LIBRARIAN’S REPORT. 
The statistical and other returns of the work of the past year are 
herewith submitted and serve to show that the Libraries are not only 
maintaining their efficiency and usefulness, but are an increasing 
force in the intellectual life and educational economy of the 
City. The issue of nearly three million volumes from the Reference 
and Branch Libraries supplies in itself a convincing evidence of the 
beneficial service of the Institutions to the community. To this 
number, however, the issue of some 500,000 magazines and reviews 
(many of them literary, technical, and industrial) must be added; 
while the visitors to the newspapers approximate to almost the same 
total. Compared with the figures for the year 1907 the very 
gratifying increase of upwards of 163,000 volumes used throughout 
the whole of the library system is shown, of which total less than 
43,000 were works of prose fiction. This improvement is general ; 
it is, however, most particularly manifest in connection with the 
Reference Library—where an advance of more than 39,000 volumes 
in the Picton Reading Room issues has been recorded, the improve- 
ment being most marked in the literature of the Fine and 
Industrial Arts, History and Biography, Commerce, Political 
Economy and Maritime affairs, Education and Language, Poetry 
and the Drama, and Topography and Antiquities; while of the 
22,242 additional volumes read in the Brown Reading Room only 
3,737 were works of prose fiction, which indicates a marked advance 
in the quality of the reading, and justifies more strongly than ever 
the Committee’s policy of supplying popular works of travel, science, 
history, and other subjects of general interest, to this department. 
_ These latter figures are exclusive of the large numbers of 
Directories, Patents, and files of newspapers consulted. Slight 
reductions appear in the issues of children’s books and in some other 
_ directions also; but the only notable decreases are in respect of the 
_ Magazine issues and the number of visitors to the Newspapers at 
_ the Branch Libraries, where the totals have fallen by 121,848 and 
118,724 respectively, compared with 1907. 
