Note 28 — V A NATIONAL LIBRARY SERVICE.
Reading edition
There are great irregularities in the distribution of these libraries; for instance, the ratepayer in Holborn has to walk on the average 540 yards to get to a library; in Camberwell he would have to go 1,030 yards; in Wandsworth 1,400; while in the huge borough of Woolwich, if it were all built up, he would have to travel about 2,400 yards. The majority of the boroughs, however, only expect their readers to walk between 500 and 1,000 yards.
If we consider the provision of libraries in proportion to the population, we find that the extreme variations are that Hampstead supplies a library for every 14,000 inhabitants, while 75,000 inhabitants in Stepney share one between them.
But the demand for library facilities is not the same in all the boroughs, for we find that while in Hampstead 125 out of every 1,000 of its inhabitants are registered as using the library, in Shoreditch only 29 per 1,000 avail themselves of the facilities which exist in that borough. The effect of this is that the number of readers per library varies considerably, for while Poplar and Hammersmith share a library or branch between 1,200 readers, Stoke Newington and Chelsea are satisfied with one establishment for 4,600 readers.
(John McKillop: “The Present Position of London Municipal Libraries with suggestions for Increasing their Efficiency,” in Library Association Record, Dec. 1906.)