Education: British Librarians

Sir Henry Guppy’s term as president of the British Library Association ended last week and Edward James Bruce, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine replaced him at the association’s jubilee meeting in Edinburgh. The chief significance of the succession lay in the ability of a librarian group to attract a potent citizen to their leadership.

The earl is the great-grandson of that Lord Elgin who found the “Elgin” marbles scattered over the Acropolis at Athens. He picked them up and carried them to England. The present earl, who lives at Dunfermline, Scotland, where Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was born, is an honorary colonel of the City of Edinburgh and, more importantly, chairman of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. That institution (endowment £2,000,000) is the analog of the Carnegie Trust Corp. of New York (endowment $125,000,000). Its purpose, Carnegie ordered, was “for the improvement of the well-being of the masses of the people of Great Britain and Ireland by such means as are comprehended within the meaning of the word charitable.” Under the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine the trust has supported child welfare and rural development work, and built libraries.

From him, their new president, the British librarians at Edinburgh last week heard a heartening definition of library work which might have been meant for Chicago ears: “One of the main features on which the success of the library service depends is freedom—freedom of the locality to develop its resources without dictation; freedom of the library in its construction and accessibility; and freedom of the individual to seek for what he desires.”