The Library World Volume 22 Issue 8

Sufficient time has not yet passed to enable us to remark more than the immediate effects of the new Libraries Act; but there are already signs of much activity and probable expansion. The most significant event in the past month has been the adoption of the Public Libraries Act by the long‐delaying metropolitan borough of Marylebone, which is about to spend eighty‐thousand pounds on establishing its system; and lately Paddington has referred the question to a special committee for report. Thus, at last, all the London Boroughs may now be said to be on the way to possessing a library system. Much remains to be done. St. Pancras—the apostate borough—must needs fall into line with these. The impelling fact in the case has been the matter of control. Unless these boroughs adopt the Acts before the 31st March their power to do so will have passed to the London County Council, and the residents may appeal to that Council over the heads of the borough councils. There seems to have been some virtue, at any rate, in the clause empowering education committees to become library authorities. No borough is anxious to have its own powers restricted, even in what have been not exactly popular matters with them.