THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, August 14, 1939. THE COUNTRY LIBRARY SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23886, 14 August 1939, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, August 14, 1939. THE COUNTRY LIBRARY SERVICE

The report which has been presented to* Parliament, of the operation of the Country Library Service inaugurated last year, is of considerable interest. " Reading maketh a full man" says one of our great philosophers. The effect in this direction of the distribution of more books to dwellers in the rural districts in the Dominion through the Country Library scheme cannot yet be measured. Probably it never will be fully measurable. But if no fault can be found with the dictum that intelligent and useful citizens should develop with the aid of libraries, not in spite of the lack of them, rural communities, through the provision of readier access to good reading matter, should be coming into no more than their rightful inheritance. In the not distant future perhaps book consignments will drop from the clouds upon such rural communities as are thirsty for literary sustenance. In the meantime two book vans, each carrying over eleven hundred volumes, are an important feature of the mechanism of the country library service of this Dominion. When the organisation of it has been completely effected, " it will be possible for each person living in a country district, however remote, to be as well served with library facilities as a city dweller." It is an impressive objective that is envisaged. The service is based on sufficiently generous lines to permit of groups of readers in isolated places and of even individuals to take advantage of it. The book reaches the borrower free, and all is asked of him is that he shall pay the return postage upon it, and that he shall not ask for fiction, or rare or expensive editions, or students' textbooks. Otherwise at his disposal is a large selection of volumes on such varied subjects as economics, plumbing, interior decoration, physiology, diatetics, and other grave and fascinating fare. When the country library service was instituted one of the problems that had to be faced related to the small independent subscription libraries, some hundreds in number. In 1930 subsidy grants from the Education Department to these institutions were discontinued, and many of them, their stocks worn out, ceased to function altogether. To help these country libraries was regarded as the first major task of the Country Library Service. The plan which has been adopted of making a suitable charge for so many oooks, changeable three times a year to each independent subscription library that has no means of establishing a publicly supported free service, seems to have worked satisfactorily. Up to the end of December last 197 libraries had applied for this service; the number of books on issue in this way was nearly ten thousand, and the rural population 'reached by the service was estimated at 67,000. It is to be inferred from the report that the institution of the country library service is bringing, where it operates, a realisation of the disadvantages of the subscription method of financing public libraries. "As an institution," it is observed in the report, "the free public library, when well supported by its local authority and supplied with a changing stream of books from a central source, is clearly one of the finest things that a country borough or town district can possess. The contrast between some of the best of the free libraries and some of the most dingy and uninviting subscription libraries is most sharp. It is : the difference between hope and j despair, or day and night." Six-1 teen public libraries undei" various controlling authorities, mostly in the North Island, avail themselves of the country library service. Not surprisingly there is an indication that the libraries which are assisted by the service have a hankering for a larger proportion of fiction in the books supplied to them. A "determined effort" har been made, it is recorded, to get libraries interested in the many kinds of books to which they have not been accustomed. There is, perhaps, just this to be suggested, that there !s an enormous output of books that are listed as " cultural" of which a proportion is calculated to discourage reading altogther.