FRANCE’S LIBRARIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 978, 22 May 1930, Page 18

FRANCE’S LIBRARIES

ABSENCE OF PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS BOOKS DIFFICULT TO GET The Ministry of Public Instruction in France has recently appointed a commission to examine the question of establishing public libraries, and this commission has begun by comparing what is at present done in France with what is done in other countries. France comes very badly out of the comparison, says the Paris correspondent of a London exchange. It is an astonishing thing that in a country, where the average of intelligence is so exceptional and the standard of education so high, hardly anything exists to encourage the man who is not possessed of means to cultivate his mind. When Jules Ferry ha| succeeded in persuading the Chamber to adopt the principle of compulsory free secular education, to be supplied by the State, he added, “And now, if you do not give Francq some libraries you will have achieved nothing at all.” That was more than fifty years ago, and it is only now that France is thinking seriously of filling up the gap.

The truth is that any Frenchman who wants to cultivate his mind can only do so with great difficulty if he lives in any town but Paris, for he will have to buy nearly all the books that he wants to read. If he lives in the country, he will have to buy every one. for, apart from a few shabby “cabinets de lecture,” in watering-places, with dog-eared novels, which had no value when they were new. and have less now, circulating libraries in France are unknown. Authors, indeed, look upon them with horror as a diabolical contrivance for preventing the sale of a proper number of copies of their books and for robbing them of their royalties, and no doubt the first result of a generalisation of circulating libraries in France would be that the published price of books would go up. However, that is a long way ahead.

The fact is, that the literary and artistic culture of France, although its effects are spread very widely by an admirable educational system and by the French habit of discussing everything, is very little dependent upon the general reading of books. France, which has so many writers and so many admirable writers, has very few readers of anything but newspapers. Her reading public is an elite, and is largely concentrated in Paris. That fact, perhaps, has a great deal to do with the character of French litera ture.

In Paris the reader who cannot afford to buy books can easily read them—if he does not want to take them home. Apart from the Bibliotheque is a lion ale, there are three other fine libraries in those of Sainte Genevieve, the Arsenal and the Institut, and other libraries again, of a specialised artistic, historical, scientific, or theatrical character, to which the student can easily have access. All of these libraries are, however, poor in contemporary books, and this will be understood when it is said that even the Bibliotheque Nationale can only spend £3,200 a year on the joint account of bookbinding and the purchases of new works, while the other libraries mentioned have to rely on private munificence. There are a few small libraries maintained by the municipality, but their total expenditure for all purposes is not £3,000 a year, and there is not a single public lending library, and only one or two very small commercial ones, run by individual booksellers. The only lending library of any size in Paris is conducted by Americans, and its stock consists almost entirely of books in English.

In the provinces the position is far worse. In Lyons, the second town of France in size, less than £SOO a year is spent by the town on buying books. In Toulouse, which has 150,000 inhabitants, the sum is hardly more than £l5O. In Amiens, with 90,000 inhabitants, it does not exceed £BO. Compare this with Great Britain, which spends well over £200,000 a year on its public libraries, and has 15,000 of them, to say nothing of a number of highly organised commercial lending libraries. It looks, however, as if something would soon be done in France. The commission which is now sitting is the outcome of a resolution, passed in the Senate last March, and calling for the establishment of public reading rooms where they do not at present exist —which means virtually everywhere.

The first step is to centralise information about the many small libraries, which there are already—attached not only to municipalities bu* to universities, colleges, and other institutions—but which hardly know of each others existence or of the facilities which each can furnish Long ago, before the war, there was a Department at the Ministry of Public Instruction for this purpose; but it has disappeared, and is now to be revived.

It is also proposed that the State shall give grants to towns and even to villages which are ready to make an effort on their own account, but only in proportion to that effort. There the plans come to an end for the moment; but there is evidently room for another Andrew Carnegie Will not any wealthy American offer himself? Or what about a wealthy Frenchman—M. Citroen or M. Cotv for example? ’