2. “That the creation in the child of intellectual interests, which is furthered by a love of books, is an urgent national need; that while it is the business of the school to foster the desire to know, it is the business of the library to give adequate opportunity for the satisfaction of this desire; that library work with children ought to be the basis of all other library work; that reading-rooms should be provided in all public libraries, where children may read books in attractive surroundings, under the sympathetic and tactful guidance of trained children’s librarians; but that such provision will be largely futile except under the conditions which experience, especially in America where the importance of this work has long been recognized and where it is highly developed, has shown to be essential to success.”
3. “That in view of meeting trade conditions after the war, commercial libraries should be established in all the great trade centres of the kingdom, as a part of the municipal library system, where business men may obtain reliable commercial information, by means of the collection and arrangement for rapid consultation of all Government and other publications relating to commerce; that such libraries should act as outliers or branches of the Commercial Intelligence Department of the Board of Trade; and that such Department should further the work of these libraries in every possible way; that in the smaller towns commercial collections should be formed.”
4. “That technical libraries are as essential, both to technical education and to manufacture, as the laboratory or the workshop; that discovery and invention are stimulated by books; that the technical library, therefore, should be established as a special department of the public library in all important manufacturing towns, with a special organization, including a librarian trained not only in library method and in the bibliography of technology, but possessing also a sufficient technical knowledge to enable him to act as a source of information to inquirers.”
5. “That collections of books and other printed and manuscript matter bearing upon questions of local government should be established in connexion with municipalities; that such collections to be effective must be in charge of a trained librarian; that the management of such collections should be placed under the library committee; that the cost of such libraries will be small in proportion to the valuable part they will play in serving the needs, not only of officials entrusted with the carrying out of public work, but also of members of the municipality responsible for local government finance and policy.”
VI. Since the succeeding chapters of this manual were revised the Ministry of Reconstruction has issued a report on libraries and museums which has been made by its Adult Education Committee. This traverses in a general way the ground covered by the Library Association resolutions and makes recommendations of much moment and gravity. The aim of the report is to explain the extent of libraries and to secure their co-ordination. It criticizes Resolution 1 on the ground that it represents the aims of education inadequately, and it deduces from several very cogent arguments the policy of placing libraries under the local education committees in order that they may be merged into and worked as an extension of the national education system. For London this would mean taking libraries from the boroughs and placing them in the care of the county. The matter is too unsettled to admit of argument here, but such a policy, if carried out, might alter radically the whole character of library provision and administration. The linking up of libraries is recommended by means of a central lending library in London, the municipal libraries, special libraries, and rural libraries; the central lending library would supply the more expensive, little-used books to students direct or through the municipal or rural libraries, and special libraries should be drawn upon in their specialities for books to be used throughout the country. To the end that the service should be developed to the greatest extent, the present income of libraries should be increased, either by an increase in the separate library rate or by abolishing that rate altogether and allowing the estimates of the library to be included in general education estimates.
It seems quite probable that the near future will see a removal of the main financial difficulties.
VII. This manual is based upon the syllabus of the Library Association, but excludes sections 1 and, in part, 2 (Literary History and Bibliography), and includes the subject-matter of the resolutions of 1917. Primarily it is a manual of municipal library practice, but is by no means exclusively so. Special libraries have their individual methods, and a general conspectus of librarianship cannot include them; and state, university, institutional, club and private libraries are equally matters for specific treatment such as would be impossible here. But all libraries are faced with very similar problems of selection, accession, classification, cataloguing, etc., or at any rate they differ in these matters in degree rather than in kind; and it is hoped that for them much that follows will be at least interesting and suggestive. To this end the method aimed at is expository rather than argumentative; and when two or more methods are in vogue they have been placed side by side in order that the student may review them and form his own judgment of their relative merits. Where we are dogmatic we are so unconsciously, and we hope that aberrations of this kind will be passed over with forbearance.