Book Expenditure in British Public Libraries 1966–7

AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES CONFERENCE at Dublin in 1967 my paper entitled ‘What should we provide?’ included an appraisal of where we stood in the matter of book expenditure, and this appraisal was based on the Public Library Statistics 1965–66 issued by the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants and the Society of County Treasurers. As is generally known, these statistics are compiled with the help of the Library Association and are recognized as the official statistics for public libraries by the Department of Education and Science. What is apparently not so widely known is that these statistics are published after the lapse of about a year from the end of the period they cover. This seems to me to be perfectly understandable but it did result in a good deal of criticism that the figures I had used in Dublin were out of date.