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LIBRARIES
RECREATION
The Urban Council's public libraries at the City Hall, Hong Kong, and at Cambridge Court, Kowloon, provide lending and reference services. Each consists of adult lending, junior and reference sections, a newspapers and periodicals room and students' reading room. The new Aberdeen-Pok Fu Lam Branch Library at Wah Fu estate opened this year provides lending facilities and has adult and junior sections and a students' reading room. All the three libraries offer free library services to residents of Hong Kong. Almost two-thirds of the books are in the Chinese language, and the remainder in English with a small collection in French, Spanish and German.
The microfilm collection of 2,710 reels contain rare books in the National Library, Peking, and back-numbers of selected early English and Chinese newspapers of Hong Kong and South China.
In addition to the 506 seats in the study sections of the City Hall, Cambridge Court and the Aberdeen-Pok Fu Lam Libraries, an independent Students' Study Room with 300 seats has been provided this year at the newly opened Kowloon Park as a pilot scheme.
Progress has continued in the expansion of public library service, including the preparation of new branch libraries and the provision of more reading material and extension activities in the form of book exhibitions, children's story-hours and organised school visits. The expansion of public library services to the New Territories has also been under preliminary consideration in order to meet the growing demand from residents there.
THE BRITISH COUNCIL
The British Council continued to make its contribution to the educational and cultural activities of the Colony during the year.
Its two libraries, at Gloucester Building in Central district, and at Star House in Kowloon, provided their 8,000 members, mainly students, with a selection of some 30,000 English books, mostly educational. Its reading rooms also made 216 periodicals available to readers as well as providing a quiet place to study for the many