Borough of Derby. 
TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT 
OF THE 
Free Library and Museum Committee, 
For the Year ended September 30th, 1894. 
an Free Library and Museum Committee have very much pleasure 
in presenting to the Town Council their Twenty-Third Annual 
Report, and are glad that in doing so they can testify to the 
undiminished popularity and usefulness of the Institution committed to 
their charge. 
The Statistical Tables appended to the Librarian’s Report will be 
found to contain many interesting details, and to those Tables all are 
referred who are interested in the inner working of the Library. The 
Committee feel, however, that they should draw attention to the increased 
issues in the Lending Library, which amount to more than ten thousand 
in the year just closed, and also to the fact that no fewer than 1,410 books 
have been added during the same period, of which 522 were replacements 
of books worn out, and the remainder entirely new. The Library stock 
in the two departments now amounts to 28,086 works. It will very soon 
become a question of shelfroom for the accommodation of the ever- 
increasing number of books, and the Committee have at present under 
consideration a scheme which will afford much relief, by the separation 
of the Juvenile books from the others, and thus set a large quantity of 
shelf-room at liberty, and also add materially to the comfort of adult 
borrowers, and the facility with which they can be served. 
No new Supplementary Catalogue has been issued this year, but the 
Committee feel that the time has now arrived when the Catalogue as a 
whole should be grappled with, and they have adopted the suggestion of 
the Librarian, that the whole should be republished, but in Sections, and 
that Section dealing with Science, Art, and Technology is now in course 
of active preparation, and it is hoped may be issued by about Christmas, 
