METHODS IN LIBRARIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1933, Page 6

METHODS IN LIBRARIES.

BRITISH-AMERICAN COMPARISON.

NEW ZEALANDER’S OBSERVATIONS.

By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night.

Some observations on American and English library methods were made by Mr. A. D. Mclntosh, a member of the staff of the Parliamentary Library, who returned by the Maunganui to-day after travelling 4 in America, England and Europe on a Carnegie grant. America, said Mr. Mclntosh, was a land of libraries. Their magnificence, and superiority was freely universally acknowledged. In the United States a book was regarded as a source of information; in Great Britain it was regarded as a work of literature or of art, and that more than anything else expressed the difference in the aims and methods. The great body of American librarians underwent careful training in special library schools and were highly skilled, efficient and well paid people. In this latter respect English librarians were much less fortunate. They had old and smaller buildings and smaller and untrained staffs and were quite ready to admit that they were behind the times, but they pointed out that they performed all the work expected of them at one-third of the cost of Americans. The British' public library movement had definitely established itself as an indispensable element in the life of the community. In its splendid reorganisation as a national service since the war it presented a plan far in advance of that of America, but its disabilities were still very great.

Mr. Mclntosh said the great point about American and British libraries was that they were free. The subscription library had long ago been abandoned.