At the beginning of this century, some municipal reference libraries were set up in the larger cities in order to indirectly help the municipal reforms.
There were two of the common characteristics of the libraries. One was the location at the city halls and the other was the task to serve the municipal personnel by assisting their work with librarians who had knowledge both in librarianship and public administration. While many of them were either branches of public libraries or under the control of public library governing boards, some were independent bodies the municipality organizations.
The libraries were regarded something marginal not only by those concerning the municipal administration because there were a few which could provide them with the “real” municipal reference services but also by librarians because they seemed to be ambiguous having both natures of public libraries and special ones. Since they were definitely situated neither in the local govenment administration nor in the librarianship, the municipal reference library movement began to wane as early as in the late 1910's.
In 1960's through 1980's we have found various types of municipal libraries being established which provide local government information services. We can consider them as descendants of municipal reference libraries.
