A Librarian's Open Shelf: Essays on Various Subjects

The vital thing about the house--the thing that differentiates it from other masses of the same materials--is the idea--the plan--that was in the architect's mind while wood and...

If we are to introduce the regime of law among nations as among individuals, our first step must be similarly to shift the incidence of violence. In so doing we may not decrease...

And first, please note that re-reading is the exact repetition of a dual mental experience, so far at least as one of the minds is concerned. It is a replica of mind-contact, un...

In endeavoring to distinguish between self-education and education by others, one meets with considerable difficulty. If a boy reads Mill's "Political Economy'" he is surely edu...

Logical as he was, however, he was in no sense bound by convention. His economics, as has been said, was often unorthodox, and even in his mathematical text-books he occasionall...

This sort of thing is not at all to be wondered at. It has gone on since the dawn of time with college theses, clergymen's sermons, the orations and official papers of statesmen...

The fact that the Elizabethan plays were given against an imaginary back-ground enabled the playwright to disregard the old, hampering unity of place more thoroughly than has ev...

As we have already noted, the material objects distributed by the librarian are valued not for their physical characteristics but for a different reason altogether, the fact tha...

Almost while I have been writing this I have been visited by a delegate from the foundrymen's club--an organization that wants more books on foundry practice and wants them plac...

And now we come to a use of books that is more important--lies more at the root of things--than their use for either information or recreation--their use for inspiration. One ma...

I have always considered pharmacy to be one of the occupations in which malemployment is particularly objectionable. If you read Homer badly it affects no one but yourself. If y...

We may now examine the effects of this tendency toward eclecticism in quite a different field--that of morals. Among the settlers of our country were both Puritans and Cavaliers...

We must remember, however, that by our method of sending out books for home use we are making a great open-shelf of the whole city. While the number of volumes in any one place...

We need not despair of finding ultimately the exact differences in method which, applied in the education of the sexes, will minimise such of the present mental differences as w...

A general collection of books, then, constitutes an important factor in the selective part of an education. Where shall we place this collection? I venture to say that altho eve...

What a result this will have on that woman's reading--on what she does before she writes her paper and on what she goes through after it! If her interest is as vivid as we assum...

The papers here gathered together represent the activities of a librarian in directions outside the boundaries of his professional career, although the influences of it may be d...

An interesting and satisfactory summary. There is, however, another way of looking at it. A well-known scientific man recently expressed to me his conviction that an "American"...

The trouble about this impression is that it is gained without knowledge of the facts. If a majority of the citizens, understanding how much work a modern public library is expe...

Critical judgment is shown by some of the young people. One boy says: "I heard all the other boys saying it was a good library and that the books were better kept than in a majo...

1. Large books printed on a somewhat generous scale and intended to sell at a high price, the size of the type being merely incidental to this plan. These include books of trave...

Another interesting light on the functions of the printed page, and hence of the library, is shown by the recent biological theory that connects the phenomena of heredity with t...

Very few persons would hesitate to admit that the matter that now constitutes the universe is identical in amount with that which constituted it one million years ago, and that...

But although the spirit that collectively animates a group of men cannot be calculated by taking an arithmetical sum, it does depend on that possessed by each individual in the...

These are all trite things to say to churchmen: I have tried, on occasion, to say them to non-churchmen, but they do not seem to respond. There are those who rejoice in their br...