Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/166

 ,^ The Library. In Massachusetts the Free Library idea seems to be very thoroughly Acetate is divided into 352 local autonomies, and its population in 1800 was - -MS 043 There are libraries from which the people are en- titled to take books for home reading, free of all expense in 305 of these owns and cities, which embrace more than 97 per cent, of the population. The aeereeate number of volumes in the libraries is two and three-quarter millions, and the circulation for home use is five million volumes per annum more than two volumes to every man, woman, and child in the Q0A " State. Hmertcan THE Boston Public Library, when re-opened in its new home, will put in practice several schemes for facilitating the mechanical part of the work. Among them, according to Mr. S. A. B. Abbott, president of the Trustees, will be the "substitution of machinery for the old fashion of legs in bringing the books to the readers. . . . Orders for books will be transmitted almost instantaneously by pneumatic tubes to stations in the stacks, and books conveyed to and fro by a cash railway, carrying baskets of twenty-five pounds' capacity. An indicator showing what books are out will stand by the delivery-desk." The catalogue will not be open to the public, but will be served out by assistants as wanted. The card cabinet form is to be abandoned in favour of what, from the description, appears to be the Staderini catalogue tray. There appears to be a most bewildering array of " novel and ingenious devices," tele- phones, book-railways, and other elaborations of library practice. Some of the arrangements seem to be based on a certain distrust of the public, otherwise so many plans for overcoming the difficulties caused by barriers would be quite unnecessary. It is claimed that the new Boston Public Library will surpass every institution of the sort in the world as a " temple of culture," and certainly with mural deco- rations by Messrs. Whistler, Sargent, and other painters, it will so far be unique. It seems a somewhat retrograde movement for an im- portant library, which at one time showed the way in the States, to cut off readers so completely from their own books, and at one stroke annihilate the refining influence of contact with literature by substi- tuting a cash railway, warranted to carry twenty-five pounds, as an inter- mediary between readers and their wants. It strikes us as a very reactionary measure, after such a tremendous expenditure of dollars and splendid chance of a root and branch reform, to resort to such complicated and unsatisfactory devices as mechanical deliveries and in- dicat The sooner library management is simplified, the better it will be for both readers and books ; but if matters are arranged on these latter-day Boston lines, there will soon be evolved the mechanical library automaton, with an electro-motor where the brains ought to be. The different " state library associations " and " library clubs " of the United states should be more frequently imitated in Britain. Although the grouping of districts for the purposes of local library clubs and
 * .itions is difficult, there seems no good reason why the North

Midland and Mersey district library associations should not be imitated in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, North-East England, Central England (Birmingham centre), and South-Western England, with a club in