Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/32

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22
The Library.

place in connection with the St. Helens Free Library I have endeavoured to give you a brief outline of what has been attempted and of the pleasing success resulting therefrom. If only a few students and readers are induced to make use of the Library through visiting a book exhibition, it will not have been held in vain, but apart from any numerical gain in the way of new readers it would give pleasure and satisfaction to hundreds who rarely, if ever, make use of the Library, and thus the "people's university" would be popularised and its influence for good extended.

In conclusion I would ask members to give this matter their earnest attention. Let them by way of experiment have a local exhibition on either of the two plans named and I feel sure they will be gratified by the result, for in the words of the late Lord Neaves, a celebrated Scotch lawyer and something of a poet:—

"To have a thing is little, if you're not allowed to show it,
And to know a thing is nothing, unless others know you know it."