§ 36. Establishment: By majority vote at any election any city, village, town, school district, or other body authorized to levy and collect taxes, or by vote of its common council, or by action of a board of estimate and apportionment, or other proper authority, any city, or by vote of its trustees, any village, may establish and maintain a free public library, with or without branches, either by itself or in connection with any other body authorized to maintain such library. Whenever 25 taxpayers shall so petition the question of providing library facilities shall be voted on at the next election or meeting at which taxes may be voted, provided that due public notice shall have been given of the proposed action. (As amended by laws of 1895, ch. 859, § 5.)

(Establishment of free public library by town, city, or village, general municipal law, § 24.)

§ 37. Subsidies: By similar vote money may be granted toward the support of libraries not owned by the public but maintained for its welfare and free use; provided that such libraries shall be subject to the inspection of the regents and registered by them as maintaining a proper standard, that the regents shall certify what number of the books circulated are of such a character as to merit a grant of public money, and that the amount granted yearly to libraries on the basis of circulation shall not exceed 10 cents for each volume of the circulation thus certified by the regents.

(Laws of 1886, ch. 666, and laws 1887, ch. 313, authorizing local subsidies to libraries, were repealed by the membership corporation law, 1895, ch. 559. This section now contains the only provision of law for subsidies to libraries.

See also ordinance 67.)

§ 38. Taxes: Taxes in addition to those otherwise authorized may be voted by any authority named in § 36 and for any purpose specified in sections 36 and 37, and shall, unless otherwise directed by such vote, be considered as annual appropriations therefor till changed by further vote, and shall be levied and collected yearly, or as directed, as are other general taxes; and all money received from taxes or other sources for such library shall be kept as a separate library fund and expended only under direction of the library trustees on properly authenticated vouchers.

§ 39. Trustees: Such libraries shall be managed by trustees who shall have all the powers of trustees of other educational institutions of the university as defined in this act; provided, unless otherwise specified in the charter, that the number of trustees shall be five; that they shall be elected by the legal voters, except that in cities they shall be appointed by the mayor, with the consent of the common council, from citizens of recognized fitness for such position; that the first trustees determine by lot whose term of office shall expire each year, and that a new trustee shall be elected or appointed annually to serve for five years.

§ 40. Incorporation: Within one month after taking office, the first board of trustees shall apply to the regents for a charter in accordance with the vote establishing the library.

(See also ordinance 7, for property minimum.)

§ 41. Reports: Every library or museum which receives State aid or enjoys any exemption from taxation or other privilege not usually accorded to business corporations shall make the report required by § 25 of this act, and such report shall relieve the institution from making any report now required by statute or charter to be made to the legislature, or to any department, court, or other authority of the State. These reports shall be summarized and transmitted to the legislature by the regents with the annual reports of the State library and State museum. (See also ordinance 19.)

§ 42. Use: Every library established under § 36 of this act shall be forever free to the inhabitants of the locality which establishes it, subject always to rules of the

library trustees, who shall have authority to exclude any person who wilfully violates such rules; and the trustees may, under such conditions as they think expedient. extend the privileges of the library to persons living outside such locality. (As amended by laws of 1895, ch. 859, § 6.)

§ 43. Injuries to property: Whoever intentionally injures, defaces, or destroys any property belonging to or deposited in any incorporated library, reading room, museum, or other educational institution, shall be punished by imprisonment in a State prison for not more than three years, or in a county jail for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than $500, or by both such fine and imprisonment. (To like effect, Penal Code, pp. 647-648.)

§ 44. Detention: Whoever wilfully detains any book, newspaper, magazine, pamphlet, manuscript, or other property belonging to any public or incorporated library, reading room, museum, or other educational institution, for 30 days after notice in writing to return the same, given after the expiration of the time which by the rules of such institution such article or other property may be kept, shall be punished by a fine of not less than one nor more than $25, or by imprisonment in the jail not exceeding six months, and the said notice shall bear on its face a copy of this section.

45. Transfer of libraries: Any corporation, association, school district or combination of districts may, by legal vote duly approved by the regents, transfer the ownership and control of its library, with all its appurtenances, to any public library in the university, and thereafter said public library shall be entitled to receive any money, books, or other property from the State or other sources to which said corporation, association, or district would have been entitled but for such transfer, and the trustees or body making the transfer shall thereafter be relieved of all responsibility pertaining to property thus transferred.

(See also ordinance 68.)

§ 46. Local neglect: If the local authorities of any library supported wholly or in part by State money, fail to provide for the safety and public usefulness of its books, the regents shall in writing notify the trustees of said library what is necessary to meet the State's requirements, and on such notice all its rights to further grants of money or books from the State shall be suspended until the regents certify that the requirements have been met; and if said trustees shall refuse or neglect to comply with such requirements within 60 days after service of such notice, the regents may remove them from office, and thereafter all books and other library property wholly or in part paid for from State money shall be under the full and direct control of the regents who, as shall seem best for public interests, may appoint new trustees to carry on the library, or may store it or distribute its books to other libraries.

§ 47. Loans of books from State: Under such rules as the regents may prescribe, they may lend from the State library, duplicate department, or from books specially given or bought for this purpose, selections of books for a limited time to any public library in this State under visitation of the regents, or to any community not yet having established such library, but which has conformed to the conditions required for such loans.

§ 48. Advice and instruction from State library officers: The trustees or librarian or any citizen interested in any public library in this State shall be entitled to ask from the officers of the State library any needed advice or instruction as to library building, furniture and equipment, government and service, rules for readers, selecting, buying, cataloguing, shelving, lending books, or any other matter pertaining to the establishment, reorganization, or administration of a public library. The regents may provide for giving such advice and instruction either personally or through printed matter and correspondence, either by the State library staff or by a library commission of competent experts appointed by the regents to serve without salary. The regents may, on request, select or buy

books, or furnish' instead of money apportioned, or may make exchanges or loans through the duplicate department of the State library. Such assistance shall be free to residents of this State as far as practicable, but the regents may, in their discretion, charge a proper fee to nonresidents or for assistance of a personal nature or for other reason not properly an expense to the State, but which may be authorized for the accommodation of users of the library.

49. Use of fees and fines: The regents may use receipts from fees, fines, gifts from private sources, or sale of regents' bulletins and similar printed matter, for buying books or for any other proper expenses of carrying on their work.

(By-law 16 requires report to legislature of all receipts and payments.)

§ 50. Apportionment of public library money: Such sum as shall have been appropriated by the legislature as public library money shall be paid annually by the treasurer, on the warrant of the comptroller, from the income of the United States deposit fund, according to an apportionment to be made for the benefit of free libraries by the regents in accordance with their rules and authenticated by their seal; provided that none of this money shall be spent for books except those approved or selected and furnished by the regents; that no locality shall share in the apportionment unless it shall raise and use for the same purpose not less than an equal amount from taxation or other local sources; that for any part of the apportionment not payable directly to the library trustees the regents shall file with the comptroller proper vouchers showing that it has been spent in accordance with law exclusively for books for free libraries or for proper expenses incurred for their benefit; and that books paid for by the State shall be subject to return to the regents whenever the library shall neglect or refuse to conform to the ordinances under which it secured them.

(See also ordinances 37-45 for rules governing these grants.)

§ 51. Abolition: Any library established by public vote or action of school authorities, or under § 36 of this act, may be abolished only by a majority vote at a regular annual election, ratified by a majority vote at the next annual election. If any such library is abolished its property shall be used first to return to the regents, for the benefit of other public libraries in that locality, the equivalent of such sums as it may have received from the State or from other sources as gifts for public use. After such return any remaining property may be used as directed in the vote abolishing the library, but if the entire library property does not exceed in value the amount of such gifts it may be transferred to the regents for public use, and the trustees shall thereupon be freed from further responsibility. No abolition of a public library shall be lawful till the regents grant a certificate that its assets have been properly distributed and its abolition completed in accordance with law. (As amended by laws of 1895, ch. 859, § 7.)

§ 52. Laws repealed: Of the laws enumerated in the schedule hereto annexed that portion specified in the last column is repealed.

§ 53. Saving clause: The repeal of a law or any part of it by this act shall not affect or impair any act done or right accruing, accrued or acquired, or liability, penalty, forfeiture, or punishment incurred prior to such repeal, under or by virtue of any law so repealed, but the same may be asserted, enforced, prosecuted, or inflicted as fully and to the same extent as if such law had not been repealed; and all actions and proceedings, civil or criminal, commenced under or by virtue of the laws so repealed and pending at the time of such repeal, may be prosecuted and defended to final effect in the same manner as they might under the laws then existing, unless it shall be otherwise specially provided by law.

(Similar and other saving clauses, statutory construction law, 1892, § 31-33.) $54. Construction: The provisions of this act, so far as they are substantially the same as those of the laws herein repealed, shall be construed as a continuation

1 So in the original.

of such laws, modified or amended according to the language employed in this act, and not as new enactments. Repeals in this act shall not revive any law repealed by any law hereby repealed, but shall include all laws amendatory of the laws hereby repealed. References in laws not repealed to provisions of law incorporated in this chapter and repealed shall be construed as applying to the provisions so incorporated. Nothing in this act shall be construed to repeal any provision of the criminal or penal code.

§ 55. To take effect: This act shall take effect immediately.

57. Rules, how changed: The rules established by the court of appeals, touching the admission of attorneys and counselors to practice in the courts of record of the State, shall not be changed or amended, except by a majority of the judges of that court. A copy of each amendment to such rules must, within five days after it is adopted, be filed in the office of the secretary of state, who must transmit a printed copy thereof to the clerk of each county, and to the presiding justice of the appellate division of the supreme court, in each judicial department, and also cause the same to be published in the next ensuing volume of the session laws.

LAW STUDENT EXAMINATIONS.

[Rules 5 and 6 of the court of appeals, adopted October 22, 1894; to take effect January 1, 1895.] The university is responsible only for the preliminary general education of law students. The full rules for admission of attorneys to the bar may be obtained of the clerk of the court of appeals, capitol, Albany, N. Y.

Rule 5, § 3. Applicants who are not graduates of a college or university or members of the bar as above described, shall, before entering upon the clerkship or

attendance at a law school herein prescribed, or within one year thereafter, have passed an examination conducted under the authority and in accordance with the ordinances and rules of the University of the State of New York, in English composition, advanced English, first year Latin, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, United States and English history, civics and economics, or in their substantial equivalents as defined by the rules of the university, and shall have filed a certificate of such fact signed by the secretary of the university with the clerk of the court of appeals, whose duty it shall be to return to the person named therein a certified copy of the same showing the date of such filing. The regents may accept as the equivalent of and substitute for the examination in this rule prescribed either, first, a certificate properly authenticated, of having successfully completed a full year's course of study in any college or university; second, a certificate properly authenticated,' of having satisfactorily completed a three years' course of study in any institution registered by the regents as maintaining a satisfactory academic standard; or, third, a regents' diploma. The regents' certificate above

3

The regents count forty weeks as a full academic year. If the candidate has passed successfully in a registered institution all the examinations for a full year's work, the question of actual attendance is not raised.

2 The court and the regents both refuse to recognize as a college or a university an institution which, though taking the name, in reality does work of a lower grade. Colleges of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, business colleges, and all similar professional and technical schools are not registered as colleges. By college is understood an institution which requires for admission four years of academic or high school preparation in addition to the preacademic or grammar school studies, and which gives four full years of college instruction as a condition of graduation. Institutions with courses equivalent to three years of college work are sometimes registered when they require four full years of academic preparation, as are other institutions that admit after three years of preparation but that require a minimum of four years of college work. In all cases the total of academic and college work must be not less than seven years in advance of grammar school studies, or the institution can not be registered as giving a full college course. The court also refuses to recognize as "study in a college," work in an academic or lower department conducted and supervised by a college. To be accepted as an equivalent by the regents the work must be of college grade.

3 Besides the institutions of higher education in the State of New York inspected by the regents, institutions in other States and countries are registered on reliable information that the minimum standard is fully met. If credentials are offered from any institution not yet registered (or rejected as below the registration standard) the necessary investigation will be made as promptly as possible and the candidate notified whether the credentials can be accepted. The frequent changes in organization and standards, and the practical difficulties of recording the grade of work outside regularly organized institutions, have made necessary the rule that candidates instructed by private tutors or in unregistered private schools, however excellent, can not be excused from taking the examinations by presenting certificates similar to those accepted from regularly organized and registered institutions.

"The term "regents' diploma" refers not alone to the classical, English, and academic diplómas which bear that specific name, but to all graduating credentials, whether called certificates or diplomas, which certify from the university to the completion of a full academic course. As some candidates prefer to pass examinations in the higher branches more recently studied rather than in more elementary subjects in which they have become rusty, they are allowed to select from the entire list of over 70 studies in which the regents examine, provided that the total academic counts equal a full course.