'21st March.
Tr_ will hardly be contended that the Shanghai Library is what it ought to bein a great commercial centre and focus of enlightenment like Shanghai. 1b was a very good library forty years ago when the white population of Shanghai was counted by hundreds, but is entirely inadequate to Shanghai as it is O: her public institutions have grown with the growth of the community, but the library has been our Cinderella and has been most unkindly treated and neglected. It is not the fault of successive committees and honorary secretaries, who have done their best, and have been well seconded by the librarians, to put new vigour into the decrepit fume; various devices have been adopted to augment the Library's income, but with little success, and indeed the Library is an institution that should not be dependent on subscriptions for its existence, The annual report of the Committee of the Library, and the report of the annual meeting of its subscribers, appeared so recently in our columns that there is no need to recapitulate their chief points. It is no credit to Shanghai that such an important educational institution as this should have a total income, including a grant of Ti. 1,000 from the Municipal Council, of only Tls. 8,510, and that its accounts should show that on the 31st of December last it owed a sum of £155 2s, for books, against which it had debit balance of 'I'ls, 54, 'A good library is indispensable to a community like this, and its value lies not only in its being the only place for the community generally where current literature and books of reference can be read and consulted, but in its being the storehouse for books on China and the Far East which are now out of print. A gued library is as necessary, to a community not entirely steeped in money-grubbing, as a good public school, and the question is, what is to be done now to make the Shanghai Library what it should be?
To relieve the meagre resources of the Library as it is, the Municipal Council granted it recently the use of one moderate-sized room at the Town Hall, in which it is excessively cramped and which it is obliged to surrender to baser uses whenever the Hall itself is engaged fora Ball. It is convenient enough for the Library to get a room rent-free, but it is in a most inconvenient situation. Five-sixths of the people for whom the library is most wanied, that is, the rising generation whose education is going on, live on the north side of the Soochow Creek and the Huangpu. To make the Library most accessible to all, it should be within the area bounded by the Soochow Creek, the Honan Road, the Nanking Road, and the Bund, There is no necessity for it to be on one of the principal streets, or even to have a street frontage at all, so long as it has an entrance from a street. Is there no landowner in or connected with Shanghai public-spirited enough to give a mow of ground in the area suggested as a site for a Public Library? We trust that there is, Presuming that a site can be obtained, another public-spirited person must be found who will give the community the necessary building. Probably all that is required could be built for Tls. 30,000. Failing somebody directly connected with Shanghai, Mr. Carnegie might be approached, Mr. Carnegie, whose benefactions in this direction will make his name illustrious for centuries, makes it a condition, we believe, that any municipality to which he presen's a Library shall undertake to spend on 1 annually a sum equal to ten per cent on the sum given by himself. The budget of the Municipal Council for 1904 shows an appropriation of Tls. 22,372 for the Public Band and Tis, 1,000 for the Public Library. Isa good library not as desirable for the community as a good band? And would not the ratepayers, ifa suitable building could be erected, cheerfully appropriate even Tls. 5,000 a year for its maintenance? They readily give Tls. 13,000 a year to the Public School; a Library is a necessary complement to a public school, and its income should be sufficient to pay a head librarian competent to advise those who frequent it, and direct the reading especially of the young. Tne income from subscriptions should not be dispensed with altogether; those who use it as a lending library should still.be asked to pay the $12 a year to which the subscription has now been reduced; but its use as a read-ang room should be free, as it is now.
fe earnestly reconimend the suggestions we have made to our readers, suggestions that can be doubtless improved on; and we trust that before long the reproach which the present. condition of the Library is to a great city like Shanghai will be removed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.