LIBRARY METHODS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21793, 7 May 1934, Page 12

LIBRARY METHODS

NEW ZEALAND CRITICISED " FIFTY YEARS BEHIND " SUBSCRIPTION PLAN ATTACKED Lending libraries which cost their users nothing except a small addition to the rates, towns in which it is considered niggardly to spend less or; library services than on education, and an attitude toward libraries in general which he claimed places them considerably higher than in New Zealand, were described to a reporter of the Press in Christchurch last week by Mr. Ralph Munn, director of the Carnegie Library at Pittsburg, United States, who is making a survey of the Dominion's libraries. These happy conditions, lie said, exist in many towns of the United States, which carry out to the full the American Library Association's recommendation that not less than one dollar a head should be spent every year on library services.

In such a town as Christchurch, said Mr. Munn, at least 120,000 dollars, or £25,000, should be spent, annually on library work. Moreover, ho regards with a good deal of distrust the system of subscription lending departments which exists in New Zealand, since, he says, he believes that all library services should be for the benefit of the community as a wliolo, and not for any particular class.

The librarian of tho Canterbury Public Library, Mr. E. J. Bell, who was present at the interview, provided a sharp contrast to Mr. Munn's account of tho libraries in the United States by remarking that the total expenditure on all tho libraries in Christchurch did not exceed £IO,OOO a year, and that moro than half of this was obtained from subscriptions. Thus in Christchurch, instead of ono dollar a head, or ss, being spent yearly on libraries, only about 2s a head is spent, and of this considerably less than Is comes from sources other than the subscribers. "Select Body ol Subscribers" "New Zealand librarians who have visited tho United States," said Mr. Munn, "very quickly discovered that New Zealand libraries arc—l would saj-—about 50 years behind those of England and America. They asked the Carnegie Corporation to send someone familiar with library work over to appraise and report on the New Zealand library system. That is why I am hero now." , Mr. Munn is particularly concorned over the subscription system in force in the lending libraries of New Zealand. "The free lending libraries in the United States are supported entirely by local taxation," he said, "and aw considered a part of the educational system of the city in which they stand. There is no select body of subscribers who pay a special fee and whose desires must be specially catered for.

"In New Zealand these subscribers appear to be interested only in detective stories and the lighter types of literature, and, because the libraries are dependent for their very existence on the fees of these persons, the librarians dare not select books of 1 a genuine educational and cultural value. I have seen many libraries in the smaller country towns of New Zealand in which the book collection is 97 per cent fiction, and a very cheap and ephemeral fiction at that. Demand For Light Fiction "In the larger cities of the Dominion the librarians have made a determined effort to make their libraries exert a greater educational force, but their subscribers exprt an unfortunate influence in demanding a large supply of light fiction," Mr. Munn continued. "A the children's sections are not well developed in New Zealand outside of the four large cities." Because of the large area of the country districts in New Zealand and their sparse settlement, the small towns and rural areas presented, in Mr. Munn's opinion, a particularly difficult problem. In England the library system had been developed with the county as the administrative unit, and practically every English farmer had access to a near by library. The county in New Zealand, however, was not an appropriate unit, but it was hoped to find some other regional district in which library services could be developed to the advantage of the inhabitants of the back blocks. Mr. Munn added: —"I think that the city councils of New Zealand would be entirely unjustified in paying any such sums as are paid in tho United States to the libraries of the Dominion as they exist to-day. It is to be hoped, though, that the libraries here will in time develop along educational and cultural lines so that their return to the country will fully justify such an expenditure."