[Book Reviews]

Abstract

IF in Her Majesty's dorninions there is a spot where newspapers do not penetrate and where free libraries are only known by name, and yet where some pioneering spirit only requires a spark to set aflame the desire to start such an institution, this book will be a fitting flint and steel for the purpose. But as such a combination is to be found in very few places, we cannot encourage the writer to hope that many will read his 500 pages of newspaper cuttings with much satisfaction. To any reader who is within measurable distance of earnestly considering that “most interesting question of the day—how to work a free library in a small community” —nine-tenths of this book, commencing its survey as it does at the British Museum, vill be provokingly irrelevat; he will grudge the time taken up in finding where the practical information is scattered. As a missionary book, crying in the wilderness the advent of knowledge, it is less likely to make its way than the newspapers from which it is compiled, and it is thoroughly wanting in the eloquent earnestness of the prophet.

Free Public Libraries; their Organisation, Uses, and Management.

By Thomas Greenwood. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1886.)