APPENDIX XXIV.

LIBRARIES IN ENGLAND.

Returns have been received from thirteen of the Free town libra ries, established under the Parliamentary acts of 1850 and 1855, and from several of the associated libraries. The details are in a few cases amended by later printed reports of the several libraries. 1. When established? The free library of Salford, one of the suburbs of Manchester, seems to have been the earliest in date, 1850; and the two largest of the free libraries, those of Manchester and Liverpool, were both started in 1852, but branches have since been added from time to time. The third in importance, Birmingham, did not begin till 1861 with one lending library, but their plan has grown to embrace a reference collection and five branches at the present date. In the precincts of London the free library scheme has not proved successful at Marylebone, but in the Parish of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster, one was founded in 1857, and has furnished answers to some of the following questions. That of Nottingham is the latest founded from which wo have returns.

2. Present yearly income, and from what source, funds or appropriations; and if from both, what part from each? An act of Parliament gives towns authority to levy not over one penny in the pound valuation for the support of free libraries and museums. The munificence of William Brown gave Liverpool a magnificent building for its library, and that wealthy city levies for its support the limit the law allows, which now produces nearly £8,000; Manchester, with the same limit, has £6,000; Birmingham, £5,000; Salford, with nearly that limit, £1,760; while Sheffield, levying only three farthings, has £1,774. The smaller of these libraries are supported by different levies, as follows:

Birkenhead, one penny, yielding
Nottingham, one penny, yielding
Walsall, one penny, yielding
Bolton, half-penny, yielding

£800 £1,000

£300

£430

Blackburn, half-penny, yielding

St. Margaret and St. John (Westminster), half-penny,

yielding

Cambridge, three farthings

Oxford, half-penny, yielding

£350

Which last is expended in the reference department, while the lending department, in an exceptional way, is supported by a charge of one shilling to each user, and by the fines accruing from the overdetention of books. Birmingham derives £200 additional from fines and sales of catalogues, and the corporation has spent nearly £30,000 in its building. Birmingham has not been materially assisted by private munificence, while Manchester and Liverpool have.

3. Is it a circulating or reference library, or both? The free libraries are almost always of both kinds, though that of Kidderminster is a reference one only, and that of Walsall, in Staffordshire, circulating only. The larger ones have their circulating department divided into branches, located in different sections of the city, one being with the reference collection; thus Liverpool has two of these branches, Birmingham and Manchester five each. At Bolton, there was a subscription library before the free library was founded, and although the former is united with the latter, it is still maintained separately. The Manchester Library competes with the Athenæum of that city, which is almost wholly a circulating library.

4. Total number of volumes, and if divided into reference and circulating departments, the number to each.

Bolton

Birkenhead

860 vols. London, St. Margarets, etc. 2,000

2,500

150

400

1,300

6. Are you particularly strong in any specialty and what? As a general thing these libraries establish a due proportion of every class of books, and strive to keep the proportions the same, history naturally preponderating ordinarily, or sharing such preponderance with local matters, several of them striving, as at Nottingham, to garner up all that pertains to their region. Liverpool is thought to be strong in topography, and Birmingham in science and the arts, though the latter library is founding a Shakespearian collection, as of Warwickshire interest, which must become of the utmost importance.

7. What proportion of your use of books is in novels? This naturally varies according to the policy maintained of adding freely or scantily of current fiction in their circulating departments. The use is large even in the reference department, where extensive additions of this class are made, as at Liverpool, and the proportion is correspondingly small where the opposite plan is pursued, as at Manchester. At Salford, where their purchases of fiction are ninety per cent. in their circulating department and ten per cent. in their reference library, the use of such books is

in just the same ratio. In many of the libraries, the plan of the British Museum is followed, of binding all three-volume novels in one; and in some libraries, the two and three volumes making a novel are issued as one volume, even when bound separately. In these libraries the class fiction is not always kept account of strictly, and the estimate is made from judging of the proper proportion of classes called sometimes "Light Literature," and sometimes, "Polygraphy."

At Manchester, while they report the use as small in the reference department, it is given as 55 per cent. in the circulating libraries; at Liverpool, it is 33 per cent. in the reference department, and 73 per cent. in the circulating; at Sheffield, as 42 per cent.; at Birmingham, as 40 per cent.; at Blackburn, as 66 per cent.; at Bolton, as 50 per cent. ; at Nottingham, as 33 per cent. ; at Birkenhead, as 25 per cent., etc.

At the associated libraries, the use is in corresponding proportions. The Carlisle Mechanics Institute reports a large use in novels; that of Liverpool, 33 per cent.; and the Athenæum of Manchester more than 50 per cent.

7a. What proportion of your use is in juveniles? Several of these libraries have separate departments for younger readers. That of London, St. Margarets, etc., has 1,000 volumes, and is open evenings during the winter months for youths under 17 years. Nottingham has 1,000 of juvenile books out of 12,000 in the whole library. Two-thirds of the use of the reference library of Kidderminster is in such books. At Birkenhead they are about establishing a youth's department, to see if they can diminish the use of novels in the general collection.

8. What is your total use of books? Of these what part is used in the building only? In many of these libraries, the current periodicals are issued in numbers as they appear, and these count in the aggregates; and with those libraries having the British patent specifications and drawings, it is sometimes the custom to count each specification issued, and to reckon all in the volume as being used when they are bound in volumes and are issued in that way.