Before the advent of bar codes, RFI tags or whatever technology is brought to bear on the task nowadays, borrowing a book from a library was a simple affair. You chose your book, took it to the librarian who then took an identifying card from within the book, stamped the card with the return date and put it into your 'holder' in the filing system. They also put the return date, typically two weeks for fiction and a month for non-fiction, on a frontispiece like the one above. All very civilised and a process many of us of a certain age (aka oldies) will remember fondly. Self service scanners and their like just don't have the same romance, do they?. But there was a time when I felt a frisson of anxiety every time I visited our local lending library which was, if you'd like to know, on the ground floor of the Bedwas Workmans' Hall, of which more at another time.
The cause of my anxiety? This was down to the rather sinister notice that appeared opposite the frontispiece warning of the dire consequences that could result from coming into contact with an infected book. We are talking of the mid-1950s when I was 7 or 8-ish and had no way of putting disease into a rational context. I remember being petrified that the book I wanted to borrow had just been returned from one of the more feral families in the village. In fact, I remember asking the librarian if anyone of the *******s or the ******s had taken the book out. Of course they hadn't (they probably couldn't read) and I was never smitten by one of the notifiable diseases listed below. I'm not quite sure how long such notices appeared in library books but they were a sign of those times. Things move on and we no longer have to risk life and limb to read Enid Blyton. Did she ever write one called 'The Famous Five visit the Isolation Hospital'?
The cause of my anxiety? This was down to the rather sinister notice that appeared opposite the frontispiece warning of the dire consequences that could result from coming into contact with an infected book. We are talking of the mid-1950s when I was 7 or 8-ish and had no way of putting disease into a rational context. I remember being petrified that the book I wanted to borrow had just been returned from one of the more feral families in the village. In fact, I remember asking the librarian if anyone of the *******s or the ******s had taken the book out. Of course they hadn't (they probably couldn't read) and I was never smitten by one of the notifiable diseases listed below. I'm not quite sure how long such notices appeared in library books but they were a sign of those times. Things move on and we no longer have to risk life and limb to read Enid Blyton. Did she ever write one called 'The Famous Five visit the Isolation Hospital'?
Section 155 of the Public Health Act 1936:
(1) A person who knows that he is suffering from a notifiable disease shall not take any book, or cause any book to be taken for his use, or use any book taken, from any public or circulating library.
(2) A person shall not permit any book which has been taken from a public or circulating library, and is under his control, to be used by any person whom he knows to be suffering from a notifiable disease.(3) A person shall not return to any public or circulating library a book which he knows to have been exposed to infection from a notifiable disease, or permit any such book which is under his control to be so returned, but shall give notice to the local authority, or, in the case of a library provided by a county council, to that council, that the book has been so exposed to infection.
(4) A person who contravenes any of the foregoing provisions of this, section shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds.
(5) A local authority or, as the case may be, a county council on receiving such a notice as aforesaid shall cause the book to be disinfected and returned to the library, or shall cause it to be destroyed.
(6) A notifiable disease means any of the following diseases, namely, small-pox, cholera, diphtheria, membranous croup, erysipelas, the disease known as scarlatina or scarlet fever, and the fevers known by any of the following names, typhus, typhoid, enteric or relapsing, and includes, as respects any particular district, any infectious disease to which Part V of this Act or any corresponding enactment repealed by this Act has been applied by the local authority of the district in manner provided by that Part or that enactment.
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