“The Democracy of the Printed Page”

Grey River Argus, 12 September 1940, Page 10

“The Democracy of the Printed Page”

“One still sees in the medieval libraries of Europe books chained in tneir stalls. Only a few people have access to them.. .Nowadays the poorest man in the land can walk into a library and have the richest treasures of knowledge, wisdom, and imagination at his command. What this means for an entire people is not easily or accurately describable. But it would seem to be safe to assume that a people granted the privilege of moving through the printed page, beyond the area of their immediate experience, gain breadth of outlook .. .. Books rank high as the essential civilisers of life since they enable the individual to move easily and freely beyond liimself. Of incalculable moment, then, to the development of a free people was the decision to make access to books a public concern .... To every member of thp community, from the humblest to the highest, can walk up to a shelf and make his own acquaintance with the books he chooses to know. This z ■ is the real democracy of the printed page.” —II. A. Overstreet and B. Wilkinson, on Libraries in the United States, in “Town meeting comes to town,'" Harper, 1938.