Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/428

 4i 6 The Library. Public Library Legislation}. It must, however, be distinctly under- stood that I am referring only to Commissioners in a parish and not to library authorities in other districts, and without considering the effect of the Local Government Act, 1894, which, of course, is not yet in operation. There is no provision in the Public Libraries Acts, 1892, disqualifying a Commissioner, as, for example, in the Municipal Corpora- tions Act, 1882, which provides that a person shall not be qualified to be elected or to be a Councillor unless he is enrolled and entitled to be enrolled as a burgess. COMMITTEE OF DISTRICT COUNCIL. Question. In there is a Free Library, but the Committee is composed of only the members of the Local Board. I and others are desirous of getting elected to that Committee, ladies and gentlemen outside the Council. I want particularly to know the law upon the subject. In other words, should the Committee consist of members of the Local Board (Council it will be now) only, or of a certain number of Councillors plus outside electors ? Answer. It will be for your District Council to determine whether the Com- mittee is to be constituted entirely of members of the Council, or partly of such members and partly of co-operative members (see section 15 Public Libraries Act, 1892, and section 56 of the Local Government Act, 1894)- Correspondence, THE L.A.U.K. EXAMINATIONS. SIR, Although I gather from the October number of THE LIBRARY that the English Literature Professional Examination will cease to exist per se, but will become incorporated in the proposed Bibliography and Literary History Examination, there is no doubt that a knowledge of both English and French literature will be stringently required. But the papers as at present set in English literature are so framed as to exclude from passing in that portion of the Professional Examination any but those who have, for its requirements, been fortunate enough to be employed in a free public library or a similar institution, in which the subjects contained in its volumes are fiction and poetry to a large degree. My contention is that the questions should be framed so that those candidates who come from libraries dealing with special subjects of literature should have an equal chance of passing with their brethren who are familiar with current English fiction and modern literary criticism. To illustrate my meaning : in one of the English literature papers for the Professional Examination set not such a great while ago, candidates were asked to give the real name, amongst others, of " Fanny Fern." " Fanny Fern " happens to be the pseudonym of a Mrs. James Parton a writer of "sketches and stories of interest, though mostly of ephemeral value." Surely a question like that is the reductio ad absurdum of the rote system. It is hardly credible that the foremost of our English critics, such as Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Andrew Lang, or Mr. Edmund Gosse would be able to answer off-hand a question of so trivial a nature ; and 1 Richardson's Primer of American Literature, 1892, p. 76.