Public Libraries Are Very Essential

Public libraries play a very important part in promoting the spread of knowledge. They bring within our reach valuable books which we could not afford
to purchase for ourselves. They are particularly useful for poor students whose education would be hampered with almost insuperable difficulties if they were confines to such books as they could buy for themselves or borrow from private individuals. Even those who are better off cannot afford to buy all the books they require for their studies.

For instance, such a work as the Encyclopedia Britannica is an invaluable book of reference; yet how can they afford the expense of adding it to their private store of books! There are many other such compilations to which scholars have constantly to refer to i.e. large dictionaries, classical dictionaries, dictionaries of antiquities, dictionaries of biography which are scarcely to be found anywhere else but in the large public libraries, and are there open to poor and rich alike in addition to books of general reference.

Students in every branch of study have often to consult expensive books that are beyond the reach of their limited means. IN such cases they trust upon the public library to supplement the necessary textbooks.
A well-managed library, besides supplying many valuable books not to be elsewhere, is very conducive to educational progress in other ways. At his own home student may be liable to continual interruptions in instruction which break the thread of his attention on his books. In a large apartment where silence rings, from where the noises and worries of the other world are carefully excluded.

The very airs of the other world are carefully excluded. The large circular reading room of the British model on a large scale of what such institutions ought to be. The commander books of reference from the librarian. For more special asking application is made on a written from by the reader, who quietly waits in his seat until the librarian brings them to him.

This combination of free consultation of common books of reference, with written application for special books, ought to be followed, as far as possible, in every public library. A student often goes to reading room for the purpose of discovering or verifying a number of points, which he expects to find, settled in some encyclopedia or biographical dictionary, although he does not know exactly in which encyclopedia or in which volume he will find them. In such cases it is an irritating restriction to be compelled to apply to waiting for each of the books that may help him to settle the point To do also gives much extra trouble to the librarian, the trouble which is quite unnecessary, but this trouble is a part of an established system and it has to be respected. The librarian can soon determine the large reference books that are most commonly called for, put them on the table for general use, and issue all other books after receiving receipts for them from the applicants. Libraries managed on some such principles should be opened gor the use of general public in the great cities of every civilized country.

A large public library is also the store-house of books that would in time be lost to the world if there were no such places to keep them long after they have ceased to be read by the general public. Such libraries as the Bodleian at oxford and British London can claim by law a copy of every book that is published. Many old books thus preserved will be of the greatest value to future historians and literary critics.

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