CHAPTER XXIX
LIBRARIES OF MUNICIPAL REFERENCE
445. General.
445. General.—It is appropriate to devote a brief space to the consideration of reference libraries of municipal material, because the Library Association has affirmed the desirability of such libraries; although, so far as this country is concerned, the matter is in the prospective stage rather than that of accomplishment. In various Canadian and American cities such libraries exist and have proved their utility.
Municipal history would probably furnish many examples of independent attempts to solve similar local government and administrative problems, all conducted without that reference to one another which is implied in organization, and without full profit being derived from the successes or failures of former workers. It is true that before carrying out schemes appeal is made by municipalities to their official experts; but the experience of the latter, however wide, is usually circumscribed, and they can add to it only by personal visits to and correspondence with, similar experts. This limited knowledge, and the expenditure of time and money, could be avoided by any municipality which possessed an organized library of reference material.
It is, as we have shown, the business of every library to preserve in its local collection all publications of the authority to whom it belongs. The value of this limited work is obvious, but it does not necessarily demand a special department. When, however, an attempt is made to collect every kind of material, manuscript, printed, pictorial and statistical, which is likely to throw light on problems of local administration, including the municipal literature issued by other authorities, the task becomes so large that a separate and self-contained department must be devoted to it.
446.
446. In almost every municipal office there is to be found a smaller or larger collection of the more obvious technical books for the reference use of its staff. Such books are treatises on engineering details, accountancy, and the Town Clerk has usually a small collection of acts, manuals, and other literature bearing upon municipal law. The collections are rarely if ever large enough to possess a representative and co-ordinate character, nor are they easily available for the whole of the staff of the local authority or for members of the town council and the public. There is a certain wastefulness in this method of providing books. One or two of the greater towns have more general municipal collections; Glasgow is an example; but there is no town in the United Kingdom which possesses a systematically arranged and professionally administered municipal library, or bureau of municipal research, if the term is preferred. Yet many things may be urged in favour of such a department. It would be an infinite advantage to any inquirer, whether an official or a member of the public, to be able to go to a specially constituted department and to study what has been the general experience of any question or scheme under consideration or in prospect.
Within the limits presumed the field of the municipal reference is a wide one. It would collect all books of an authoritative nature on local government, and every available municipal document, from the minutes of the local council to the small paragraph from the newspaper which would shed light on municipal administration. It is definitely bibliographical work and should be placed under the control of the libraries committee; moreover, it is expert work, and can only be conducted satisfactorily by a man or woman who has been trained in the collection, classification, filing, and particularly the minute cataloguing and indexing of literary material; in short, to be effective, it must be placed in the care of a professional librarian.
447.
447. Such a library would demand fairly generous accommodation if it is to contain the material indicated, and would require a proper staff; it would cost money. Here, perhaps, we have the crucial factor in the situation, because it is difficult to convince the average municipal governor that books can bear a part in the solution of municipal problems. It is obvious that such a department cannot be supported out of the present resources of library committees—in fact, it is most undesirable, even if it is legal, that the cost should fall upon the library rate. It is special work to assist the government of a town, and should be paid for by the governing authority as a whole and quite apart from ordinary library funds. In Milwaukee, where the Public Library administers such a department, the city makes an annual appropriation of five thousand dollars from the general city fund to be added to the library’s revenue, and used only for municipal reference purposes. One thousand pounds a year would possibly seem an excessive amount to the average town council, but when it is remembered that such a library, by the information it would afford, might save many more thousands of pounds, the investment would seem to be an eminently satisfactory one.