Varsity Librarian Advocates Free Services

Grey River Argus, 22 May 1947, Page 7

Varsity Librarian Advocates Free Services

CHRISTCHURCH, May 21. Free public library service was advocated by Mr J. Harris, librarian to the Otago University, in his piesidential address to the annual conference of the New Zealand Library Association held in Christchruch to-| day. He also criticised the existing library buildings, book deficiencies and the conditions and salaries of library staffs. In the whole of New Zealand there was not a single sizeable modern library building with any pretensions to adequacy, excepting the Wellington Public Library, he said. The rest were mostly a disgrace to any civilised community. Their working quarters would be condemned at sight by any self-respect-ing factory inspector. Referring to the staffing position Mr Harris said that of all the professional groups in New Zealand librarians were the most overworked and under-paid. “We demand of them high educational qualifications, plus stiff professional training, certain office technique, practical ability, and good personality and for all this we usually offer less than the wage of a general labourer or domestic help,” said Mr Harris. It was agreed in Britain and America that a genuine public library was a free library and that a subscription library could never provide a satisfactory service for the comunity, said Mr Harris. It was up to the association to see that every public library was made a free community institution, as in Britain.

It was agreed that a genuine public library was a free library, and that a subscription library can never provide satisfactory _ service for the community. This point was being pressed in Wellington as long ago as 1841. he added. SHORTAGES CRITICISED Mr Harris added that New Zealand received about forty per cent, less of current periodicals than the 7.500 taken in one fair-sized American University, Stanford, and that periodicals in the modern world were the very life blood of investigation and research, and the main vehicles of scientific and cultural communication. “It is as bad with books,” he said. “Apart from New Zealand history, there is scarely a subject one can think of where we can offer a really comprehensive special collection. This applies even in the fields of utmost national importance. In dentistry, for instance, or chemicals, genuine research is siniply not possible because reference works are not available. The University libraries have always been starved, and have been saved from complete stagnation only by large grants from the Carnegie Corporation.”