LIBRARY METHODS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21540, 11 July 1933, Page 11

LIBRARY METHODS

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH NEW ZEALANDER'S TOUR [bv tf.lkgraph—PßESS association] WELLINGTON, Monday Some observations on American and English library methods were made by Mr. A. D. Mcintosh, a member of the staff of the Parliamentary Library, who returned by the Maungantii to-day after travelling in America, England anil Europe on a Carnegie Library grant.

America, said Mr. Mcintosh, was a land of libraries. Their magnificence and superiority was freely and universajly acknowledged. In' the United States, a book was regarded as a source of information, in Great Britain as a work of literature or art, and that more than anything else expressed the difference in aims and methods.

The great body of American librarians underwent careful training in special library schools and were highly skilled, efficient and well-paid people. In the last-named respect, English librarians were much less fortunate. They had old and smaller buildings, smaller and untrained staffs, and were quite ready to admit that they were behind the times, but they pointed out that they performed all the work expected of them at one-third of the cost of the Americans.

The British public library movement had now definitely established itself as an indispensable element in the life of the community. In its splendid reorganisation as a national service since the war, it presented a plan far in advance of that of America, but its disabilities were still very great. Mr. Mcintosh said a great point about American and British libraries was that they were free. The subscription library had long ago been abandoned.