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120 ROBERT L. HANSEN
particularly large counties) by which the interest of the population is
con-tinually excited for Libraries, where readers from the country-side see what
can be expected of a Public-Library, that it serves the interests of the
community, and that it has also to be paid for. The country-borrowers, brought
up under the influence of the modest demands of the past, become
gradu-ally weaned from their untimely modesty and as time goes on become less
surprised when the Central Librarian in the county town makes a budget
for a Village-Library, by which it no longer has to exist as a
»pauper-library», but becomes a centre of culture to its surroundings. In this
influence of the Central-Library upon the growth of Village-Libraries we see
one of its most important objects, as the Library Question is not yet solved in
the country. And Lange plainly saw that the problem, as far as the country
was concerned, could not be sol ved by continuing to work under existing
conditions. The way he chose out of the difficulty was later suggested in
England at the same time as the proposition which brought about the
English County Libraries, which are only country-libraries, but the
proposition did not give any results.
It was, therefore, Organization — even as had been the case previously
in regard to the Co-operative Movement — which made the Danish Library
Service into an Institution which drew the attention and interest of foreign
countries towards itself. Further, the chief characteristic of the Danish Library
Service in modern times is this, that all our Libraries — principally based
upon the experiences of co-operation gained by regarding the
working-together in their districts of the Central-Libraries with larger and lesser ones
— from a point of view of books, are regarded by our library-folk and
granting authorities as one organization, where there is easy and quick access
from any one part to another, so that the f ar away reader has, f. inst.,
through his Village-Library admittance to all the rungs ön the literary
ladder, right from the nearest Town-Library, via the Central-Library, and
the State Library in Aarhus, to the large Libraries of Science and
Technical Libraries in the Capital — should his demands be so extensive.
The Danish system is, as yet, not introduced into other countries, but
in Finland’s new Public Libraries Act as well as in the newly proposed
Swedish one, Danish ideas have been taken into consideration, and in any
case one will undoubtediy see the one Central-Library after another come
into being in Sweden during the coming years (for the time being it has
been planned to found t wo a year).
The first Central-Library Service, the re-organization of the Copen-
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