Welsh Journals

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THE NATIONAL LIBRARY THE intellectual awakening which, during the lifetime of a single generation, has given Wales a complete system of higher education, is one of those outstanding features in a people's history, which serve as landmarks of progress. It is just over forty years since the first university college was founded, to struggle with adversity for a dozen years or more, upheld by the self-sacrificing devotion of the people, but always fighting for bare subsistence. It is thirty years since that college with two others received formal recognition as part of a scheme of higher education for Wales. The founding of the Intermediate Schools and the University followed, and the ladder from the primary school to a university degree was accomplished. To fulfil their purpose, colleges and universities must be supplemented by museums and libraries, where students of the higher branches of learning, and those engaged in research, may profit by the accumu- lated knowledge of other investigaters in the same fields. The work of the university has been seriously hindered by the lack in Wales of opportunities for post-graduate study. Students were obliged to go elsewhere, or to abandon post-graduate work, a serious loss to the country. The need for a museum and a library of a national character, to supplement and perpetuate the work of the schools, the colleges and the university, became so urgent, that the reasonableness of this demand for the completion of the scheme of higher education was recognised by the government. The immediate purpose of this article is to consider the place which the National Library should take in the educational scheme, and to indicate what has been done during the last five years towards realizing the purpose for which the library was founded. The Royal charter founding the library, issued in March 1907, sets forth the object in the following terms: The object of the Library shall be the collection preservation and maintenance of manuscripts printed books periodical publications newspapers pictures engravings and prints musical publications and works of all kinds whatsoever especially manuscripts printed books and other works which have been or shall be composed in Welsh or any other Celtic language or which relate or shall relate to the antiqui- ties language literature philology history religion arts crafts and industries of the Welsh and other Celtic peoples as well as all literary works whether connected or not with Welsh subjects composed written or printed in whatsoever language on what- soever subject and wheresoever published which may help to attain the purposes for which the University of Wales the University College of Aberystwyth and the University College of North Wales the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire and the other educational institutions existing in Wales were created and founded especially the furtherance of higher education within the meaning of the Education Acts 1870 to 1902 and of literary and scientific research." The Charter clearly contemplates two con- current lines upon which the building up of the Library must travel. The first is to bring within reach of the people residing in Wales books, necessary for the pursuance of those higher studies which the colleges and the university were founded to promote. The first object received a magnificent start with the collection of books and manuscripts made by Sir John Williams, Bart., who transferred his Library on the 1st, January, 1909, the date on which the National Library, as a place with a temporary habitation, came into existence. The transfer of other important collections followed immediately after, and by gift and purchase considerable additions have been made each year since. This section has already attained a measure of completeness which is remarkable. Other collections, known to be destined for the National Library, will place it in the front rank of great libraries, so far as our own national literature, printed and in manuscript, is concerned. The second great purpose of the library, on the other hand, presents a difficult problem. To collect the books in whatsoever language on whatsoever subject and wheresoever published which may help to attain the purposes for which the University the colleges and other educational institutions were founded, and for the furtherance of literary and scientific research, means bringing together books on a variety of subjects, from a wide area-on this side not much assistance could be looked for within the Principality. The great works of reference, the transactions of learned societies, publications of governments at home and abroad, sets of literary, historical, artistic, scientific, technical and other periodicals, and the expensive books in every branch of knowledge, have not hitherto found their way into Wales. For a long period England, Scotland and Ireland. respectively, have enjoyed special privileges under successive copyright acts, whereby libraries in each of those divisions of the United Kingdom are supplied