The primary purpose of this Volume is to serve as a Handbook for Promoters and Managers of Free Town Libraries; especially of such Libraries as may hereafter be established under the ‘Libraries Acts.’ Its secondary purpose is to compare British experience in that matter with Foreign, and particularly with American, experience.

Eighteen years have now passed since the enactment of the first Libraries Act of the United Kingdom. Under that Act, and its followers, more than thirty Free Town Libraries have already been successfully established. They have been formed under circumstances of much diversity. Probably, the experience of each of them has something or other which may be usefully applied to the working of like institutions in other places.

In many European countries Free Libraries, under municipal control, are much older institutions than Town Libraries, of any kind, are in Britain. Sometimes, the Continental Town Libraries of early foundation have fallen into a state of comparative neglect and inefficiency,–arising from inadequate means of maintenance, and from minor causes. But there is still much, both in their history and in their methods of working, which may be found highly instructive. This volume will be seen to contain conclusive evidence, on the other hand, that knowledge of what has been done, of late years, in the matter of increasing the number and improving the management of Popular Libraries, both in Britain and in America, has been already turned to good account in several countries of Continental Europe.