Borough of Derby. 
oe 
TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT 
OF THE 
Aree Aibrayy and Museum Committee, 
For the Year ended September 30th, 1895. 
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iG ae Free Library and Museum Committee present their Twenty- 
Fourth Annual Report to the Town Council with very great 
pleasure, believing that at no time in its history has the Institution been 
doing more or better work than at the present, and that the advantages 
it offers to the Ratepayers have never been more highly appreciated. 
The issue of books in both Lending and Reference Departments 
shows a substantial increase, which would have been greater still were 
it not for the fact that during the two months preceding the opening of 
the new Children’s Department, juvenile books were gradually with- 
drawn from circulation. 1258 New Books were added during the year, 
of which 221 were replacements, and the total Library stock in all de- 
partments is 29,173 books. A change foreshadowed in the last Report 
has now taken place, and with excellent effect. One of the rooms has 
been specially fitted as a Children’s Library, and to stock it about goo 
books were withdrawn from the main Lending Library, and about 500 new 
ones purchased. Juvenile readers from 8 to 14 years of age have now 
a well-selected Library of 1,400 volumes. Considerable relief has been 
afforded to the over-crowded shelves in the Lending Department, and 
older people can get their wants attended to with greater celerity. 
During the three months the department has been open, more than 
three hundred borrowers have been enrolled, and the daily issue 
amounts to about fifty volumes. 
The Committee have made another new departure during the past 
year. A good deal has been said from time to time about providing a 
a branch in the Litchurch division of the Borough, and a step has been 
