CHAPTER XXVI

BOOK DISTRIBUTION

=397. Branch Libraries.=--Branch libraries are included in this division, because as a general rule they are principally lending libraries with a reading-room attached, and rarely possess reference departments. Every large town extending over a wide area must sooner or later face the question of establishing branch libraries, not only as a convenience to the public, but as a relief to the central library. No rule can be laid down as to the distance which any reader should be from the nearest branch or other library. It is one thing to make a symmetrical plan on paper, showing a central library with a ring of branches situated at regular distances, and so placed as to bring every reader within one, half or quarter of a mile of the nearest library, but it is quite a different matter realizing this ideal. Topographical difficulties arise; the matter of density of population must be considered; and, to crown all, sites or suitable premises cannot always be obtained at, or near, the places selected, as the ideal spots. For these reasons regular spacing can rarely be achieved in the provision of branch libraries.

=398.= A branch library differs from a delivery station in being, to some extent, a miniature central library, carrying its own stock of books, and having its own reading-room accommodation and magazines. A delivery station need not necessarily have a stock of books, beyond those sent in response to applications, and it would have no reading-room whatsoever. Branches and deliveries are often confused, no doubt because both provide for book distribution, but beyond this common feature all resemblance ceases. The question of the amount and kind of accommodation which it is desirable to provide depends entirely upon funds, conditions and requirements. For most situations in which branches are necessary, such as the suburbs of large towns, the minimum provision should include a lending department, and general reading-room for periodicals. Very occasionally a reference department is provided, but few systems will bear the cost of providing more than one such department, and that at the central library; but every branch should have a collection of quick-reference books which answer everyday questions and afford such information as is needed in every library. Such a collection does not necessarily require a separate room, because that requires special oversight, but it is better to place it in a convenient recess of the reading-room or vestibule, where it is under the observation of the staff, and where it is not necessary for the reader to pass through the wickets or other barriers of the lending department in order to make use of it. All kinds of extra features can be added to these provisions, if necessary, but these will depend upon funds; but a lecture room is especially valuable in a branch, as it is usually in an area ill-provided with such accommodation and one in which lectures, exhibitions, etc., can be given most profitably. Modern experience also advocates children’s departments at branches, as the suburbs are the nursery districts of most towns, and therefore the most fruitful opportunities for work with children are afforded in them. Some of the branches at Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Croydon, Coventry, Edinburgh, Bristol, Islington, Lambeth, Sunderland and Fulham are models of what such establishments should be.

=399.= It is impossible to lay down any rules for guidance as regards the financing of branches, beyond the general recommendation that they should never be developed at the expense of the central library. It is better to have one efficient library in a town than several inefficient ones, as is the case in some towns where this wholesome principle has been forgotten or ignored. Librarians are justified in taking a strong stand upon this point against the unreasonable demands of ward committee representatives, who are sometimes bent upon getting everything they can for their own particular district irrespective of the claims of the system as a whole. Separate account should be kept of all moneys expended upon each branch. Receipts should also be separately accounted for, and the central library should receive a daily or weekly statement of all cash intromissions, issues, occurrences, etc. Such statements can either be rendered upon specially ruled sheets or post-cards, or kept in books according to some such form as shown in Fig. 150. All forms, books, etc., at the branch should correspond with those of the central library, and everything affecting administration stated throughout this book applies, though in a modified degree, to branch work.

=400.= In the selection of books for branches the same principles should be applied as previously advocated, namely, the endeavour to get a high average of quality and utility in the literature added and the determination to discard useless books when the time comes. But an effort should be made to vary the contents of branch libraries so as to obtain as catholic and representative a stock as possible. With Fiction, of course, this is not so easy, especially in the case of popular novels by well-known writers, but in other classes this can be done frequently. For instance, if the north branch has So-and-So’s _Chemistry_, there is no reason at all why, all things being equal, the south branch should not have Someotherbody’s _Chemistry_ and the east branch Someone-else’s. Of course it is assumed that these are all text-books of fairly equal merit. As every library should possess a union catalogue showing the whereabouts of every book in the library system, and as borrowers’ tickets should be interchangeable all over the town and not limited to one particular library, this arrangement of different books on similar subjects widely enlarges the borrower’s field of choice. If the central and branch libraries are all interconnected by means of the telephone, as they ought to be, a borrower at the north branch can ascertain if Someotherbody’s _Chemistry_ is available without going himself, and can easily arrange by waiting a day or shorter time to have the book delivered at the nearest branch. At Croydon a system of interchange effected by means of the municipal tramways, which carry parcels of books free, reduces the waiting for a book at another library to about thirty minutes. Such systems of interchange are a great convenience in many cases, and place the entire resources of the library at the command of readers, no matter where they may live.

+-----------------------------------------------------+ | | | LIBERTON PUBLIC LIBRARIES. | | | | NORTH BRANCH.--REPORT. | | | | Date........................ | | | | |A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|J|K|L|| Total. | | Lending Issues . | | | | | | | | | | | || | | Reference Issues . | | | | | | | | | | | || | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++---------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | || | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-++---------+ | | | Receipts from Fines | | | | „ „ Catalogues, etc. | | | | Books asked for | | | | Books wanted from Central | | | | Supplies wanted | | | | Callers and occurrences | | | | Signed.................... | | | +-----------------------------------------------------+

FIG. 150.--Branch Library Return (Section 399).

=401. Delivery Stations.=--A delivery station is a place which may or may not have a small deposit collection of books--generally not--and is meant to supply readers in thinly populated districts and to be the forerunner of an orthodox branch to be established when the district develops. Such stations are usually a post-office, school, police station, or shop, which may be induced to carry out the necessary charging, etc., sometimes at a small remuneration. At the very best a delivery station in a town is but a makeshift substitute for a branch, and, from the borrowers’ point of view, does not afford a very satisfactory or expeditious service. If books which are wanted are not _in_ at the central library, considerable delay and trouble are caused. Borrowers are compelled to make out long lists of the books they desire to read, and as often as not these are all out at the central store. As delivery stations seldom carry a stock of books from which an alternative choice can be made, borrowers are driven to the task of making out new lists or taking anything the delivery attendant can get by telephone, if there is this kind of communication, which is not generally the case; and as delivery stations are frequently managed by any untrained person obtainable, the reader gets very little help in solving real difficulties. Apart from all this, a day must elapse, as a rule, before any book wanted can be obtained, even if it is available, and for these reasons the establishment of book-delivery stations is not advisable save in remote and inaccessible parts of a large town, when every other method of giving a local service has been found impracticable. A highly organized system of delivery stations with frequent motor deliveries might, however, be made effective in scattered suburbs, but although such a system has been suggested, we have no record of a successful British example.

=402. Travelling Libraries.=--Of much greater importance are travelling libraries, which can be made to serve every purpose of delivery stations, with the great additional advantage of furnishing, in part, the same alternative selection of books as a branch library affords. These libraries are much used in the United States, and take the form of boxes of books numbering from fifty upwards, which can be deposited at fixed points in towns and rural districts, where borrowers can attend and make a choice of reading matter. Boxes of books by this plan can be sent to the care of responsible persons in all parts of a town, and these persons can undertake the local delivery and collection of the books, either for a small fee or as voluntary sub-librarians. Various kinds of records are necessary to keep track of the boxes and their contents and where and to whom they travel. Until lately very little of this kind of work had been done either in the United Kingdom or America, although the Americans are gradually developing systems of rural travelling libraries and town “home” libraries. The travelling libraries of the States of New York and Wisconsin form a most interesting study, as also do the “home” libraries of the city of Boston. Lately this matter has been given a considerable impetus through the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, which has established experimental rural library schemes in various parts of the kingdom in connexion with County Councils and, more infrequently, suitable municipal centres. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, the counties of Dorset, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Cumberland and Westmorland have all such schemes in operation or have undertaken them. These have a central deposit library and circulate boxes of books at frequent intervals to the villages and towns in the area, in which the clergy, teachers and others act as honorary sub-librarians. In this way the people who are not at present touched by the public libraries are being brought into the fold. The matter is in the experimental stage, and is jeopardized by the fact that, in England at least, the County Councils have no express powers to provide libraries; but results of the most promising kind have already been obtained, and the day is no doubt at hand when the traditional idea of the function of a public library as a store from which literature is doled out to the people, _if they know what they want_, will be superseded by a very pronounced missionary spirit, and an endeavour to make known in every possible way the value of all kinds of books to all kinds of people.

=403. Subscription Departments or Book Clubs.=--In some of the older municipal libraries subscription departments or book clubs have been established, as a means of increasing the stock of a library, without much expense. Such departments exist at Bolton, Burton, Dewsbury, Dundee, Elgin, Leek, Tynemouth, Wednesbury and Workington. They are operated as follows: For a certain annual subscription any library reader or townsman may join this select library. From the subscriptions so received, supplemented in some places by occasional grants from the rate, new books are bought, generally in accordance with the wishes of a majority of members, but on this point practice varies. For one year these books are at the service of subscribers only, who borrow them in the usual way, for a fortnight or other periods according to circumstances. At the end of the year each book is transferred to the public library, and becomes the property of the library authority for the use of all borrowers. Where the selection is made with discretion, this may seem an economical way of obtaining books for a public library, and there is much to be said in its favour in present circumstances; but objections have been raised. Public libraries, it is argued, have no right to set up a privileged class in this way, especially as it is probable that the subscriptions cannot pay all the cost of service, lighting, housing, etc.; thus a proportion of the cost of maintenance falls on the library funds, and it is doubtful if in the end there is much gain in receiving as a _quid pro quo_ a number of stale and, perhaps, not very judiciously selected books; and, further, public libraries have no right to compete with private and commercial subscription libraries for the sake of ministering to the few people who can afford the luxury of a select public library to themselves.

=404.= Another form of subscription is occasionally indulged in by public libraries. By paying a certain subscription to large commercial libraries, like Mudie’s, they are entitled to borrow so many volumes at a time, and these are re-issued to the borrowers in the ordinary way, the library being responsible for losses. In small libraries this is often an economical way of obtaining the temporary loan of copies of expensive books for which there is a large transient demand, and in this way the people have immediate access to books which might otherwise never be bought, or only obtained in second-hand form long after their interest had faded. The only trouble about this arrangement is that it depends upon the mood of the said commercial libraries for its continuance. To what extent these would endure a constant drain from a hundred or so municipal libraries remains to be seen, as also does the problem of how they would meet the demand when it attained large dimensions. At one time certain of the London commercial libraries absolutely refused to lend books to public libraries on any terms. Now they are more complaisant.

=405. Inter-Library Exchanges.=--This is a method of book distribution which has not been tried to any extent among British municipal libraries, and some organization would be required to place it on a working basis. Briefly, the idea is to enable a public library which has not got a particular book, to borrow it from some library which has, assuming all the responsibility for its safety and due return; and making its own arrangement with its borrower for the cost of carriage. This kind of exchanging could be managed better in London than elsewhere, but it could be applied to any group of libraries, such as those of Lancashire, Wales, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, etc. Each exchanging library would require to possess a complete set of class lists and bulletins, or other catalogues, of all the other libraries, and when a demand was made for a book which was not in its possession, the assistant could look through the catalogues of the other libraries till he found a copy, and it could then be written for, the borrower paying all resulting expenses. Of course, this arrangement would only apply to non-fictional works. There would be an undoubted advantage, too, if such a privilege could be obtained for public library borrowers from some of the older proprietary libraries with huge stocks of practically unused books which municipal libraries would not buy in the ordinary course. Arrangements whereby books from special scientific or other libraries could be borrowed for the use of local borrowers would also be an arrangement, could it be managed, which would benefit a greater number of students and other persons than at present. But, of course, there would be very serious difficulties in the way of inducing the owners of valuable special libraries to lend books for the use of strangers introduced by municipal library authorities. Meanwhile, because of these difficulties thousands upon thousands of valuable and useful books are lying idle and neglected in every part of the country, a waste of power which it is sad to contemplate.

A modification of this idea is the arrangement now made between a few towns whereby readers from the one who are visiting the other, who have been vouched for as being in good standing by their own library, are permitted to borrow books from the library in the town visited. Such an arrangement exists between Brighton and Croydon, Waterloo has a similar scheme, and possibly other places, and these have given much satisfaction. The main difficulty is that few inland libraries can give a full return to libraries in pleasure or health resorts, but perhaps too much emphasis should not be laid upon the necessity for an absolute return of service.

REFERENCE LIST OF AUTHORITIES

=406. Branch Libraries:=

Cole, G. W. Branches and Deliveries. U.S. Educ. Rept., 1892-1893, vol. i., p. 709.

Eastman, L. A. Branch Libraries and Other Distributing Agencies. A.L.A. Man. of Lib. Econ., Preprint of chapter xv., 1911.

Hutchins, F. A. Travelling Libraries, 1902. (A.L.A. Tract, No. 3.)

For articles see Cannons, D 13, Branch Planning; F 1, Methods; L 67, Books; F 2, Delivery Stations; F 4, etc., Travelling Libraries.

DIVISION XII

THE REFERENCE DEPARTMENT