COUN TY uwBOROUGH# GEx DERBY. 
‘Twentpzsixt§ Annual Report 
Free Library & Museum Committee 
For the year ended September 30th, 1898. 
—— > se+oa- dm_-_ 
ge Free Library and Museum Committee have pleasure in laying 
before the Town Council their Twenty-seventh Annual Report. 
The Library and Museum are in a prosperous condition. The 
Library now contains 31,210 volumes—an increase of a little more 
than a thousand during the year—and full details respecting it 
and its working will be found in the Librarian’s Report to this Com- 
mittee and the tables appended to it. The Committee have made no 
new departure during the year, but the usefulness of the Institution 
as a whole has been fully maintained. 
The Arboretum Branch Reading Room fully justifies its establish- 
ment, and the numbers using it show a steady increase. In the four 
months of the year in which the visitors were counted, the numbers 
reached 40,091, giving a total for the year of 120,273, which is 
6,700 more than last year, and 13,000 more than the first year in 
which it. was open. The special exit into Rose Hill Street, for 
use during the last hour of the evening, has proved a great boon | 
and the Committee desire to acknowledge the readiness with which 
the Arboretum Committee met their views when the subject came 
under discussion. The cost of maintenance keeps well within the 
Committee’s estimate, although this year there has been special paint- 
ing and cleaning to be provided for. 
The re-arrangement of the Museum still steadily progresses 
under the direction of the Sub-Committee charged with the work. 
Some valuable donations to the Museum will be found in the lists 
this year, among the most important of which are a number of 
horns from South Africa, presented by Colonel J. A. Spreckley, of 
Buluwayo, a former townsman. To the same gentleman’s good 
