ENG-1965 — Page 279

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RECREATION

than 700 items including paintings, prints, engravings and photo- graphs. They illustrate the growth and development of Hong Kong, and life in the Colony, Macau and the China Coast area during the 18th and 19th-Centuries. The limited space within the City Hall does not allow for the permanent display of all this material, but exhibitions under different titles and subjects are arranged from time to time.

The Henry Yeung Collection of Chinese Ceramics forms the basis of the Museum's collection of Chinese antiquities. This collection comprises 166 pieces and consists of some fine grave pottery of the Han Dynasty, a series of early bronze mirrors, and outstanding pieces of Ming porcelain. The collection continued to grow throughout the year and a permanent display of early ceramics from Han to Sung Dynasty was mounted during the latter part of the year. To this display has been added loans received from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.

LIBRARIES

Hong Kong's public libraries, with headquarters at the City Hall, now possess a collection of approximately 196,000 items. About 75,000 books, of which one quarter are for children, are housed in the City Hall Library's lending departments, and consist of roughly equal numbers of books in Chinese and English. The lending department also contains a small music collection of about 1,500 items. The reference department at the City Hall houses some 18,000 volumes, together with the nuclei of map and picture collections; again about half the books are in Chinese. The re- maining 73,000 volumes at the City Hall Library are all in Chinese, mostly classics. Although many of these Chinese classics do not yet appear in the Library's catalogues, the work of cataloguing them is going ahead, and they are meanwhile being jacketed with traditional folders and are available on special request. The City Hall Library also possesses the complete National Library of Peking on 8,000 rolls of microfilm and microfilms of The Times from 1900 to 1958.

On 16th August the first branch library was opened in the centre of Kowloon. Like the City Hall Library it provides reading facilities for all ages and tastes. It had an initial stock of 25,000 volumes