Manual of Library Economy / Third and Memorial Edition

by James Duff Brown; W. C. Berwick Sayers

543. The private schemes, effective as they are, are unable to supply that co-ordinated service which may be expected from a state, or rate, maintained service; and as a whole the rural population is unprovided as yet. Although the need for general library provision has been abundantly recognized, the imagination of British legislators seems to have been unable to compass anything practical towards meeting it. The reasons for lack of village libraries turn upon the small product of the penny rate, which in an average population of 400—a frequent population figure for a village—rarely exceeds £10 yearly, a sum manifestly inadequate to provide or maintain a library. Ignorance of even this possibility and the traditional apathy or actual hostility of squire and parson, at least until lately, to any scheme of rural enlightenment may also have been factors; but, however that may be, in 1915 only seventy-six out of all the parishes of the kingdom had libraries working under the Acts. Co-operation alone can produce for these scattered populations the benefits of a sound service; but although the Libraries Acts (1892, Sections 9-10; 1893, Section 4) permit the co-operation of neighbouring urban districts or parishes for the provision of libraries, the method has been resorted to only occasionally, as at Workington and Harrington in Cumberland, where some such combination exists.

544. The County Council as Library Authority.

544. The County Council as Library Authority.—The obvious authority to establish and administer rural libraries is the County Council; but there is no explicit legislative instruction, or even permission, for them to do so. The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust has given careful and sympathetic attention to this problem, and to this body the recent rapid development of rural libraries is due. Acting on a recommendation of Professor W. G. S. Adams, in his valuable Report on Library Provision and Policy, 1915, that experimental library systems should be established in five selected areas in different parts of the kingdom, the Trustees invited certain County Councils through their education committees, and certain towns well placed in regard to surrounding rural districts, to accept grants for such work. Professor Adams advised the provision of (1) a central library, from which the books could be distributed at regular intervals, and from which also there should be supervision of the whole area; (2) village libraries, usually placed in a school, with the schoolmaster as librarian, and consisting of a permanent collection of important reference and standard works, and a circulating library which would be exchanged at three-monthly or other suitable intervals. The first areas chosen were Staffordshire as a county; Worksop, Nottinghamshire, as a town centred amongst villages; and the Trustees themselves established at the public library of their own centre, Dunfermline, a system to deal with the Orkneys, Shetland and the island of Lewis, and to reinforce by circulating collections the Coats libraries in other districts. The scheme has developed rapidly, and at the time of writing the counties of Dorset, Gloucester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Somerset, Stafford, Warwick, Westmorland, Wilts, York, Montgomery, Brecon, Buckingham, Cardigan, Carnarvon, Forfar, Lewis, Orkney and Shetland, Perth, Kerry and Limerick are all administering, or have accepted, grants for rural libraries. The grants range in amount from about £3000 to £7000 each, and are initial and experimental; that is to say, the sum provided is intended to establish and maintain the library system for a space of five years, after which it is expected that they will be administered entirely from county funds.

545. The Methods of Carnegie Rural Libraries.

545. The Methods of Carnegie Rural Libraries.—It is too early yet to assess the results of these schemes or to expatiate with any certainty upon their methods; but an account of the administration of the Trust’s own scheme for the North of Scotland may be taken as typical, because, with the necessary variations imposed, or considered desirable, in the various county schemes, it is the standard for them all.

546. The Central Repository.

546. The Central Repository.—At the central repository the books are collected, classified, catalogued, dispatched and received; and accommodation sufficient for these purposes is provided. The extent of the initial stock, which is intended later to be fully representative of English and translated foreign literature, literature in Gaelic, local industries, science, history and topography, is such as to provide a collection of about seventy-five books for each centre to be served; and the travelling collections consist in equal proportions of general works, fiction for adult readers, and literature for children. Later, however, the selection will be influenced largely by the demands made by the local librarians. In the first case collections were exchanged twice yearly. Certain current periodicals, not returnable, were also sent out in boxes.

Accession.—A slip suggestions record is used, one slip being written for each title; and from this the order list is compiled. Both order and slips are stamped with the date of the order, and when the books are received and found to be correct the slips are stamped with the date of receipt. The slips are then filed to form a continuous catalogue of accessions. Accessioning is done the ordinary way; all books are stamped throughout with a rubber-stamp impression of the name of the Trust; and the board label reads thus:

RURAL LIBRARIES.