our mom-Lc-rs of Parliament want to lead novels lei them buy their own. just at they supply »ny other pevitmuJ luxury for thcmielvct."