and help can be obtained from the teachers: after leaving school
guidance in reading and study can be obtained at the Libraries. Public
Libraries, their ownership and the right to use them. The contents
of the News and Magazine Rooms. Lack of home accommodation, and how
the Reference Rooms can be used for quiet reading and study. Books
in Lending Department on all subjects, elementary, intermediate, and
advanced. Assistance given by staff. How to use the Libraries in
conjunction with Continuation Schools and Evening Classes: also when
learning a trade, business, or domestic arts and occupations. Children
are urged to retain the knowledge gained at school and to supplement
it. Wisdom of acquiring General Knowledge, and how to acquire it:
with special reference to time-tables, directories, atlases, and
dictionaries. The lighter side of Libraries:--Use of holiday guides;
books of travel, manners and customs; music; home interests, such
as gardening, poultry-keeping, pets and hobbies. The care of books.
(Syllabus of one of the lectures described above).
IV
RURAL LIBRARIES.
Before the Act of 1919, more than two-fifths of the population of
these islands, which means practically those living outside the towns
and urban districts, were entirely without a library service. A few
attempts had been made, with various degrees of success, to found small
libraries or contrive methods of circulating collections of books in
the villages. Such were the library of the Lancashire and Cheshire
Union, inaugurated in 1847, the scheme of the Yorkshire Village
Libraries Association, in 1856, and the Coats Libraries supplying
many parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Besides these,
there was an odd village library here and there, such as the excellent
miniature institutes given to the inhabitants of East Claydon, Middle
Claydon, and Steeple Claydon, in Buckinghamshire, by the late Sir
Edmund Verney, or the library founded in a Hampshire village by the
unaided efforts of the villagers themselves, which is described by
Miss Sayle in her little memoir _Village Libraries_. Many other rural
libraries have flourished for a time, and then decayed, leaving no
history. Professor Adams found that of the total population of the
United Kingdom in 1911 not more than 57 per cent. resided within
library areas. He contrasted the library provision in different parts
of the country in the following table:--
--------+-------------------+--------------------+---------------------
| Total | Population in | Percentage
| Population, 1911. | Library Districts. | of Total Population.
--------+-------------------+--------------------+---------------------
England | 34,194,205 | 21,103,317 | 62
Wales | 2,025,202 | 938,303 | 46
Scotland| 4,760,904 | 2,403,283 | 50
Ireland | 4,390,219 | 1,245,766 | 28
--------+-------------------+--------------------+---------------------
| 45,370,530 | 25,690,669 | 57
--------+-------------------+--------------------+---------------------
“These figures,” he remarks, “would in themselves suggest what is an
outstanding feature of the present situation, the fact that libraries
are chiefly in the larger town areas, while the smaller towns and
country districts remain to a great extent unprovided for.”
The reason for “this partial and unequal development” was the absence
in the early Public Library Acts of any clause providing for concerted
action among bodies competent theoretically to become library
authorities, but unable practically, because to furnish an adequate
income out of a parish rate would have required an Aladdin’s lamp.[18]
If the county authorities had been permitted long ago to establish
systems of public libraries for the villages, and the product of a
penny rate throughout the county had been spent on the upkeep, there
might by now have been a rural library service not inferior in quality
to that in the towns. But before 1919 the potential library authority
in country districts was the parish council; and, even if parish
councils had been persuaded to combine, the unit of organization would
have been too poor to support anything but a miserable apology for a
library. In his report of 1915, Professor Adams observed that there
was a growing consensus of opinion that the county authorities should
be empowered to adopt the Acts and impose rates, and that the rural
library systems so established should be closely linked up with the
educational system. By this plan the financial difficulties would be
overcome, and, since “common thought and common action” are hard to
attain in a dispersed population, it was only reasonable that a more
widely representative body should be authorized to take the initiative.
“It is part everywhere of the rural problem that there needs to be an
organizing centre for the concentrating and directing of rural thought
and action.”[19] Professor Adams outlined “a public State system” of
rural libraries, “supported by the rates, and, like the educational
system, universal.” It would be closely associated with, if not under
the control of, the county educational authority. “It would radiate
from one or more centres, according as the county is large or small.”
“There would be ample room for voluntary organization and effort
within this framework, and a good village and rural library system
must depend largely on voluntary co-operative work. But the framework
of the system must be strongly knit, and must secure especially at
the centre a library institution, well equipped, and with expert
management and supervision. A new corps of librarians, in the form of
county library superintendents, will be required if the movement is
to be progressively developed.” I have quoted an important passage in
the actual words of Professor Adams, since it must be always borne in
mind that he proposed something far more substantial than the mere
circulation of boxes of books among villages or small country towns
such as asked for the privilege. One of the primary requisites of each
local library, even in the initial scheme which, he suggested, should
be experimented with in a few select areas, was “a permanent collection
of certain important reference books and standard works.” That, indeed,
must be the minimum foundation for the most unambitious kind of library
service, as distinguished from a mere book service. This latter may be
furnished by a circulating system, centering in a repository at some
distance; but the permanent collection must be there, in the village,
or the book service will be bereft of most of its educational value.
The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, at whose request Professor Adams had
carried out his investigation, adopted for the sake of experiment his
suggestion that the Trust should take over the Coats Libraries in the
Highlands and Islands, which had been initiated by Sir Peter Coats of
Paisley and at that date numbered 186 on the mainland, 59 in Shetland
and Orkney, 33 in Lewis and Harris, and 37 in the other Hebrides. A
repository was established at Dunfermline, from which these local
centres were supplied with periodical batches of books. This was the
beginning of the Carnegie rural library scheme, which during the next
few years offered the public and the Government an object-lesson in the
methods of supplying the neglected two-fifths of the population in the
four kingdoms with a library service.
The first county scheme to be set on foot was in Staffordshire. In
1915 the Trust offered £5,000 to this county council to be expended in
five years on a central repository, a stock of books, travelling boxes
and other equipment, and the costs of administration and carriage,
asking in return for “reasonable assurances that, at the conclusion
of the period and after the expenditure of the grant named, the
scheme would be maintained and supported on funds other than theirs.”
From 54 centres at once established in Staffordshire schools the
scheme gradually spread in four years to 206. The county councils of
Gloucestershire, Cardiganshire, Somerset, and Wilts undertook similar
schemes under like financial conditions, and the Trust made grants to
the public libraries of Perth and Grantham to organize a service in
the neighbouring country parishes. These rural systems were given a
statutory basis in Scotland, under sec. 5 of the Scottish Education Act
of 1918; but it was not till the Public Libraries Act of December, 1919
that the position in England and Wales was legalized. That Act gave an
immense stimulus to the rural library movement. Library schemes have
now been prepared for nearly half the rural area of Great Britain, and
a large number are in actual working order.[20] The Trustees in 1920
set aside a sum of £192,000 for grants to county authorities during the
six years 1920-5, such grants to be employed on the initial expenses
of the stock of books, boxes, shelving, and similar accessories for
the central repository. From that date they ceased to pay for the
erection of buildings or for running expenses. The premises used are
mostly temporary buildings, such as Government huts, or else rooms
in schools. These central repositories look bare and insignificant
to the uninitiated, since they are furnished with little but a few
tables or benches for packing books on and enough shelving to hold a
fraction of the working stock of books, most of which are out in the
villages and when they come home are off on another journey almost at
once. A few stout boxes, with simple fittings countersunk to avoid
damage in transit, lie about, full or empty. These are sent out, each
carrying fifty or a hundred volumes, by rail, carrier, or motor-van,
to the village schools or perchance the village club, to be handed
to the readers by volunteer librarians, who are in most cases the
schoolmasters.
In a typical county, where the population is mainly rural and the
repository is quartered in a borough of moderate size without a library
of its own--where indeed the local inhabitants, hungering for books
which their own borough council will not consent to provide, have to be
kept at arm’s length by warning notices--some three hundred villages
are each at present receiving about two hundred and fifty books a year.
It is not much; it is not much more than an experiment; but anyhow
it is a beginning; and, remember, until the rural scheme arrived the
labouring man never saw a new book, from year end to year end, unless
his child won a Sunday School prize. The circulating stock consists of
books for children and the class of books commonly defined as for the
general reader--that is to say, works for entertainment primarily and
in the second place for knowledge or information. Further, there is in
this particular centre a strong collection of educational works for the
use of teachers, and a numerous and sound selection of sociological
literature for the special benefit of the Workers’ Educational
Association, who have many tutorial classes in the district, most of
them studying economics, social philosophy, or the science of politics.
The teachers are allowed to borrow several books at a time, to further
their work; and in addition, the requirements of modern methods in
teaching reading are met by the allowance of perhaps fifteen or two
dozen copies of certain select books, to enable every child in a class
to have a copy--the reading-circle system applied in the school. If any
studious person should ask for a book not in the printed catalogue,
a book obviously in advance of the general demand and costing rather
more than the average price bargained for, the librarian sends for it
to the Central Library for Students, in Tavistock Square, London. Even
the newest and least-developed rural library aims at an ideal that the
great commercial circulating libraries have given up as unattainable,
to enable any reader to have access to any book, of unquestioned value,
that he applies for--and few failures to achieve this end, by one means
or another, have to be reported.
The librarian superintending another county system, a lady who has
built it up from the foundation stone, has, after three years been able
to announce an average circulation of two thousand books a week. This,
in spite of difficulties of transport, and the absence of facilities
for reaching the adult readers directly. The work here is done entirely
through the schools, and of the eighteen thousand and odd borrowers
recently on the register not much more than eight thousand are above
school age. Nevertheless, she reports, even if the parents have “to
snatch the books from the children or to wait patiently until they are
all in bed” ... “the people will read if they get the chance.”
“In one Cotswold village there are seventy readers, forty of whom are
adults; among them are several farmers, a painter, a butcher, a sadler,
domestic servants, railwaymen, builders, labourers, many mothers, and
the postmistress. Forty books were sent there in January, and by June
these books had 389 readers, an average of 9.5 readers per book. One
teacher reports that his male readers include a carter, a cowman, a
rivetter, farm-labourers, the policeman, a workhouse attendant, the
night watchman, the schoolmaster, and the vicar. Another writes:
“Our readers are chiefly as follows--cloth-workers, carpenters,
clerks, plasterers, house-decorators, tailors, gardeners, printers,
engine-drivers, ironworkers, chauffeurs, railwaymen.” When one looks
at lists like these one realizes that to pack a box to meet all tastes
is no easy matter. In Stroud there is an old lady of seventy-nine who
borrows books regularly from the school, and at Coln St. Aldwyn, in the
Cotswolds, a disabled soldier read, in three months, nineteen out of a
possible twenty-six books. One of our former borrowers who came in by
train every day left her book in charge of a porter in the evenings. It
was some time before she discovered why he was so surly at times, and
then she found she had changed her book before he had finished it!”[21]
Here are samples of the letters received from imaginative
school-children, who had been told about that inexhaustible
treasure-house, the Central Library:--“Please send me a book on
carpentering and oblige.” “Dear Sir, Could you kindly send me on one of
your nature study painting books as you spoke of in our schoolmaster’s
letter from you and oblige, Yours sincerely.” “Dear, Sir, I should be
pleased if you would kindly forward me a book on the study of knitting
a Jumper.” And here is an extract from a teacher’s account of her
library centre:--
“We all feel greatly indebted to the Carnegie Trustees, it is
impossible to over-estimate the boon that the Library is in these
country districts. If the Trustees could see for themselves the
excitement and pleasure when the books arrive, and the rush to see them
and choose, I am sure they would realize afresh how well-spent their
funds are. Our only difficulty is that there are never enough books for
all who want them, but that, without doubt, is a difficulty common to
all Carnegie rural librarians.”
The Carnegie Trustees calculated their grants on the understanding that
purchases by the rural libraries should be restricted to the cheaper
books in general demand (averaging 3s. 6d. new or second-hand), and
that when other or more expensive books were required they should
be obtained on loan from the Central Library for Students. To this
library, which forms a central store of technical, scientific, and
other high-class works, for supplying both the rural systems and those
urban libraries that pay a small subscription, the Trustees are now
making a subsidy of £1,000 a year. It may eventually develop into
an invaluable auxiliary to all the public libraries in the kingdom,
and money spent on increasing its stock is a thoroughly economic
expenditure, since it saves an incredible amount of overlapping among
the different units of the nation’s library service.
Different counties have employed different modes of distribution. Rail
and carrier are the usual medium where the centres are not far from
the railways, and some counties have secured half rates for conveyance
of books by passenger train. Experiments have however been made with
hired motor transport, with a saving on costs and a much more important
saving in time and trouble, since more than a score of boxes can be
delivered and the time-expired boxes collected in a single day’s trip.
The Perthshire authority have acquired a motor-van of their own to
be used for conveying books and also for the librarian’s tours of
inspection. This will no doubt be the plan adopted elsewhere when
the systems reach a further stage of development. More miscellaneous
and more picturesque methods have had to be followed in the North of
Scotland service, which feeds the Islands, including St. Kilda, with
much-needed books. After many abortive attempts to reach St. Kilda,
it was found that a trawler was going there from Fleetwood, and in
this roundabout way the first box of books from Dunfermline arrived
there last year. In the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides, crofters,
fishermen, and cobblers, we are told, look eagerly for books on
natural history, science, and philosophy, from the Central Library for
Students. How many people passing the drab house in Tavistock Square
have the remotest idea that from this centre, unmarked by anything
more grandiose than a small brass plate, mental and spiritual light
is being steadily radiated to the inhabitants of utmost Thule. In the
island of Foula, where the grown-up people cannot leave their crofts
in the scanty summer, the school-children are enlisted as carriers. A
schoolmaster describes how in the winter he carried the books himself
until he fell in with the sheep-dogs sent out to bring them to the
distant croft. On this island a population of 175 borrows 1,300 books
a year. Guiberwick, with a population of 200, calls for 700 every six
months. Minute records are kept at Dunfermline of the kind of reading
that appeals to various kinds of readers. “For the fiction,” says the
librarian, Miss Thomson, “taken on a whole, they read very good novels.
The general works are of a varied nature, but I have noticed that books
dealing with the literature, fauna, flora, and topography of each
island are much in favour. We also supply books in Gaelic, which are
widely read both by adults and juveniles.” Anyone who has wandered in
the lonelier parts of the Highlands will know what are the difficulties
of a service to the remote glens and the foresters’ stations in the
deer-forests, and what a priceless gift a handful of books always is.
It must be evident from this short account that the rural problem has
been tackled on the cheapest lines. The maximum cost of any county
scheme has in no instance exceeded the yield of a halfpenny rate; and
until there are centres throughout a shire, or until supplementary
means are employed, such as the establishment of stationary libraries
at accessible points in certain areas, it is not likely to increase
appreciably. The following typical examples of county expenditure are
given by the Trustees in their report on the year 1920:--
Total School
pop. pop. Cost
Age of of area of area Total Rate per No. of
County. Scheme. served. served. Cost. equiv. head. Centres.
Staffordshire 4th yr. 246,000 35,000 £525 ¹⁄₁₈d. ¹⁄₂d. 206
Gloucestershire 2nd “ 212,000 30,000 500 ¹⁄₈d. ¹⁄₂d. 303
Cardiganshire 3rd “ 60,000 6,500 440 ¹⁄₄d. 1³⁄₄d. 45
Wiltshire 1st “ 181,000 34,000 435 ¹⁄₁₂d. ¹⁄₂d. 90
Notts 2nd “ 100,000 13,421 580 ¹⁄₆d. 1¹⁄₂d. 164
Somerset 2nd “ 335,000 52,000 450 ¹⁄₁₈d. ¹⁄₃d. 223
It was a wise stroke of policy to make a beginning through the schools
and the children. A reading public is in process of manufacture,
and through the books and the readers thus introduced into rustic
households even the stubborn bucolic mind can hardly fail to receive
some impression. But the risk of beginning in a small way is that
people will be content with small results, or, even worse, that the
service may have such insignificant consequences that nobody will
mind if it declines into something like the old-fashioned school
library or disappears altogether. The country districts are being
supplied with boxes of books; they are not being put into contact
with libraries--they are not yet supplied with what Professor Adams
laid down as the first essential, “a permanent collection of certain
important reference books and standard works.” Such a permanent nucleus
is in truth the essential basis of a library service; a rotation of
book-boxes is, in reality, but auxiliary to this. Unless it be firmly
realized that what has been done is only a very small beginning, and
that enormously more remains to be done before an adequate library
service is provided, a fatal mistake will have been committed, as
paralysing to future progress as the blunder of 1850, which made public
libraries a failure on the whole throughout the first period of their
existence. The warning ought by now to have been taken to heart. In
their manner of dealing with the rural library, the county education
authorities are on their trial. If the wonted errors of bureaucratic
management are committed, if there is a lack of vision and of sympathy
with the villager, especially the villager who will not be hustled
inside the fold of organized adult education, failure to come to
grips with the thorny problems of rural psychology, and, above all, a
one-ideaed zeal for economy and a cheap sort of efficiency, not much
can be hoped for until public opinion, when our new readers have grown
up, imperiously demands more.
So far, little has been attempted, except in one or two counties
blessed with an open-minded and energetic librarian, to secure the
personal contact and the insight into local needs and local avenues
of approach that are the indispensable preliminaries to success. For
the extension work that has proved so lucrative in urban libraries
there is doubly and trebly a need in the country, if libraries are to
play any vital part in the rural economy. During the last few years,
fortunately, many agencies have come into being or have acquired a new
lease of life through which missionary enterprises can be carried on,
granted the necessary intelligence and driving-power at the centre.
Rural conditions have changed profoundly since the war. There is a keen
desire to make life in the country interesting, to open the stagnant
backwater into the general stream. Here there is a village club or a
women’s institute, there a branch of the W.E.A.; the Y.M.C.A. and the
Y.W.C.A. have both identified themselves with these and other local
activities and initiated fresh projects themselves, including small
libraries, reading circles, and educational programmes; one place has
a field club, another a musical society; almost everywhere there are
boy scouts, girl guides, and other elements of social life, to all
of which the library movement should come as an aid and a stimulus.
Some of these may form a natural home for the village library; others
will provide materials for reading circles and similar enterprises on
the part of librarians having some insight into the rustic mind and a
determination to break down initial barriers. But to make such efforts
effective, the policy of the rural library authority must be pushing,
adaptive, and not a parsimonious one, and the staff of librarians must
be something more than machines for distributing books.