The Public Library in the Service of Leisure

Abstract

The article stresses the need for greater public provision in adult education and the arts as recreational activities, and identifies various institutional "growth points", including public libraries which should find their special role in this sector of community life, as a combined "theatre of recorded entertainment" and a "library-college". Equally important to the public library is the information function as the "library of first resort" and this creates organisational and design problems when trying to reconcile the two objectives.

Library success in the leisure field requires inter-disciplinary teamwork, flexibility in staff organisation and in allocation of resources, greater use of non-book media and a co ordinated approach by cultural associations and institutions at national, regional and local levels. Additional resources are required to exploit information and arts opportunities and these may be found partly by reducing investment in large reference libraries which are seen in practice as duplicate provision for the academic sector of the community. The right of librarians to set quality standards in selection is questioned, but supported, subject to the criteria being made explicit to governing bodies and to the public.