The Library World Volume 12 Issue 12

Abstract

ACCORDING to the Directory of Libraries in the United States and Canada, there are about 4,500 libraries of a more or less public character in those two countries. The Literary Year‐book, Clegg's Directory, and other authorities, furnish the information that at least 2,000 public libraries exist in the United Kingdom. Allowing 10,000 more for the rest of the world, we get a total of 16,500 libraries. Deducting three‐fourths of this number as representing libraries of the smallest and most poverty‐stricken or special kind, we obtain 4,000 institutions capable of supporting professional literature of all forms. A sanguine librarian might be induced by these figures to launch out in authorship, certain of his market, and might even be prone to disregard the warning that not more than about one‐tenth of these 4,000 libraries are to be depended upon as possible purchasers.

Citation

(1910), "The Library World Volume 12 Issue 12", New Library World, Vol. 12 No. 12, pp. 444-476. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb008935