Library Association
Published: 2015-07-12
Total Pages: 162
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Excerpt from Public Libraries, Their Development and Future Organization At this time our main interests and thoughts are directed towards the successful prosecution of the war. The present struggle is to preserve for the nations the right to continue and to improve their social and economic life and well-being, and although the work and progress of libraries, like all other normal activities, have been interrupted and curtailed, we must not permit them to languish and die. It is not necessary therefore to offer excuse for the issue at the moment of this record of the proceedings of the important Library Conference, recently held. The programme of subjects was drawn up with the object of bringing to public notice the more pressing questions which affect the libraries and now demand attention if those institutions are to take their proper place in any considered new plans for national efficiency. The term "Reconstruction" is being freely used and has even brought forth a new department of the Ministry. The necessity for new methods and a wider outlook has impressed itself upon the people, who, suffering from the catastrophe of war, are the more alive to the lessons the war has brought. Our commercial system and aims are to be re-modelled and improved, and this can only be secured by a re-vivifying of technical and industrial training, which must be built up on the foundation of a wider educational basis. Both in the field of general education and in furthering industrial efficiency public libraries can play a great part. Following the school - elementary and secondary - and as an adjunct to the college and the university, libraries alone can meet the needs of every class. "We learn not at school but in life" - our education is but commenced at school. This war was conceived in the schools and the libraries of the German people. It will lie with the other nations to see that their schools and their libraries spread a knowledge and perpetuate a humanity which shall emancipate the world, and for ever crush the lustful ambitions of a race seeking to impose by the sword its savage "Kultur" upon all mankind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.