Excerpt from Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Public Library, 1888 The total issues from all the libraries for the year were 934, 593, against volumes in 1886. This diminution is partly owing to the temporary closing of the active South Boston and East Boston branches for repairs of the build ings, and to a falling off in Jamaica Plain and Dorchester, while the South and North End branches showed a gratifying increase. Since the opening of these various libraries, now belonging to the City of Boston, or under its charge, there have been distributed to readers 'since 1853, volumes, of which more than one-third were issued from the Lower Hall Library in Boylston street. The use of the reading-rooms for periodicals shows a marked improvement. The 933 magazines and literary weeklies found readers a gain of over from the previous year. Of this aggregate numbers were delivered from the desk of the hall in the Central Library devoted to this purpose. The wear and tear of the library books is specially felt in the collections dedicated to popular use. In the past year books were condemned, either as imperfect or worn out. The books from both halls and from the branches which from excessive circulation required rebinding numbered about volumes. The volumes unrecovered from borrowers in all the libraries were only 49. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.