This plan has since been extended to provide Libraries and News Rooms at Nechells, Small Heath, and Spring Hill, (these three have yet to be built). The small and incommodious Room at Constitution Hill or Northern District, the starting point in 1861 of the Libraries, was superseded by a large and handsome building in July 1883. The cost of these buildings was defrayed from loans borrowed on the system of an annual repayment of loan and interest in one hundred years. The first Reference Library of 16,000 volumes, with the Central Lending Department and News Room, was opened in October, 1866, and an eloquent and original address by the late George Dawson, declared these Libraries open and free for ever, and started them on their course of usefulness. As regards the character of books read, it may be said that by far the largest demand in the Reference Library is for books of practical value in Science and Art, and that the taste for Scientific Works in the Lending Libraries is steadily growing, and the Committee are only too glad to meet the demand. These Free Lending Libraries seem to reach all classes with their elevating and gladdening influence. There are not only books for the student and worker by which they may be helped in the business of life, but there are books for the weary, books of standard music, books for little children, and even books for the blind. The History of the Libraries has been, with one exception, an unbroken record of success, and what a world of happiness and growth twenty-five years of successful Library work means it is very difficult to measure or estimate.