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Twenty-Fourth Annual Report 



OF THE 



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For the Year ended September joth, 1895. 



VJJ|[^HE Free Library and Museum Committee present their Twenty- 

 Xlilv 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 900 

 books were withdrawn from the main Lending Library, and about 500 new 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 



