Search results

I HAVE been asked by the Editor to give my reminiscences of the modern library movement in India. H. H. The Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda, the pioneer of that movement, was responsible for arousing my interest in the subject. In an interview which I had with him in London in 1910, learning that I was keenly interested in education, and had for twenty‐five years been in the service of eminent English publishing houses, he informed me that free and compulsory education had been in existence in Baroda for some years, and that he had recently engaged an American library expert to inaugurate in his dominions a system of public libraries. Three years later the Maharaja asked me to join his Library Department, and I arrived in Baroda in December, 1913. Mr. W. A. Borden, the American librarian, had returned home, and Mr. J. S. Kudalkar, his designated successor, had been sent to study library conditions and services abroad.

AS will be seen from the following correspondence, the Library Committee of County Meath has taken very seriously an observation we made in one of our Notes and News items in the Spring number of the LIBRARY REVIEW. In view of the subject being one of high interest not only to Irish librarians but also to readers everywhere, we invited observations from other quarters, and these we have pleasure in publishing. Our readers, we feel sure, will be much interested in the discussion, but it seems almost a sinister sign that without exception our Irish correspondents (not all of whom are librarians) beg us to withhold their names from their quite innocuous comments. We would enquire if the politician alone is to be allowed the liberty of free expression of opinion?

ALL historians are biassed. There is no great harm in that; indeed it is inevitable. The trouble is that some historians are not aware of their bias. “I write without anger or favour, remote as I am from both these things” (“Sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo”), boasted Tacitus, and there is no doubt that he made his claim in good faith. But two comments may be permitted. First his attempt at impartiality detracted from the value of his history. “The Roman historians” said Mommsen, “were men who said what it would have been meritorious to omit, and omitted what it was essential to say.” Again, for all his effort, Tacitus did not attain to impartiality. So much impressed was he,—to take only one instance,—by the contrast between slavish Roman and free barbarian, that his accounts of Germans and Britons must be taken with more than one grain of salt. His history, in other words, was conditioned by his own experience, his own environment, his own heredity.

OF old the public library was wont to take its reputation from the character of the newsroom. That room, as everyone knows, attracts every element in the community and it may be it attracts especially the poorer elements;—even at times undesirable ones. These people in some towns, but perhaps not so often now‐a‐days, have been unwashen and often not very attractive in appearance. It was natural, things being as they are, that the room should give a certain tone to the institution, and indeed on occasion cause it to be avoided by those who thought themselves to be superior. The whole level of living has altered, and we think has been raised, since the War. There is poverty and depression in parts of the country, it is true; but there are relief measures now which did not exist before the War. Only those who remember the grinding poverty of the unemployed in the days, especially the winter days, before the War can realise what poverty really means at its worst. This democratic levelling up applies, of course, to the public library as much as to any institution. At present it may be said that the part of the library which is most apparent to the public and by which it is usually judged, is the lending or home‐reading department. It therefore needs no apology if from time to time we give special attention to this department. Even in the great cities, which have always concentrated their chief attention upon their reference library, to‐day there is an attempt to supply a lending library service of adequate character. We recall, for example, that the Leeds Public Library of old was first and foremost a reference library, with a lending library attached; to‐day the lending library is one of the busiest in the kingdom. A similar judgment can be passed upon Sheffield, where quite deliberately the city librarian would restrict the reference library to works that are of real reference character, and would develop more fully the lending library. In Manchester, too, the new “Reference Library”—properly the new Central Library—has a lending library which issues about 1,500 volumes daily. There must be all over the country many libraries issuing up to a thousand volumes each a day from their central lending departments. This being the case the department comes in for very careful scrutiny.

THERE is to be an international Library Conference in Rome at the end of June, under the Presidency of Dr. Collijn, the Librarian of the Royal Library of Stockholm. This is the outcome of the Edinburgh and Atlantic City conferences when an international committee was formed. Great Britain is represented on the Committee, and it is hoped that the unique occasion of the Conference will not be passed by British librarians. Our language difficulties are real, but there is sufficient linguistic ability in the profession to provide the right delegates; and the matters to be discussed range over many aspects of librarianship, including personnel, technique and international co‐operation. We are part of the library system of Europe and ought to take our place in it; and not allow Anglo‐Saxon libraries to be represented entirely and invariably by our nevertheless always welcome American colleagues.