1931 - Annual Convention

              A L B E R T A W O M E N ' S I N S T I T U T ES
than he ever thought they would be. You see, the trouble r e a l l y is, that when
people once begin to find out what they can get in books they keep on coming
back for other things, and it is the experience of every l i b r a r y that the better
it does its work, the less is i t able to meet a l l the demands that come on it.
The total result of the experience of the last generation has been, that every
l i b r a r i a n knows now that he w i l l never be really ' happy till he gets a l l the
books that there are in the w o r l d w i t h i n c a l l of his readers.
To put the matter in another way, we find out that we do not solve the
reading problems of a communitj' by gatherin g together even a b i g c o l l e c t i on
of books and then s a y i n g : " N o w there you are. You have got your books,"
for the better that collection is the sooner it w i l l make its readers find out
other things that lie be} rond it that thejr simply must get hold of and read.
The main outcome then of a generation's experience has been that
A n d r e w Carnegie's gifts have g r e a t s stimulated the provision of library
service, and at the same time have awakened a demand that stretches far
beyond the limits of our present resources.
Experience has thus done two things for us. It has shown us how very
much we need good l i b r a r y service, and it has made a complete change in
our ideals of what l i b r a r y service should be. The best ' i l l u s t r a t i o n of the
changed ideal w i l l be found in what has been undertaken in the United
Kingdom. By the aid of the munificent benefaction of the Carnegie United
K i n g d o m Trust, the whole system of l i b r a r y units which were separately
administered and self- contained, and which sought to meet the l i b r a r y needs
of a community from a f a i r l y l i m i t e d collection of books, has been remodelled
into a national l i b r a r y system. The new " tactical unit" of l i b r a r y service is
no longer the self- contained public library serving a l i m i t e d community, but
the centrally administered group of libraries covering the count}'. W i t h in
each county under the new system there is a central l i b r a r y , usually at the
count}' seat, of w h i c h the public libraries i n the other towns and villages are
branches. These branches are supplemented by numerous book deposit
stations in the smaller centres of population, and under the ideal system a
motor book van b r i n g s books to the very doors of the people in the more
isolated parts of the country. This means that a l l the books w i t h i n the county
l i b r a r y system are held on call for the use of any reader in the county. The
county libraries are again supplemented by a large central depository oi
books, the New National L i b r a r y as it is called, in London, and the proud
c l a im is now made that any citizen within the whole county can now get any
book he requires, for if it is not to be found in any of the county collections
of books, the central or N a t i o n a l L i b r a r y undertakes to buy it a n d have it
sent down for the reader's use. You w i l l see, then, that the older system of
libraries might be compared to a series of water tanks holding a s t r i c t ly
l i m i t e d quantity of water into which readers could dip their buckets. The
new system is like the i r r i g a t i o n system which leads the water from central
reservoirs direct to the t h i r s t y fields.
That, I hope you w i l l understand at once, is a very bold conception of
what a l i b r a r y system ought to be, and it is very heartening to k n o w that
this is no longer a paper scheme. It is n ow working, and it is almost possible
today to say that any reader in the U n i t e d K i n g d om has access to any book
whatsoever that he finds himself in urgent need of, or w h i c h for some reason
he is curious to read. It is in the light of such an overwhelmingly glorious
ideal that we in A l b e r t a have to consider how we stand at present in the
matter of library service, and to take such steps as we can to build up a
l i b r a r y service to meet our needs as they are now and as they shall be when
our communities have awakened thoroughly to the appreciation of what
modern book service can do for them.