School Committee made a grant of £10 for Aramoho. These sums, spent through the School Committees, earned a £ for £ Government subsidy and were also subject to educational discount, so that books to the value of £54 were actually purchased. They were all chosen as being outstanding of their kind, and were selected by Mrs Hillary Wooding, a committee member of the Friends and formerly Organising Librarian for the School Library Service in Wanganui. There was never any question as to the success of the classes at Putiki. They went with a bang from the start, have been thoroughly enjoyed by both story tellers and children, and two years later are still attracting bumper attendances. This year one of the story tellers is Mrs L. M. Sutherland, one of the local mothers. To begin with there was a great lack of books for this group. The residents of Putiki are in an unusual situation so far as Wanganui Public Library is concerned. They are outside the city boundary, although less than half a mile from the G.P.O. as the kotare flies across the Whanganui River. If they wish to join the Public Library they must pay an annual subscription of £1, but very few do so. Many reasons besides cost keep them out of the library — time, effort, diffidence, feelings of ‘it's an all-pakeha show’, or lack of any particular inclination to read. Their children, by virtue of attending city schools, are entitled to free membership until the age of twenty-one, but very few use this privilege after leaving primary school. The local secondary schools have good libraries for the pupils interested enough to use them, but there is no carry-over to the Public Library when they leave school. A few join commercial lending libraries in town. Towards the end of 1964 the chairman of the Whanganui Educational Advancement Committee, Mr H. R. Metekingi, made an appeal for donations of children's books for Punga-haruru. By March 1965, 500 books had been received. Of these less than 200 were reasonably modern, and less than 30 were new. Roughly 10% were non-fiction for adults, and 30% adult fiction. The remaining 60% consisted of picture books and stories for the standards. It was evident that there was going to be an adult section in our growing ‘library’ whether we had planned one or not.

Study Centre During 1965, Punga-haruru was made available to secondary school students as a study centre “Wanganui Chronicie” photo Wilson Huwyler and Neddy Ihaka helping to set up the Punga-haruru library on three nights a week. Coaching was given by Mrs E. McRae, a member of the Federation of University Women. This year Mrs McRae has continued her expert help to our secondary students, beginning in the first term. A reference collection has been built up for the use of these pupils and others, and it is now small but first-rate. All the books are new and up-to-date. Its main lack is a copy of the Descriptive Atlas of New Zealand, which the Advancement Committee would dearly love to obtain. Donations of books continued to arrive and by the end of 1965 more than 1,200 had passed through the hands of the volunteer librarians. The pressing problem was where to house the ones selected for use. The children's books were put on some second-hand kitchen shelves, and some shop shelving was donated by the local store. At one stage seventeen cartons of adult books and reference books were stacked in the front porch of Punga-haruru. Mr and Mrs Waitere cleared out the store-