Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Comité International des Bibliothèques. 3:e session. Stockholm 20—21.8. 1930. Actes - XVII. The Libraries of Great Britain and Ireland, 1929—30. (Mr. A. Esdaile)
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72
tion-stone laid; the donor took the occasion to announce a further gift, that of his
own fine library, rieh in monuments of printing, and in literary mss., notably of
Victor Hugo.
Several other private collections are coming, either at once or after a life interest,
to University libraries, Sir Edwin Durning Lawrence’s to London, Sir Charles Firth’s
to Sheffield, Mr. C. K. Robjohn’s to Leicester. The new University buildings of
Nottingham, situated in a park on the outskirts of the city, include a handsome library
building; the University has hitherto made much use of the city library, and its own
is but small at present. The smaller University libraries, at present in many cases
of slight resources, begin to attrået gifts, and
The Central Library for Students, which serves for a centre for loans, as
biblio-graphical enquiries, and for the supply of more expensive books to students*in local
libraries, has been recognized by the State and given a grant of £3.000 a year. It has
been reconstituted in close association with, though not as a department of, the British
Museum, under the name of the National Central Library. We shall then have side
by side national reference and lending libraries, and the demand that the British
Museum should lend will be evaded.
A considérable number of urban municipal libraries great and small have been
or are being rebuilt. Founded half a Century and more ago, when the populations
of these towns were much smaller, and the idea of a public library much more restricted,
than to-day, they were old bottles being burst by new wine. Among them may be
men-tioned Exeter (City and College), Bolton, Burnley, Workington, Watford, Rotherham
(where the old library was destroyed by fire). Reconstruction, to permit of free
access to the shelves, and other enlargements and improvements, has been carried out in
very many public libraries. An entirely new public library, where none was before, has
been provided in a London suburb, Hendon. London, it will be remembered, has no
single public library authority, each metropolitan borough or urban district Controlling
its own.
The County libraries continue to expand their services. The Carnegie United
Kingdom Trust has helped with funds for improving the book supply. In several
coun-ties sub-head-quarters have been set up in different quarters of the county, thus
reliev-ing the main head-quarters of much routine work.
Regional coopération is at work in Cornwall, in East Anglia, in part of
Nottingham-shire, and in Northamptonshire, and is just established in the four most northerly
countries of England. The Carnegie Trust has granted a sum of £3.000 to enable
this scheme to be the model for the many future schemes of the kind which will no
doubt be set up in other parts of the country. A commission studied the library
provision of Northern Ireland, and reported in favour of a plan of regional coopération
in the province, turning upon a national library at Belfast, which does not yet exist.
Probably a combination of the libraries of the City and University would best provide
the centre required.
Readers’ tickets are now made available for several libraries, interchangeably, in
Birmingham and the surrounding country, an act of grace on the part of the large library
towards its poorer neighbours.
Public Libraries Acts of Parliament are foreshadowed both for England and for
Scotland, the existing acts being numerous and in some points confused and in others
out of date.
Professional Education. At the School of librarianship (University of London)
an alternative course for candidates for libraries of natural sciences is being introduced.
Professional Organization. The Library Association met in September at Brighton
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