The Library World Volume 5 Issue 9

Abstract

WITH the sentiments expressed in Mr. Doubleday's excellent paper in the February number almost every librarian will be in substantial agreement. First, it is wholesome for the welfare of Public Libraries that the subject should not be tabooed; librarians ought to be continually obsessed and worried by it, and should exercise their minds chiefly, not in framing apologies for their prodigious issues of fiction, but in finding a drastic remedy. That these excessive issues are “an abuse of the privileges offered by Public Libraries” and a principal reason for the bad odour in which the institution stands in the minds of many thinking people; that the expense of furnishing “leisured or semi‐leisured people” with this kind of luxury is an injustice to the most worthy class of readers; and that the feeble expedients hitherto adopted to lessen the evil have had no real success, are propositions that command well‐nigh unanimous consent. But is Mr. Doubleday conclusive enough? Does he state in a sufficiently clear and positive manner what is the alternative policy?

Citation

(1903), "The Library World Volume 5 Issue 9", New Library World, Vol. 5 No. 9, pp. 224-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb008853