LIBRARY SURVEY

Evening Star, Issue 21634, 1 February 1934, Page 2

LIBRARY SURVEY

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT CARNEGIE CORPORATION'S ACTION At last night’s meeting of the City Council, Cr Borrie put forward details concerning the survey of the public and institutional libraries in the dominion which is to be commenced for the Carnegie Corporation, New York, by Air Ralph Alnnn, a director of the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh. In moving the adoption of the Library Committee’s report, Cr Borrie stated that Mr Alnnn, who would have associated with him the Auckland librarian (Mr John Barr), would make a survey of all the libraries in New Zealand. They might remember that when the University Commission sat in regard to the universities of New Zealand, one weak point to which It directed attention was the library system. Unless they had better libraries it was difficult for men to do research work. He understood that the Carnegie Corporation was offering 25,000 dollars to each of the university colleges in New Zealand to enlarge their libraries. Cr Borrie said that recently all over the English-speaking world there had been a very great advance in the scope and function of public libraries. They had come more and more to be relied upon for technical and commercial information ; drama societies and art socities had found in them the most economical means of maintaining stocks and of remaining in touch with modern movements. The libraries of England and America had come to specialise in all the interests, trades, and professions of their people. To some extent this was possible in any individual library; but if the service was to be adequate it would he done only cooperatively—by the libraries of the whole country working together to provide certain expensive, essential, and technical, scientific, and general material without duplication and which individually it would be impossible for them to purchase. There was at present no such co-operation in New Zealand. The Carnegie Corporation of New York had appointed Air Alnnn, who, with the Auckland librarian, would ■make a survey of the libraries of New Zealand and report later upon I heir condition. Preliminary surveys of this

sort were made by the Carnegie Corporation in Canada and South Africa, in the British West Indies, and in the United Kingdom, and a survey was about to be made in Australia, said Cr Borne. Canada, and especially British Columbia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, now owed their existing library systems largely to the assistance which the Carnegie Trusts had afforded. The arrival of the surveyor in April would therefore bo a very important step in the history of the libraries of New Zealand, and Dunedin will have reason to be proud of the fact that of the four large centres it was only here that a free-lending library policy existed—a policy which had been approved by practice in the United States, in Great Britain, in Canada, and in South Africa. It was possible that some means would be devised whereby the small country libraries might be assisted nationally, Cr Borrie proceeded, and, as in England, work co-operatively around chosen centres. The general aim would be to make available all over the country material which catered for the ordinary and active interests and real needs of the mass of the people. Material on farming, on the home, on home crafts, material to satisfy interests: in religion, in travel, in philosophy; material which is necessary for the si ccessful working of machinery and for the best workmanship in the trades; and recreational reading. It had hardly occurred as yet to the average New Zealander that a free service such as this was in any way possible. The library survey might perhaps be an opportunity for bringing this about, and as Dunedin was the only one of the four centres in New Zealand which had a Carnegie Library, he would like Otago to be taken as the demonstration area for the survey. The report was adonted.