MISSING LIBRARY BOOKS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 101, 30 March 1925, Page 12

MISSING LIBRARY BOOKS

LOSSES AT DUNEDIN. RECORD NUMBER FOR YEAR. DUNEDIN, March 26. In moving tlio adoption of the library committee’s report at the meeting of tlie city council last night, Mr Clarke referred to the following report by the librarian, Mr W. B. McEwan, covering the annual stock-taking:—“l have to report that the annual stock-taking for the year 1924-25 was completed during the week ended March 7, and I regret to say that the losses for the past 12 months exceed any experienced by the library in previous years. The- total losses amount to 32 volumes, 30 being missing from the lending library and two from the juvenile department. The books lost from the lending library cover all sections of the department and as was the case last year the literature division has suffered to the greatest extent. No fewer than 15 volumes out of a total of 30 missing books have been taken from the section devoted to literature. Five of the volumes are on the art of public, speaking and reciting, eight are works of poetry or deal with drama, including four volumes from a set of Jludyard Kipling. One can understand how an individual would take an illegal loan of a book on auction bridge, or even a book ,on magic, but when it omes to such a volume as Trotter’s ‘Music and the Mind,’ a study of psychology and the mental effects of music, it is beyond one’s comprehension altogether. “It is difficult to suggest a remedy. It is true that rest fictions coidd be brought into operation, but as the great majority of our readers are honest 1 am opposed to any curtailment of recognised privileges. In the past 15 years between 200 and 300 volumes have been taken from the shelves and the hope may be expressed that some of them may find their way back to tlie library, where they rightly belong.”