1931 - Annual Convention

              S E V E N T E E N T H A N N U A L C O N V E N T I ON 81
Before t u r n i n g to speak of our present situation and our prospects, how­ever,
I w o u l d like to take a moment to remark that a good l i b r a r y service is as
important as any of the public services which our modern communities have
learned to provide for themselves. In p r o p o r t i o n to the outlay, it is possible
that more satisfaction comes out of libraries than out of any other public
service, and we may hope that our authorities w i l l understand better as the
days go on. that n o t h i n g makes for a peaceful and contented community more
surely than the fact that the minds of its citizens are pleasantly occupied w i th
good reading, and find there at once a relief from the everyday cares of life
and the stimulus to face life w i t h new courage. This is more true in modern
democracies like our own than it has ever been. The v e r y idea of a democ­racy
is. that the citizens of a community have the right kind of knowledge
and the r i g h t ideals so that they are fit to govern themselves wisely, and the
strength of our social order depends at once on the good intention of all our
citizens and on their information and their ability to weigh a question and
decide what is right without fear and without prejudice. Those of us who
are interested in l i b r a r y service may very properly feel that we are doing a
l i t t l e service to our democratic society, and helping to lay more firmly the
foundations at once of social justice and of social peace.
F o r The past few years some of us who have been pretty closely con­nected
with library service i n the province, have felt that the day was near
when we should t r y to make a forward step, and a good deal of thought was
given from time to time during the past few years to our present standing in
the matter of l i b r a r y service and to possible projects for the extension of
that work in our communities. As it seemed that the first t h i n g to do was to
c a l l a conference of l i b r a r i a n s and others interested so that we might size up
the situation and talk over our prospects, arrangement was made to rail a
conference in December, 1930, and with the very much valued assistance of
the P r o v i n c i a l Government, we were able to b r i n g to the U n i v e r s i t y nearly
fifty delegates representing not only the libraries but other organizations like
Women's Institutes, Local Councils of Women, Women's U n i v e r s i t y Club,
C a t h o l i c Women's League. Teachers' A l l i a n c e and so on. The welcome given
to the idea of the conference was exceedingly encouraging, and the sessions
were both interesting and valuable.
Before I tell you of the outcome of the Conference, let me take a minute
or two to r e m i n d you h ow we stand i n the matter of e x i s t i n g l i b r a r y service.
It is not necessary to enumerate our libraries, or to mention in detail what
equipment we have in books and buildings. A l t h o u g h we have by no means
covered the province, we have a very f a i r s p r i n k l i n g of municipal l i b r a r i e s in
our cities and towns. Our greatest trouble has been that, though the people
i n our cities and towns may have reasonable access to books, our r u r a l munici­palities
have not been very well off in this matter, and that is a very serious
defect in our present arrangements, as lack of access to a generous supply of
good books is one of the handicaps of l i v i n g out of towns, and some of us
feel that if we succeed in developing better library facilities for rural com­munities,
we shall have done not a little towards equalizing conditions and
e q u a l i z i n g opportunity:
We need not repine greatly because up to the present we have not got
very many libraries. Many of the older communities are having a good deal
of difficulty in m a n o e u v r i n g into position for modern l i b r a r y service because
the flexibility, centralization and mobility of l i b r a r y resources, according to
the modern ideal, are heavily mortgaged to the support and maintenance of
numerous independent library units. In the old country for example, it is
t a k i n g millions of pounds to adapt the older Carnegie ideal to modern needs".
We have a c l e a r field for b u i l d i n g as we feel we ought to do.