GREAT LIBRARY PROPOSED FOR SOUTH AFRICA

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6804, 7 January 1929, Page 2

GREAT LIBRARY PROPOSED FOR SOUTH AFRICA

HUGE NATIONAL SYSTEM WILL CAUSE VAST NETWORK IN EACH PROVINCE. JOHANNESBURG. A library for all South Africa is the scheme that is visualised by Milton J. Ferguson, of California, and S. A. Pitt, of the Glasgow Library, who are on a visit to the Union and Rhodesia on behalf, of tho Carnegie Corporation. The proposals, which will probably be carried out in conjunction with the municipal and state libraries, teachers’ associations, and universities, involve a network of district libraries spreading from a centtal libiarv in each province, which, in turn, would be served from a huge national library. There would bo a freo exchange of books to serve the demands of each district, and by utilising the telephone and organising a rapid service there would be no delav. ,

How Johannesburg might form part of some such system was suggested in an address by Mr. Pitt. The small towns on tho East and West Rand might co-operate with Johannesburg as a federated community for library services, ho said. Having been found successful in Scotland and America, the system was now being established in England. Ho and Mr. Ferguson felt that while Johannesburg had done a great deal of good in providing a public : library-in the full sense of the word, it did not seem to them that Johannesburg had envisaged tho possibilities of what tho people in the city and surroundings might, enjoy.

Mr. Ferguson said that conditions in California, where he had been engaged in library work, were similar to South African conditions, and he claimed that to-day, through the public library, Californians far removed from populous centres, as so many South Africans found thomselves, were as much abreast of tho times, if not more so, than people in tho great American pentres of population.