VITAL FORCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27078, 12 May 1949, Page 8

VITAL FORCE

ROLE OF LIBRARY EDUCATING THE COMMUNITY IMPORTANCE OF QUALIFIED STAFFS An informed and rational public opinion played a great part in maintaining truth, which was the greatest defender of democracy as against propaganda values, which of late had often been placed above absolute truth. Libraries could play V valuable part in helping to inform the public on important issues, said the president of the New Zealand Library Association. Mr J. W. Kealy, in his address at the opening of the annual conference in Dunedin yesterday. Mr Kealy is chairman of the Auckland City Council Library Committee. The librarian’s duty was to defend the well of truth, and this, in a civilised community, was a vital function, Mr Kealy said. The librarian had to have the courage to see that the authorities bearing on both sides of a question were equally represented on his shelves. He must so discriminate in his purchasing—within the scope of the subjects covered—as to secure a range as wide and as authoritative as possible.. By no means the least of the people’s defences of truth was the library, Mr Kealy went on. It must be one of the aims of the Library Association to ensure that those men and women who were best qualified to serve were attracted to, and retained in, library work in New Zealand.

Drawing a parallel with the law. which was a closed profession, Mr Kealy said: “ The problem of the smaller country library is such that in many districts it would not be practicable to lay down a legal minimum standard of technical qualification for those who are permitted to be employed there. We can, however, strive deliberately year after year to raise our own standards so that the technical qualifications laid down as requisite by the Library Association will gradually become essential for all worthwhile library appointments in New Zealand “In order to give the service which our librarians should give,” Mr Kealy said, “ we need to continue to attract into library work men and women of more than average ability. To gel complete integrity and of considerably such men and women we must look to the status, security and rewards that the library profession has to offer.” Mr Kealy said he believed that the future, both for the association and the library system generally, was particularly bright. Beyond question, the better libraries were doing a real work, not only in encouraging the taste for reading, but encouraging a taste for better reading. “I believe,” he concluded, “that the uncertain’ state of international affairs to-day and the general feeling that the world is at tne cross-roads is aso having its effect and leading people as never before to turn to our libraries for guidance and enlightenment.”