Public Libraries: A History of the Movement and a Manual for the Organization and Management of Rate-Supported Libraries (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Public Libraries: A History of the Movement and a Manual for the Organization and Management of Rate-Supported Libraries

Germany and France again are far ahead of us in point of number. Although in the actual use made of the books Great Britain will hold its own against any of the countries named.

The enormous distance Russia is behind the times in the matter of providing for the intellectual wants of her people is evident from the fact that the first public reading-room in the Muscovite Empire was opened only lately in the city of St. Petersburg. The room is connected with a good library, to which books have been contributed by some public-spirited citizens. Admittance is free, and permission is given to borrow books for reading at home. The new institution is named after Pushkin, the novelist. But that the foundation of the Pushkin Public Library has no significance as indicating a change of policy on the part of the Russian authorities towards literature and the press, is evident from the fact that the Government has issued an order forbidding the editors of newspapers in Russian Poland to receive foreign exchanges!

As one wanders about among the vast libraries in which some great English families keep under lock and key many rare editions Of famous books, worth their weight in gold, the reflection is inevitable that valuable as are these collections, they are not put to the best use within the range of possibility. Bound fault lessly, and shut up in elaborately carved oak bookcases that are seldom opened, inaccessible save to a favoured few, and on occasions of great rarity, they become little more than expensive articles of furniture. Books, like coins, are only performing their right function when they are in circulation. Hoarded up, the coins become only so much metal, and the books only so much paper and leather. In a Public Library, books begin to live among the people, and to exert an influence for good upon them. Oh! Ye gentlemen of England, who are said to live at home at ease, is this not worth remembering? There are vacant shelves of Public Libraries throughout the country waiting to be filled. Let these gaping shelves appeal to you! By placing your treasures upon them a new lease of life would be given to books you have prized, and it is impossible to say where, along the line of the generations to follow, they would cease to gratify and enlighten.

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