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ican) works, in accordance with the traditions of its founder.

Municipalities seldom gave subsidies to libraries, and when they did, the grants were small. As is the case generally in Europe, the library was intended to serve a narrow circle of scientific investigators, and the general public showed no special interest in the library. Only in the last fifty years, when such a large number of associations of all sorts were formed, we see the rise of public libraries for the people. Associations played an unusual part in the political and cultural regeneration of the Czech nation. They not only centred in themselves the social life, but they furnished or supplemented many of the institutions which the Austrian government denied to the Czechs. Libraries were established by both reading and social clubs, and in a really surprising number. Thus libraries of the famous athletic organization “Sokol” and of societies for the protection of national minorities in Germanized districts were founded in thousands of towns and villages. Originally such libraries were established for members of the particular society, but later were for the most part made accessible to the public.

The law of July 22, 1919, makes it the duty of every city, town and village to maintain a public library. They may establish the public library by fusing the existing club or lodge libraries. This right is of very great importance, as some two thirds of the Czech literature is now out of print, and the price of books which are being published since the war is four times as high as the pre-war prices.

This Czechoslovak law of public libraries has some peculiarities. First of all it figures with the fact that in the more advanced parts of the state nearly 80% of the municipalities, including small villages, will be able to create a public library out of association libraries that are now in existence. Thus the law can afford to impose on all municipalities the duty to erect a public library within ten years of the enactment of the law.

Secondly the law deals very carefully with the problem of national minorities. While Czechs and Slovaks form the bulk of the population of the Republic, there are many Germans and Magyars, and to a large extent these live together in the same industrial towns. It is the cardinal principle of the Czechoslovak Republic to give national minorities cultural autonomy, and thus the law provides for separate public libraries for members of the various nationalities.

Where there are poor or backward villages, central libraries will be established in the districts which will make loans of collections of books. There will be about 20 such libraries which will no doubt develop into central libraries for scholars, to serve their individual district, in addition to the large libraries in the capitals of the four provinces of the Czechoslovak Republic.

To excercise supervision over the town and village libraries there is created by law a library board for each judicial district. The board is composed of representatives of literary associations, political parties, school and autonomous public authorities. This board appoints local library experts, generally village schoolmasters, to supervise from 10 to 15 small libraries in their particular neighborhood. City libraries are supervised by professional state library inspectors.

So far there are hardly any schools for librarians in Europe. There will now be established in Prague a one year course for the training of men and women who desire to be librarians of city and special libraries while shorter courses will be conducted for those who are to run village libraries.

Czechoslovak law providing for the establishment and administration of public libraries gets its inspiration from American and English sources, but it contains detailed provisions in accordance with the special Czech traditions and needs.

Fifty complete sets of the 1919 issues of the Czechoslovak Review have been neatly bound and will be sent postpaid for $2.25 per volume. The volume is a book of 400 pages. It is a chronicle of events of the first year of Czechoslovak independence, and it contains besides a mass of other information as to the Czechoslovak nation, not available elsewhere in English. As there are only fifty copies of this bound volume, send in your order at once.