There is one important municipal library which is not rate supported under the Public Libraries Acts. This is the Guildhall reference library of the Corporation of the City of London. A library was established for London by Sir Richard Whittington between 1421-26. But it did not remain without accident ; about 1549 the Lord Protector Somerset carried off three cart-loads of books, and during the great fire of 1666 the remainder together with the buildings were destroyed. Nothing was done to repair the loss until 1824; a new library was opened in 1828.
The library (nearly 200,000 printed vols. and nearly 15,000 mss. in 1928) includes a special collection of books, prints and drawings about London, the Solomons Hebrew and rabbinical library, the National Dickens library, etc., and the libraries of the Clockmakers' and Gardeners' companies and of the Old Dutch church in Austin Friars.
British Library Administration.—A brief statement of the work and methods of public libraries in the United Kingdom will help to give some idea of the extent of their activities. In 1909 6o million vols. were circulated every year for home-reading, 54% representing fiction, including juvenile literature. The refer ence libraries issued over 11 million vols., exclusive of books con sulted at open shelves, and to the reading-rooms, 85 million visits are made per annum. It is evident, moreover, that a complete revolution in library practice has been effected since 1882. Very little had been accomplished in the way of scientific classification schemes, although the decimal method of Melvil Dewey had been applied in the United States. Dewey's system is now in use in 18o public libraries, J. D. Brown's "subject" classification in 59; the later but important library of Congress system in about five.
A complete catalogue of a general popular library contains no addition to bibliography, is costly and is out of date the moment it is printed. Modern libraries therefore compile complete cata logues only in manuscript form, and issue cheap class-lists, supple mented by lists of recent accessions.
The idea of using separate clips or cards for cataloguing books, in order to obtain complete powers of arrangement and revision, is not new, having been applied during the French revolutionary period. The card system is perhaps the most generally used, but many improvements in the adjustable binders, called by librarians the "sheaf system," already begin to make this latter form a serious rival. The card method consists of a series of cards, each bearing one entry, kept on edge in trays or drawers, to which pro jecting guides are added in order to facilitate reference. The sheaf method provides for slips of a uniform size being kept in book form in volumes capable of being opened by means of a screw or other fastening, for the purpose of adding or withdrawing slips. Both sides of a slip may be used, while a number of entries may be made on one slip. For great research libraries, however, the catalogue in volumes, though expensive to keep up to date, is the easiest to use.
In the United States, practically every library has its open shelf collection. On the continent of Europe, however, this method is rare. The first "safeguarded" open access municipal lending library was opened at Clerkenwell (now Finsbury), London, in 1893. Every year several municipal systems are reorganized in this way, and nothing but local lack of funds prevents the uni versal adoption of the system.
In America losses are sometimes enormous, one library having confessed to a loss of 35,000 volumes in a single year. The pre cautions of the British plan are automatic locking wickets for entrance and exit, and registration of borrowers. The great majority of British and American libraries use cards for "charg ing" or registering books lent to borrowers.
Excellent work has been accomplished within recent years by the Library Association and the University of London School of Librarianship in the training of librarians.
The report of the departmental committee on public libraries, 1927, is the best survey of the field since that of 1849. The com mittee aimed at stimulating backward authorities by showing what is done in more favoured places. They were opposed to putting the libraries under the education authorities. The effect of the report was to outline a co-ordinated national system of public libraries, consisting of the urban libraries and the county libraries, with their village and small town branches, all these working together in regional schemes of co-operation, and beyond them the Central Library for Students acting as a reserve for out-of-the-way books, and acting as the centre for mutual loans between a large circle of special libraries, and the public libraries. The report obtained general approval, notably that of the Library Association. In the same year the Scottish Library Association appealed to the secre tary of State for Scotland to appoint (and the minister of finance in Northern Ireland appointed) similar committees to make enquiry and report on the library service in those countries.