IN the days before wireless and television, the reading-room was an important feature in public libraries, as this busy roomful of studious Edwardian readers shows.

They are supervised on the right by a uniformed attendant and a watchful bust of benefactor Andrew Carnegie.

The Keighley reading-room displayed 20 daily and 16 weekly newspapers, 64 weekly magazines, 63 monthlies and two quarterlies, proving so well patronised that “in the evenings it is often difficult to find a vacant chair at the reading desks, and the space round the news stands is fully occupied”.

The diversity of subject is suggested by titles visible in the foreground, covering trade, textiles and phonetics.

Not shown here, the newspaper readers had to stand.

A source of friction was to be obviated in 1928 with “the obliteration of betting news from the papers”.