A Plea for a Closer Connection between Public Libraries and other Public Educational Institutions. 1 T T is not my fault that I have to throw myself into the breach
- this evening and help to fill up the programme with
something of my own. When a Secretary reads a paper it is generally to be regarded as a dernier ressort, and I trust the fact that a non-public library man finds an opening to talk about public libraries will give such an impetus to the more lethargic members of the Association that you will have no need to listen to me again for a very long time. We have been hearing a good deal of late of the connection between libraries and education, but though much has been said, the real need, from my point of view, has not yet been touched upon. Most of those who have dealt, and dealt very ably, with the subject seem to think that the proper development of a library is to end in a sort of " omnium gatherum " of technical classes, lectures, and books ; and, no doubt, if our forefathers had been far-seeing enough to have established national educa- tion on a broad and comprehensive basis, we should have had such institutions instead of libraries, pure and simple. If Parliament itself had been sufficiently educated, and the people had been willing to find the money, no doubt it would have been a grand thing to have established in every community such compre- hensive institutions as that which has been established at Nottingham and developed out of the Library at Wolver- hampton, but we have travelled by a different road and we cannot go back. It seems to me peculiarly characteristic of the English that the forces of progress should be marching in isolated companies, bound for the same goal, but along different roads. And it is only when these diverging roads begin to converge and come within sight of the goal that these inde- pendent companies recognise each other, and perhaps before the end, join forces. In the recent talks on this subject, both 1 Read at a Monthly Meeting of the Library Association, January 8th, 1894. 16
