PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3885, 28 August 1928, Page 69

PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY.

LARGER VOTE URGED. WELLINGTON, August 24. An urgent plea for more funds to enable the General Assembly to maintain its character as a national institution is made by the librarian, Dr G. H. Scholefield, in his annual report presented to Parliament to-day. The report says that during the year 2270 books were added to the collection from all sources, as compared with 2162 in the previous year, and 1501 in the year before. The number of volumes on the register at March 31 was 115,150. and there has been a considerable addition since then. “In connection with the purchase of books, I would point out that it will not be possible to maintain the proper accessions for a library of this size and character within the limits of the annual vote for book buying pur poses and the revenue from private bills.” Dr Scholefield says: “The vote was fixed at £6OO some 60 years age when the library was a very small onv and the output of books inconsiderable. In recent years the annual publication of books on serious subjects has very much increased, and there has also been a considerable increase in the cost of such books. It is obvious, therefore, that if £6OO was considered a reasonable sum for books 60 years ago, it is not possible to do anything like justice to a much larger library at the present day on £7OO a year. The purchases of the past two years hdve only been possible by reason of the existence of a credit balance of over £6OO at the beginning of the period. Although we are now purchasing on very favourable terms our expenditure on books last year (including a fixed sum of about £2OO for newspapers and periodicals) amounted to £lOBB, and the credit balance at the end of the year was only £279. At least four of the public libraries in New Zealand are spending more than the General Assembly Library on the purchase of books, a position which is hardly compatible with the character of this library as a national institution.”