Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/366

 Free Lectures in Connection with Free Public Libraries. 1 A S Manchester was the pioneer in the Free Library move- After the opening of the first free library under the Act in that city, Professor A. J. Scott, of Owens College, wrote to Sir John Potter, as follows : " The people of Manchester have now, thanks pre-eminently to your exertions, a noble library. What can be done to direct them in using it ? Much groping and discouragement might be saved by sound advice. " It has occurred to me, and it is needless to say why it is to you that I first communicate the suggestion, that the end I have referred to might be attained by a series of bibliographical lectures. Let the most important subjects of knowledge be classified. Let each department be assigned to the most competent person willing to undertake it, and to each let four or six lectures be devoted, strictly confined to the literature of the subject, i.e., books relating to it embracing whatever informa- tion as to authors, topics, modes of treatment, and subsidiary or illustrative works, an earnest but uninformed reader would find most useful, and indicating a course of reading." As a result of this suggestion, several lectures were given in the Campfield Library during the year 1852, one of them on " The Literature of Poetry and Fiction," being delivered by Professor Scott himself. Nothing further seems to have been done in this direction in Manchester until 1888, but in 1865 the committee of the Liver- pool Free Public Library turned their attention to this important adjunct to the library. A school of science had been carried on in the rooms of the library not, however, as part of the library 1 A Report read at the Paris meeting of the Library Association, September, 1892.
 * ment, so was it also in the matter of free library lectures.