Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 | Page 2

it was not then possible to obtain qualified persons to begin it. It is hoped that conditions will permit a senior appointment during the present financial year to inaugurate the service.
Regional and District Library Service--Study has continued on the problems of ensuring an efficient and soundly based library service for New Zealand's whole population. The problems facing a local authority overseas with a population of 2,000,000 within a radius of a few miles are minor ones compared with those facing New Zealand library authorities, where the secondary cities are small, where the pattern of local government is uneven, and where the population as a whole has a high standard of education and is avid for books. Costs in New Zealand, per head of population, are bound to be relatively high; vigilance is necessary to ensure that they are no higher than they need be.
It has been apparent that cooperation between local authorities will be the major factor in making economies on a national scale. A note of the work of the Working Party on Library Cooperation of 27-28 August 1956 appeared in last year's annual report, and it was recorded that the Minister of Education, at the request of the New Zealand Library Association, had authorised payment of travelling expenses for its Committee on Regional Planning to enable its work to be carried out.
The committee worked during the year and met in Wellington for two full-day sessions on 6 and 7 June 1957 for consideration of the "establishment of regional and district library services as the best method of providing a more effective library service for the whole country". Its report was made to the New Zealand Library Association. After consideration by the executive of the Local Authorities Section, some amendments were made and the report published by the Association as Co-operation: A New Phase. Fifteen hundred copies were printed and were circulated to all local authorities for discussion.
The report states:
"1. The main problems facing public libraries are:
(i) The unfair distribution over the whole community of the costs of library service.
(ii) The continuing growth of the cost of municipal government to the point where it has become an embarrassment to the cities and boroughs concerned.
(iii) The failure of some local authorities to provide for library services."
"8. The basic factor in improving library services will be cooperation among local authorities. Such cooperation should be the condition of increased Government assistance."
"10. Government assistance to such federations should take the form of cash subsidies on all expenditure approved for subsidy by the federation, and by the Minister (or National Library Board)."
This report formed the main topic of discussion at the New Zealand Library Association conference in Invercargill in February 1958. The Association approached the Government for favourable consideration of the proposals contained in the report on 11 April 1958.
In the meantime the work of the Royal Commission on Local Government Finance is being followed carefully, as its findings will have considerable bearing on the problem of library finance.
An effort is also being made to foster among local authorities the willingness to cooperate, but progress in this field is slow.
National Library Proposal--The report of the Working Party of the Public Service Commission on the National Library proposal was earlier considered by the Government, which had approved it in principle. The House of Representatives last year approved the terms of reference of a Select Committee to be appointed to make recommendations for "ways and means of carrying out the decision of the Government to establish a National Library" and to consider various other associated matters. The decision to appoint such a Committee was reaffirmed in February 1958, the Committee was named shortly afterwards and has since met on several occasions. Independently of any solution of the accommodation problems of the Service which such a move might bring, the proposal merits the most careful consideration.
Book Stock--During the year, 19,283 fiction and 35,573 non-fiction were added to stock, a total of 54,856. Of these, 10,442 separate titles of non-fiction and 205 fiction titles were added to the headquarters collection, which now contains approximately 135,000 titles together with 11,000 volumes of periodicals; 15,305 volumes were withdrawn--12,134 fiction and 3,171 non-fiction--making the net additions 39,551. The total of headquarters and Country Library Service stock now amounts to 652,308, comprising 176,600 fiction and 475,708 non-fiction. As at 31 March 1958 the stock of the School Library Service was 1,091,189 the grand total of stock in the Service as a whole being 1,743,497.
Request Service--All libraries and groups receiving library service from the Country Library Service and all Government Departments may ask for special short-term loans of books of an informational type from the headquarters stock of this Service and, in addition, the headquarters stock is used extensively to satisfy inter-library loan requests. (See also the report of the Librarian, National Library