Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 13 December 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 37) –The Surveys of Geddes”

As highlighted in a previous article, D.J. Coakely, principal of the Cork Chamber of Commerce proposed a series of reform measures for social housing in Cork City in 1918. Concluding his address he had a section entitled “What should be done in Cork”. He proposed that a ‘Housing and Town Planning Committee’ be formed in the city to consider the question of housing in its different aspects-social, economic, engineering, and legal. He wished for a detailed course of public lectures and a housing and town planning exhibition as well as a Local Government Board inquiry into the housing conditions of the working classes in Cork, similar to one held in Dublin. He also sought a report on the legal powers of Cork Corporation and the further powers required to deal adequately with the housing question.

Perhaps Coakley’s appealing proposals were that a “Civic Survey” be made of the city and that essential information be compiled for his suggested Local Government Board inquiry into the existing housing conditions of the working classes. In association with these he proposed the arrangement of a town planning competition, for which a substantial prize could be offered. The concept of a civic survey and a town plan competition was based on concepts developed by Sir Patrick Geddes. D.J. Coakley’s lecture in Cork was just echoing his work.

The UK National Biography notes that Sir Patrick Geddes (1854 –1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology. One of his central arguments in his work was that physical geography, market economics and anthropology were related, creating a “single chord of social life [of] all three combined”. As part of that philosophy, Geddes advocated the civic survey as essential to urban planning. His motto was “diagnosis before treatment”. Such a survey could include, at a minimum, the geology, the geography, the climate, the economic life, and the social institutions of the city and region. His early work surveying the city of Edinburgh became a model for later surveys.

Geddes was particularly critical of that form of planning which relied overmuch on design and effect, neglecting to consider “the surrounding quarter and constructed without reference to local needs or potentialities”. Geddes encouraged instead exploration and consideration of the “whole set of existing conditions”, studying the “place as it stands, seeking out how it has grown to be what it is, and recognising alike its advantages, its difficulties and its defects”. Geddes’s work was adopted by the Town Planning Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects who spread the work’s importance to town planners in Britain.

The Dictionary of Irish Architects describes that between the years 1911-1916 Patrick Geddes was heavily involved in the search for solutions to Dublin’s acute health and housing problems. In 1911, on the invitation of the Women’s National Health Association, he brought his Cities and Town Planning Exhibition to Dublin, while the Institute of Public Health was holding its congress there. The exhibition was later displayed in Belfast. In September 1913 he gave evidence on behalf of the Women’s National Health Association to the Local Government Board’s inquiry into working class housing conditions in Dublin. In March 1914 he persuaded the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Aberdeen, to give a £500 prize for an international Dublin Town Planning competition promoted by the Civics Institute of Ireland. The assessors of the competition were Geddes himself, the Dublin City Architect Charles James McCarthy and the American town planner John Nolen (1869-1937). The outbreak of the First World War delayed the meeting of the assessors, so it was not until 1916 that the first prize was awarded to Patrick Abercrombie of Liverpool University and his collaborators Sydney A. Kelly (1881-1943) and Arthur J. Kelly. Abercrombie was subsequently appointed town planning consultant for Dublin. His document Dublin of the Future was published in 1922.

Patrick Abercrombie, himself, trained as an architect before becoming the Professor of Civic Design at the Liverpool University School of Architecture in 1915, and later Professor of Town Planning at University College London. Afterwards, he made the award-winning designs for Dublin city centre and gradually asserted his dominance as an architect of international renown, which came about through the replanning of Plymouth, Hull, Bath, Edinburgh and Bournemouth, among others.

Cork’s interest in town planning was inspired by the work of both Patrick Geddes and Patrick Abercrombie. True to his proposals, D.J. Coakley worked with others especially the technical education committees in Cork in creating a series of public lectures dealing in greater detail with the different aspects of the problem as applied to Cork were given. The lectures were delivered under the auspices of the Cork Literary and Scientific Society and the Cork Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, and shipping, and by Professor Abercrombie. At a conference of the principal citizens, held at the Cork School of Art, in March 1922, the Cork Town Planning Association was formed, and subsequently Professor Abercrombie, and Sydney Kelly were invited and agreed to act as special advisors to the Association.

To be continued…

Caption:

671a. Patrick Geddes, c.1886 (source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 22 November 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 36) –Future Housing Debates”

At the opening of the 1917-18 session of the Cork Municipal School of Commerce, the Principal D.J. Coakley, delivered a lecture on the “General Principles of Housing and Town Planning”.  A large portion of his paper was concerned with tenement housing and the need to plan for the future for proper housing in the city.

In referring to the tenement houses in Cork City, Coakley’s lecture stated that some of them were so old and dilapidated, and so structurally bad, that repairing them was out of the question. As a consequence, 38 to 40 houses were closed some years previously as being unfit for human habitation. There were several instances of where the father and mother, and sons and daughters over 20 years of age, all slept in the same apartment. Of 12,850 houses in Cork, 1,300 were unprovided with back yards, nearly half of which were situated in the city centre. Coakley noted that if the Corporation of Cork were to demolish all the houses in the city which are absolutely unfit for human habitation and those on the border line, it would mean dispossessing 16,000 people, or one fifth of the population.

In Cork much attention had been given to the subject of poor housing in the previous thirty years. A committee of the Corporation of Cork had been formed to deal with the issues and it was continually pressing for a State grant for housing. The Corporation had, during the previous thirty years, expended £81,000 in clearing unhealthy and dilapidated areas, and providing some 532 houses, and 11 houses of 33 flats for the labouring classes. Since 1906 the Corporation had spent over £51,000 in re-surfacing the streets. The question of widening certain streets was also under consideration. Improvements had been carried out at Friary Lane, French’s Quay, and Windmill Road.

D.J. Coakley proposed a number of considerations, which in time were to become part of a wider strategy to deal with slums in Cork City in the 1920s to 1940s. Firstly, he proposed that unsanitary houses could be removed at the expense of the rate-payers and the building of others in their place. He gave the example, in London of Bethnal Green, where 15 acres of slums had been cleared at a cost of £280,000. Between the years 1893 and 1897, 5,719 inhabitants were displaced there. Similar but smaller schemes had been carried out in cities such as Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester. The Corporation of Liverpool had replaced over 500 unsanitary back to back hovels by healthy well planned tenement blocks opening on to wide courts. The disadvantages of Coakley’s method, he noted himself, were numerous- the high price for land, the compensation to the slum owners, and the high working expenses. In general during a clearance the slum dwellers were driven into some other part of the town where new slums could be created. He noted: “The rents in the district where they go are forced up, which causes the compensation price for the latter to be increased when it comes to be cleared. Indeed, that method of dealing with our slums has encouraged the development of the buying up of property in unsanitary areas in order to reap a rich harvest of compensation from the municipal pocket”.

A second method, proposed by D.J Coakley included the mending or ending of unsanitary houses at the expense of the owners. It was generally impossible according to Coakley, to achieve this end without removing one or more of the adjacent buildings, because the most unsanitary houses of all were generally found in thickly built neighbourhoods. For houses unfit for human habitation, notice was served on the owners to repair them at their own expense. If repairs were not carried out the magistrate could make a closing order. They could then be closed until repaired or demolished. The cost of replacing hovels with good cheap houses under the second method worked out in Liverpool at £7 per house of five persons. This was cheaper than the average £50 per head for the first method of creating a new house. The second method was in force in Birmingham, Sheffield, Birkenhead, Northampton, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, Warrington, and York. Liverpool followed the first method up to 1905, when they found it too expensive. In Birmingham the owners received every encouragement to carry out the repairs. When notices to repair or close their houses were sent to owners their local authority frequently told them what was exactly required, to save them expense, in many cases supplying them with specifications of the work required.

Coakley’s third proposal consisted of the construction of new houses in the suburbs, under proper town-planning arrangements. In that case, there was no heavy expense for compensation to the owners and for clearances, and the price of the land was smaller than in the centre of the city. According to this method a cheap but well-built house, with a quarter acre garden or at least a fair-sized courtyard could be obtained. In time, this scheme was adopted more so than Coakley’s first two proposals in green areas such as Turners Cross in the late 1920s.

To be continued….

Caption:

668a. Cornmarket Street, 1890 (source: Cork City Through Time by Kieran McCarthy and Dan Breen, 2012)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 15 November 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 35) –A No Man’s Land”

In 1926 the Cork Town Planning Association produced Cork: A Civic Survey, which provided a template for Cork Corporation’s housing developments at Capwell, Turner’s Cross, Gurranabraher, and other suburban sites. The committee associated with the technical education in the city had pressed for such a document for several years previously. Indeed, apart from the Schools of Commerce, and Music, and the Crawford Technical College, their management committees also took a huge interest in the condition of the housing from where many of their students came from.

Beginning at the opening of the 1917-18 session of the Cork Municipal School of Commerce, the Principal D.J. Coakley, delivered a lecture on the “General Principles of Housing and Town Planning”. The lecture, which was published in pamphlet form, by the Cork County Borough Technical Instruction Committee comprised an enormous amount of data for debate on the subject. Indeed in the printed version, now archived in local studies in Cork City Library, the introduction is penned by Arthur F. Sharman Crawford. He notes: “All the labour expended on educating the citizens in schools would be more or less thrown away if afterwards the workers had to live in over-crowded unsanitary dwellings. People living under such circumstances naturally become slack and enervated, and unfit to perform their duties with efficiency. At present, houses were built more or less haphazard, and without any properly formulated general plan. There was no doubt when the dreadful war was over, schemes of housing and town planning would be undertaken in all large cities”.

Sharman Crawford writes of the considerable amount of valuable information collected relative to the condition of housing in the city and that the Corporation of Cork had discussed the preparation of a housing scheme for Cork and the holding of a Local Government Board Inquiry into the topic. He called for a competition for the best plan for the future development of the city, and that a prize be offered of sufficiently large size to attract the “very best brains” in the subject of housing and town planning. In addition Crawford pressed for an educational side to the subject, which could be undertaken by University College Cork and by the Technical Instruction Committee, who could arrange a series of lectures on housing and town planning, so that the citizens could understand for themselves the necessity for the work and “become ambitious to have a beautiful and sanitary city”.

A series of charts and maps mapping out social and housing problems in the city had been arranged by the city engineer in City Hall a few years previous to 1917. These had been exhibited a few years previously at the Dublin Civics Exhibition, and were highly appreciated by well-known expert Professor Patrick Geddes, of Edinburgh. Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology. Indeed several of his ideas were adopted in compiling Cork: A Civic Survey in 1926 (see next week).

In Sharman Crawford’s pamphlet, he writes that during the session, 1914-15, a course of public lectures on citizenship was arranged by the Cork Municipal School of Commerce committee. The lectures had an important bearing on, and formed a necessary foundation, to a course of lectures on housing and town planning. The following lectures were delivered: Citizenship-Scope and General Treatment (by D.J. Coakley and A.F Sharman Crawford), The Rights and Duties of the Citizen (by D.J. Coakley and A F Sharman Crawford), History and Development of Government (by P.Kennedy),  The Tribal System (by W.F.P. Stockley), The Feudal System (by Dr. P.G. Lee), History and Extension of the Franchise and of Education (by P.Gamble), The Central Government of Great Britain (by H.J. Moloney), Parliamentary Procedure (by J.F. Burke), Local Municipal Government (by F.W. McCarthy), and The Government of France (by R.D. Jenkins).

Sharman Crawford goes on to describe in his pamphlet the condition of housing in other parts of Ireland such as Dublin and then focussed on the problems that existed in Cork City. In Cork City in 1917, the population of the city was 76,673 with 12,850 houses and 15, 469 families. The tenements occupied by the working classes were 719 with a population of 8,675 with 2,928 families. The report stated that overcrowding to a very great extent existed. In some cases, the cubic space of the sleeping apartments amounted to only 72 cubic feet for each person. Of the 2,383 houses other than tenement houses, 2,265 were found to be over-crowded.

There was a large proportion of the population living in overcrowded areas, as members of a family living in one of two-room houses, or inhabiting tenements. Crawford notes: “These tenement houses formerly built for one family, now occupied by from three to nine families, and even in one case by thirteen families, with a common entrance- a sort of no man’s land, naturally vitiated by neglect and dirt- are a natural breeding ground for disease of all kinds, and are a serious menace to the physical and moral condition of our people”.

To be continued…

Caption:

667a. Slum conditions in Kelly Street, Cork, c.1900 (source: Cork Museum)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 8 November 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 34) –Overarching Narratives”

Continuing on from last week, there are some interesting insights in the newspapers such as the Cork Examiner into housing and urban renewal in Cork in the mid 1920s. At a Council meeting on 19 September 1924, the principal business was to discuss the allocation of houses at a former Cattle Market site on College Road, which became known as Wycherley Terrace in time.

The architects Messrs. O’Flynn and O’Connor wrote to the Council’s housing committee stating that the Cattle Market housing scheme was ready for occupation. They were to be allotted to applicants in each city ward area in proportion to the number of proposals received from those areas. The secretary of the committee noted they had received 286 applications for the forty houses, and they were to be allotted according to the number of applications from each ward. The three areas of the North West Ward were be entitled to 19 houses, there been 138 applicants from those areas. The centre ward, with 89 applications, would be entitled to 13. The south ward was entitled to five houses, the number of applicants been 38, and the North East ward, from which 21 applications had been received, was entitled to three houses.

Cllr O’Riordan protested against the unfairness of the allocation so far as the north east ward was concerned, and another Cllr Horgan supported the protest, saying that it was something like ‘jerrymandering’. The chairman said the spirit of the Council’s decision was that the applications should be segregated, and the most deserving picked out in each area. The houses should then be given to the people who required them most. That cases where five or more lived in one room should be selected. Despite the councillors’ interventions the majority of the Council voted for the decision that the houses be allocated in proportion to the number of applications received. The councillor representatives of the different wards were to select the tenants for the houses allocated to those wards.

The culverts of the city are referred to in October 1924. Very little is known on the city’s culverts, many of which in the past straddled river channels of the Lee. Many in time became main streets in the city such s St Patrick’s Street. On the 14 October 1924, Mr Ryan, the Council’s Building Inspector, submitted a report to the City Councillors on the condition of the underground arch under St Patrick Street. He drew the Corporation’s Public Works committee to a number of defects. There was a noticeable increase in the tendency of the arch stone to slip. The side walls forming the abutments of the arch were in a wretched condition; in parts they resembled more a heap of stones loosely tipped from a cart than a wall systematically built. A considerable amount of silt helped to save those side walls from the scouring action of floods, and by its weight to retain them in position. The loose open joints of these walls admitted the free tunnelling of rats to adjoining premises. The continual working of the tide through these walls removed a certain amount of subsoil, and this the architect proposed would eventually lead to a subsidence of the adjoining ground with the drainage connections.

The unbraced concrete foundation of the pavement and the wood blocks above, both of which were atop the foundation over the arch saved it to a great extent. As the high tide level was much higher that the crown of the arch, the tide removed supporting soil. An amount of timbering or bracing had been fixed in the archway. The archway was the main sewer of the city, and received the sewage from all the sewers in the side streets; it’s bed was the old river bed and even if in good condition, it was self cleansing. The city’s tram lines were directly over it in places, and an amount of inconvenience would be experienced by the failure of any part of the arch.

On the subject of a culvert on Sheare Street, the architect noted several defects; “The crown of the arch is close to the surface of the road….The arch is affected by the impact of heavy laden lorry wheels. The arch varies in sectional area, and the change from one section to another is made by direct offsets, which slow down the flow and exposes the masonry to the scouring action of the floods. Where the sectional area of the arch is wide, as in spanning 16 to 20 feet, two lorries can travel abreast, transmitting practically all their weight to the arch”. The architect proposed that the arch be replaced with a new one of smaller span; that arch would be stronger and the weight transmitted to it less and it could have also be possible to obtain a greater depth between the road surface and crown of arch, which would facilitate the laying of gas, water of electric conduits, where they had to cross the arch. The architect concluded with options for replacing the archway with a pre-cast concrete pipe, a small brick sewer or concrete culvert.

To be continued…

Caption:

666a. Grand Parade Culvert, exposed February 2005 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 October 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 31) –Men of Action”

“At the library of the School of Art, last evening, a very interesting presentation took place when the Committee, the staffs of the Cork Technical Schools, and the pupils united in paying tribute to Mr. A.F. Sharman Crawford on his retirement from active participation in the affairs of the committee, of which he had been chairman for a period of 16 years” (Cork Examiner, 19 February, 1926).

As spring unrolled itself in 1926, change was also upon the Crawford Technical Institute as its founder, Arthur Frederick Sharman Crawford, stepped down from the institute’s management committee after 16 years. He was presented with an illuminated address on Roman vellum bound in a hand worked leather cover in a copper casket, jewelled with enamels and decorated with Celtic ornament. The address, which was in Irish and English, and consisted of four pages of illumination, was the work of Mr. John Power, second master of the Cork School of Art. The casquet, which was executed by James Archer, was from a design by Miss Gladys Scott. The Cork arms appeared in painted enamels. The leather cover, by Miss Scott, contained the Crawford arms and motto. Lord Mayor of Cork, James French did the presentation honours and a large number of guests were present, which included the Principal of the Crawford Technical Institute, J.F. King. Mr Crawford in reply, said he was very glad to have a record in years to come; noting that it would be most interesting for future generations. He added that during his 16 years’ association with technical education, speaking was not his forte but he hoped, he had been a man of action more than speech.

Crawford left a strong management committee in charge.  In the Cork Examiner on 17 November 1926, a summary was published of the Department Inspector’s report on the working of the scheme of technical instruction in operation in Cork City during the 1925-26 session. The educational programme was similar to that of preceding years and steady progress was made in the majority of the courses of study. The teaching of physics and chemistry had been maintained for many years at a high level of efficiency; instruction in many branches of mechanical, motor car, and electrical engineering had shown gradual improvement and had reached a “very satisfactory standard”. In view of the growing importance of motor car and electrical engineering, it was hoped that there would still a still further increase in the enrolment in the next session. In workshop practice it was suggested that instruction be given in the general use of machines, such as cutting speeds for different materials, etc. In carpentry and joinery, it was proposed that hand sketches should receive more careful attention so as to give a fair representation of the proportion of parts. In cabinet-making it was advised that apprentices should undergo a good course of manual instruction in wood before attempting cabinet work. In building construction the arrangement of holding all classes simultaneously in one room was unsatisfactory, and was pointed out as needed remedying. The course in domestic economy also showed improvement both in teaching and in the standard of efficiency of the students. A difficulty in the needlework classes for the unemployed was the inability of many of the students to purchase materials, and such students were engaged mainly in mending garments. The shirt-making classes failed to attract students in the trade and needed a review.  

In the same month, on the 10 November 1926, key members involved in technical education in Cork appeared before the Technical Commission of the Irish Free State. Its background dated to 1924 when Technical Instruction was assigned by the Ministers and Secretaries Act to the Minister for Education and shortly afterwards a Commission on Vocational Education was set up. The report of this Commission was the basis of the Vocational Education Act of 1930. The technical commission held 75 nationwide meetings and 129 witnesses were interviewed.

The report by the Cork group presented evidence under the headings of finance, buildings, day technical schools, co-ordination, adult education, art instruction and music. The group comprised W. Ellis, Vice Chairman of Cork County Borough Technical Committee, J.F. King, Principal of the Crawford Institute and D.J. Coakley, Principal of the Municipal School of Commerce. On finance, they noted that the then basis of distribution of the endowment grant was unsatisfactory. Although the population of Cork had increased since the Technical Instruction Act of 1899 came into force, the grant  income was less in 1926 than it was originally due to the fact that the percentage of increase in other boroughs was higher. A fairer basis for distribution was proposed based on the ratio of the population availing of the advantages of technical instruction. They also proposed that the striking of the local rate for Technical Instruction be no longer “permissive” but mandatory and that the limit of 2d. in the pound be abolished as was the case in Northern Ireland. In addition the attendance grants for numbers attending was unsatisfactory and needed changing. All in all in terms of finance, the grant system of funding needed to be reviewed.

To be continued…

Caption:

663a. Advertisement for The Munster Arcade, Cork, March 1926 (source: Cork City Library) 

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 11 October 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 30) –The Fallacies of Education”

“People must once and for all get rid of the fallacy that Ireland is a land of scholars, and also of the idea that scholarship is nothing more that knowing the grammar of one or two languages and the ability to recite a certain number of lines of poetry, or to pass certain examinations. Nor would anything be lost if the too prevalent idea were killed that the sole purpose of education is to qualify for civil service or public jobs. Of course if education generally were directed on more practical lines such an idea could not survive, and students, when they left school, would be more inclined to continue the study of useful branches in their spare time” (Editorial, Cork Examiner, 1 October 1924).

In an editorial in the Cork Examiner on 1 October 1924 on the value of Adult Education, it opened with commenting on the continuing growing interest in adult education in the United States. Indeed America’s National Education Association (NEA) was created in 1870 and had a strong history of the promotion of lifelong learning. The editor of the Cork Examiner argued that in the cities and larger towns of the Irish Free State, it was a regrettable fact that “comparatively little interest was taken, either by the educational authorities or the people in general, in a movement which, outside of Ireland had made great advancement”.  The active interest in education that was there 25 years previously did not exist. The editor further noted; “Anybody has only to pass through the principal street of the city between eight and ten o’clock to see hundreds of young people strolling about who would be much more usefully employed learning the elements of house-keeping, dress-making, gardening, or perhaps, some more literary branches. And besides those who have only left school, there are hundreds-even thousands-whose spare time could be put to better purpose… a large amount of money is expended on education in this country, a portion of which, in the opinion of many, might be more usefully employed in the provision of continuation classes or schools”.

The editorial goes on to describe that some years previously a certain amount of money was expended on nights classes in country towns and rural villages. The curricula under the County schemes were not very extensive, yet some degree of progress was attained, which promised better things as time went on. According to the editor, “the disturbed state of the country killed these classes for a time”, but there was now an opportunity for revival on a large scale.

Certainly at the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, the management committee meetings during 1924 reveal a financial deficit and fall off in numbers attending classes. These problems were common-place across the technical institutes in the country as the Irish Free State tried to move away from civil war and build an economic structure for the country.  It is revealed through a response by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in early July 1924 that the committee did apply for extra funding for its county and city based programmes. Subsequently, the work of the Cork institute was inspected. The Cork committee was successful in attaining a contribution by the Department towards the County schemes of £2,277 16s 1d. The Department regretted that they were unable to sanction any increases in salary other than those in accordance with approved scales and were unable to consider further increases until the funds of the committee were capable of meeting the expenditure involved by such increases. They hoped that through “exercising rigid economy in its administration” and by improved attendances at the classes that the Cork committee may be able to surmount the difficulties. The Department also pointed out that at least twenty hours’ teaching per week was, as a general rule, required of all whole-time teachers, while classes at which the attendance on four successive lessons had fallen below six, had to, unless in special circumstances, be withdrawn from the curriculum.

By October 1924, there were some efforts to increase class attendances and the Cork Committee sat down with several members of the Cork Workers’ Council. The Council was based at the Mechanics’ Hall, Grattan Street and later at Father Mathew Quay. There was a good response from the various unions in the direction of asking as many apprentices as possible to attend technical education classes. Hence the typographical class was able to raise its numbers to 20- a proportion that had never been reached before. However, the full equipment in the class, machinery etc was missing. A number of articles had been robbed from the school a few years previously. It was noted at the committee meeting that it would cost £309 10s 0d to replace the articles removed. There was also a proposal to utilise the services of the Domestic economy staff for short courses during the month of June. The Inspector’s report also noted that the rooms were defective to hold classes and that ventilation was poor in several domestic economy rooms. However, any changes would have had to coincide with structural alterations to the building.

To be continued…

Caption:

662a. Advertisement for Cashes & Co. Cork, October 1924 (source: Cork City Library)