Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Education and Mental Culture. Introd. by P. E. Lindström - 1. Elementary Education. By J. M. Ambrosius - Popular Education. By G. A. Aldén, A. Dalin, K. Kjellberg, N. Lundahl and B. Sernander
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popular education.
383
to the Ecklesiastikdepartementet (Ecclesiastical Department) has been appointed. It
is his duty also to advise on matters concerning lectures and lecturers (lecture expert).
People’s Libraries. The tendency nowadays is for the lectures and the
libraries to be brought into closer connection with each other: the lecturcs
interest the people in certain books connected with the subjects lectured
on, and those books are supplied by the libraries.
The old parish libraries which had long existed in many places were rummaged
in 1900. It was found that they either consisted of the decayed remnants
of originally good collections, or that the books were in good condition, but
hardly ever used.
However, there were a few libraries, supported by the parish or by private
donors, which supplied the local country population with really good literature.
People’s libraries of some size have been established in a few towns. One was
founded at Gothenburg in 1861: it was endowed by Mr James Dickson. It
now has two offshoots, the main library being housed in a handsome and well
arranged building. The town libraries at Malmö, Norrköping, Gävle, and Lund
are very good in their line. At Stockholm the town subsidizes five people’s
libraries, as well as a kind of circulating library managed by the Association for
the Education of the People. The library in Folkets Hus is also supported by
the town. Besides this, there are ten libraries, large and small, supported by
the parishes. In 1911 the municipal grant made to the Gothenburg library
with its two branches was 12 000 kronor. These libraries together possessed
18 750 volumes, and there were 174 437 loans of books to be taken home
(hemlån). In 1913 the grant made by the town of Stockholm to the five libraries
of the Association for the Education of the People was 18 000 kronor (18 000
volumes, and 99 000 "loans"), and to the Workmen’s Library and its branches
12 000 kronor (25 900 volumes and 74 000 "loans"). The Vestry Meetings had
made an aggregate grant of nearly 50 000 kronor to the ten parish libraries of
the capital (altogether 47 000 volumes and 195 000 "loans").
The libraries in the larger towns, which have latterly been gaining increased
interest on the part of the general public and increased favour on the part of
the subsidizing authorities, can scarcely reckon on aid from the State. But
libraries in the smaller towns and in the rural districts can.
State aid to the people’s libraries was first resolved on by the Riksdag in
1905, when 60 000 kronor were granted to be distributed to each library at the
rate of at most 75 kronor a year. In 1912 the grant was 170 000 kronor:
maximum 400 kronor to people’s libraries, 150 to school libraries, and 15 000
to each of those big associations called riksförbund which embrace the whole
country and have at least 20 000 members (trade unions, temperance societies),
provided they possess adequately organized "study circles". To the people’s and
to the school libraries the State makes a grant equal in amount to the local
grant, and only in the shape of bound books; to the Riksförbund it grants half
of the sum which the Association itself has devoted to this purpose.
1 140 free public and school libraries have in 1914 obtained State aid. Out
of the riksförbund, the Order of Good Templars is at present (December 1914)
the only one which possesses adequately organized "study circles" (850 circles with
an aggregate grant from the Order itself of about 35 000 kronor). However
arrangements have been made among the trades unions for ’setting on foot an
organization of this kind.
Purchase of books. For this purpose there are two State-aided establishments,
both of them at Stockholm; one of them, the Folkbildningsförbundet (Association
for Popular Education), undertakes the purchase of books for the people’s and
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