Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/150

 Public Service and Rules educational significance of well-selected collections of books. To be thoroughly successful, a municipal library should be staffed by educated and intelligent officers, trained specially for the work; and with the aid of a broad-minded committee, they can make the institution first in value to the inhabitants. The public library is practically the only department through which a municipality comes into direct and unrestrained contact with the people, and it is, therefore, the institution most likely to be criticized and consequently the one most requiring constant supervision. This fact has been recognized more generally in the larger provincial towns than in London, where there still exists a strong feeling that in some way libraries are a costly delusion, and an encouragement to the spread of socialism! In the great cities of the north quite a different spirit is abroad, and so far from starving and cutting down the public libraries, every effort is made to foster and extend their activities. Indeed, most of the large towns have obtained special parliamentary powers, with the consent of the ratepayers, for raising or removing the limitation of the rate of one penny in the pound, and the result has been to improve the public service all round.

Before setting out a series of draft Rules to serve as a basis for a code, some practical points affecting the public service in libraries may be considered. In news or reading rooms it is best on the whole to assign a fixed place for every periodical, and to classify the magazines so as to bring together