The Library World Volume 57 Issue 11

FOR public libraries the Ministerial statement that proposals for the future of local government will be laid before Parliament before October may prove to be most significant. We say may, because such preliminaries usually raise undue expectations. Meanwhile during the summer speculation may range over the public library possibilities of the situation. Will the known blue‐prints made for us come into the picture: the masterly, and at that time far too advanced, pattern in the McColvin Report, already fourteen years old, and the older Ministry of Reconstruction Report, made as the First World War was closing, which would have given libraries, willy‐nilly, to the Education Committee? Will the present L.A. plan, which everyone knows, affect matters? Will public libraries come in at all? Local Government, as at present organized, does work, even if the machinery creaks with too many uncontrolled bodies intervening in every part, too much remote control, and, conversely, too little co‐operative organization, too many jealousies, boundary graspings, disputes and much expensive, unnecessary litigation. That public librarians can provide an acceptable solution for their own admittedly limited field will, alas, not occur to many authority minds. In the reconstruction of the patchwork now existing our library leaders must be alert to prevent complete indifference to library needs and possibilities. We feel sure they will be. That vigilance will be necessary even if, as we suspect from the tendency of the times, what will be proposed is not likely to produce radical redistributions and changes. The counties, municipal corporations, and the urban districts together form a formidable combination and, we think, can prevent further encroachments on their areas and increased restrictions of their powers. The way may be somewhat plainer before the L.A. Annual General Meeting is held in September, but the announcement we are discussing came later than the printing of the outline programme of the Conference which is inserted in the May L.A. Record.