The Council of the Library Association have arranged for the issue of
a series of Handbooks on the various departments of Library work and
management. Each Handbook has been entrusted to an acknowledged expert
in the subject with which he will deal—and will contain the fullest and
latest information that can be obtained.
Every branch of library work and method will be dealt with in detail, and
the series will include a digest of Public Library Law and an account
of the origin and growth of the Public Library Movement in the United
Kingdom.
The comprehensive thoroughness of the one now issued is, the Editors
feel, an earnest of the quality of the whole series. To mere amateurs,
it may appear that it deals at needless length with matters that are
perfectly familiar; but it is just this kind of thing that is really
wanted by the people for whom Mr. Brown’s Handbook is intended. It seems
a simple matter to order a gross of chairs for a library; but only
experience teaches those little points about their construction which
make so much difference as regards economy and comfort.
With this Handbook in their possession, a new committee, the members of
which may never have seen the inside of a public library, may furnish
and equip the institution under their charge as effectively as if an
experienced library manager had lent his aid.
The second issue of the series will be on “Staff,” by Mr. Peter Cowell,
Chief Librarian of the Liverpool Free Public Libraries.