Part 15

One result of the library extension work described in an earlier chapter is a wider diffusion of the library arts. When the Education Act of 1918 comes into force throughout the land, and the school-child becomes a “young person”; when intellectual training is carried on right through the plastic period of mental development, the opportunity for cultivating the library arts will be laden with profound consequences. If elementary schools and continuation schools then work in due co-ordination with libraries, the new curricula will in large measure comprehend what we desire: instruction in the art of reading and the enjoyment of literature, guidance in the use of scientific and technical books and in the methods of research. Every young person should be shown how to make himself master of the multifarious contents of a library, to acquaint himself with other library resources that are within reach, to become his own bibliographer, map out his reading to the best advantage, and be able to choose books wisely, whether he is buying for his own shelves or making use of the public library.

The vital importance of the library arts to the researcher and to all whose work is among books, pamphlets, or records, needs no expatiation. Mr. Sidney Webb, in lecturing to young librarians some years ago, depicted the infinite pains with which he constructed his own bibliographies of social science. He had to acquire the library arts in the hard school of experience, when manuals of bibliography and guide-books to books were fewer than they are now; and, no doubt, the fine library at the London School of Economics may be regarded as in no small part the result. Modern specialization has extended the field of knowledge so enormously that the finest education is, in a large sense, only elementary--only a preparation of the individual to use human knowledge and exert himself in extending it.

Exact classification is making its way in all directions. The art of classification is not only an invaluable mental discipline, it may be applied with advantage in every province of work and business. It stands for order and method in all sorts of affairs. Though a classification of books is not the same thing as a classification of things, and may depart in many respects from the exactness of logical theory, there is no better way of inculcating the usefulness of system than by illustrating it in a well-classified library, where the reader can find his way from shelf to shelf, and follow the tracks pointed out for him to other book-cases the contents of which are more distantly connected with his subject. Commercial firms have learned the value of systematic filing. Representatives of business corporations and parties of students from schools and colleges visit the Commercial Library at Manchester in order to examine the vertical file and have its principles explained. It is in the research departments of the technical firms that classification, filing, and indexing are pursued to their furthest reaches. It is to be wished that the librarian’s near relations, the publisher and the bookseller, would make more use of system. When the bookshops are arranged on an intelligible plan, there may be less romance in the Charing Cross Road, but it will be better for business. And, though some might think there was more lost than gained in the second-hand shop if “Americana” were shelved according to Dewey and “Book Rarities” placed in their proper decimal order, there is at any rate no sentimental objection to the scientific arrangement of new books. But, with the notable exceptions of two or three large firms of publishers and the university presses, no one seems to think it worth while to issue classified catalogues of new publications. Booksellers and publishers prefer to arrange their wares and compile their catalogues by the sizes of books, by binding, or by prices--by anything except the subject. Both are sadly in need of a course in librarianship. Publishers have declined to take the expert advice of the Library Association, or to learn anything on the materials, printing, format, or even the kinds of books that are wanted. The fact is, their books, their catalogues, and their methods of marketing are adapted to the momentary satisfaction of a public having no acquaintance with the library arts. When we are each our own bibliographer, these perfunctory ways will have to be dropped, or the reader and book-buyer will want to know why.

Classification is the natural basis of indexing, or rather classifying and indexing are complementary to each other, the object being to have everything in its place and to show how it can be found. Every author, every one who uses or dispenses information, every one who keeps so much as a commonplace book, ought to be an efficient indexer; yet ignorance of what constitutes a good index is almost universal. There has been a slight improvement of late in the proportion of books indexed; but the general standard of precision and scientific arrangement is still very low. Apart from inaccuracy, which is a common defect, our methods, in regard to thoroughness and ease of reference, are painfully inferior to American methods; [49]the fact is patent even in some of our big co-operative treatises, which have no excuse for their slovenliness on the score of economy. Yet the public seem to be content. They are used to taking what is offered them, and have never considered what minimum of efficiency in book-production they are entitled to expect. A review here and there makes its protest against a bad or omitted index, or against inadequate or forgotten maps, or illustrations that do not illustrate, and to this may be attributed the slight improvement noticed. Yet the importance of indexing, in all the affairs of life, is so obvious that, apart altogether from its function in books and libraries, it ought to find a place in any well-planned scheme of education.

But the most important and fundamental of the library arts is that of book selection, which is best defined, not as choosing the best books, but as choosing the right, the appropriate books. The student of librarianship is taught literary history so that he may be a safe and discriminating selector of books, and be qualified to see that the library contains the right sort of material. The object of library lectures and reading circles is to direct readers to the right books to read. In her account of a very interesting experiment,[50] Miss Sayle describes how the Hampshire villagers were allowed the casting vote on every book purchased by the simple expedient of eliminating those books that failed to attract readers. The results sound lamentable. Whole sections went under the hammer. Autobiography, Gardening, Lives, Travels, Poetry, are one and all reported “Abolished, owing to lack of readers.” _Waverley_, _Kidnapped_, _Barnaby Rudge_, and Pierre Loti’s _Iceland Fisherman_, were among the classics discarded in one year in order to make room for the works of Mrs. Henry Wood, Miss Worboise, Baroness Orczy, and Gene Stratton Porter. Lamb’s _Tales from Shakespeare_ seldom left the children’s cupboard. Now Miss Sayle is undoubtedly right in extolling the principle of giving her village readers the initiative in the choice of books for their own library, the library they founded and maintain out of their own pockets. But her story is not creditable to those who might, had they gone the right way to work, have guided the tastes of these village readers, so that they would have chosen and enjoyed the very books that had to be discarded. One can hardly imagine a reading circle finding much to discuss in books by the luminaries mentioned as chief favourites; but it is quite as difficult to imagine that a paper or a reading or an intimate talk about Stevenson, Scott, Dickens, and a few of the poets, would have failed in opening many eyes to the charms of the writers abolished. To prescribe what people shall read is impossible; it is foolish to present any public, in town or country, with a well-chosen library, and tell them to take it or leave it. Coercion would be as fruitless as it is impossible. But to leave the choice to the untrained and unguided initiative of the villagers, without some attempt at training and assisting their powers of choice, is hardly less absurd than it would be to let the children in a school decide what lessons they should be taught.

This is the real inwardness of the great fiction question, on which so much wordy argument has been expended. There is no need to deplore the high percentage of fiction that is read; if this is of any literary value, the percentage is so much to the good. The innuendo underlying the Adult Education Committee’s sneer at “unsystematic and recreative reading” betrays an illiberal conception of the cultural value of belles-lettres, of which Meredith said:--

“Light literature is the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the view within us as well as without. The Philistine detests it, because he has no view, out or in. The dry confess they are cut off from the living tree, peeled and sapless, when they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their pleasures in their own likeness--and let them swamp their troughs! They shall not degrade the name of noble fiction.... Shun those who cry out against fiction, and have no taste for elegant writing. Not to have a sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind.”

The question is not whether public libraries ought to provide novels, nor simply whether they should provide only the best novels and reject the bad. The important problem is, how the general reader is to be led to choose and enjoy the best. To spend public funds on the public provision of feeble and enfeebling reading-matter is indefensible. True, there are librarians who defend it: one head of a large system has recently pleaded for fiction of the Charles Garvice and Ethel Dell type, because the charwoman and the overworked housewife find it restful and soothing, and cannot afford to subscribe for it to the circulating library. But public libraries are not a sort of poor relief: their mission is not to provide, even these unhappy folk, with opportunities for mental dissipation; but, the very reverse, to introduce them to higher pleasures. Would apologists for bad novels recommend our public art galleries to adopt similar standards of taste? Or our museums? No doubt, if we turned them into a kind of Madame Tussaud’s or sensation-mongering picture-house, these would be much more popular with a very large and a very important class.

This kind of argument hardly needs confuting: but many committees and librarians have been led astray by the specious doctrine that by giving people the inferior stuff they like they will eventually be led to prefer something better. The present writer, who has devoted years of hard work to shepherding the general reader into the right way of appreciating good fiction, would be the last to deny the humanizing value of the novel and its right to an honourable place in the public library; but he would be the first to deny that to get people to read any kind of novel, or to bring them at any cost into the public library, is a sure way of inducing them to read something better. Than much of the reading done at the expense of the library rate it would be better if no reading were done at all. A kind of mental dram-drinking, it is stupefying to the brain and soul, and thoroughly anti-educational. Homœopathic application of continual doses of the hair of the dog that bit you is a futile mode of treatment. The time has come for saner methods, and the only sane method is to refuse to recognize the stuff as having anything to do with the literature which a public library has to supply. Earlier pages have dealt with the various methods by which the standard of fiction reading can be raised--duplication of the best on shelves to which the reader has free access, descriptive catalogues and readers’ guides, lectures, talks, and reading circles. Our crusading efforts at raising the level of popular taste must be as strenuous as those of a revivalist mission.

Future progress depends on a wide diffusion of the library arts; it depends on the attitude of that much-abused person the general reader. When the general reader uses public libraries wisely and well, and finds them indispensable to a full life, their position will be assured. The largest body of readers will always be composed of this class: the object of education is to turn out intelligent general readers.[51] The Adult Education Committee expressed too narrow a view of the library’s function in the social organism when they insisted on the paramount claims of vocational and non-vocational education, and spoke slightingly of the general reader, the vast multitude who are guilty of “unsystematic and recreative reading.” It is only fair to notice, however, two passages in which the Adult Education Committee did not overlook the claims of the general reader and of imaginative literature:--

“The Lending Department is the main feature in the smaller libraries; it provides such books as are suitable for continuous reading or study and in convenient form. The books cover the whole range of knowledge, physical and metaphysical, ancient and modern, philosophy, religion, sociology, language and literature, science, fine and useful arts, history and travel. The recreative element in reading bulks largely in the statistics of this department. Very much of what is best and most elevating in English literature takes the form of fiction, and selecting this with care and discretion the library gives valuable impulse in the direction of broadening the mental outlook, enlarging the sympathies, and elevating the tastes and feeling of readers. Any estimate of the cultural work of the library which omits the effects, more or less unconscious, of the reading of the best poetical and imaginative literature is gravely incomplete and inadequate.”

“It is clear, however, that local education authorities may neglect the ‘general reader’ in their desire to obtain from the public libraries the maximum of assistance for more serious students. This is a danger which must be guarded against. It is part of the problem of how to retain the freedom and elasticity of the library with the more organized administration of the system of public education. It is with no desire to subordinate the libraries or belittle their importance that we recommend the union of educational and library administration.”[52]

It will not do merely to tolerate this large section of those who use libraries, on condition that its interests are made secondary to the “serious students and trained readers.” This would be fatal to the true purpose of the public library, which should minister to intellectual life in all its fulness. The general reader must be put first, not second. A clear conception of what is best for the general reader will ensure that the interests of education shall not be neglected. It is on the growth of a new consciousness, a new attitude towards the institutions subserving humanism, that we must pin our faith in the great library system of the future.

A FURTHER COURSE OF READING.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES, PAST AND PRESENT.

BOSTWICK, Arthur E. The American Public Library. Appleton. 1910. 8vo. illus.

BROWN, James Duff. A British Library Itinerary, Grafton. 1913. 8vo.

BROWN, James Duff. Manual of Library Economy, ed. by W. C. Berwick Sayers. Grafton. 1920. 8vo. Illus.

GREENWOOD, Thomas. Edward Edwards, the chief pioneer of municipal public libraries. Scott Greenwood. 1902. 8vo.

GREENWOOD, Thomas. Public Libraries: A history of the movement, and a manual for the organisation and management of rate-supported libraries. Cassell. 1894. 8vo. illus.

OGLE, John J. The Free Library: its history and present condition, edited by R. Garnett. Allen. 1897. 8vo. [The Library Series.]

THE LIBRARY QUESTION OF TO-DAY.

ADAMS, Professor W. G. S. A Report on Library Provision and Policy, to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees. Edinburgh. Neill. 1915.

BOSTWICK, Arthur E. Library Essays: papers related to the work of public libraries. New York. H. W. Wilson. 1920. 8vo.

BOSTWICK, Arthur E. A Librarian’s Open Shelf: essays on various subjects. New York. H. W. Wilson. 1920. 8vo.

HARDY, E. A. The Public Library: its place in our educational system. Toronto. William Briggs. 1912. Illus.

LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. The Library Association Record. 8vo. 1899 in progress.

LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. Public Libraries: their present position and future development in national reconstruction. Library Association. 1918. 8vo. Illus.

LIBRARY ASSOCIATION. Year Book for 1921; edited E. C. Kyte. Library Association. 1921. 8vo.

Contains statistics of existing libraries and their work.

MCKILLOP, John. The present position of London Municipal Libraries with suggestions for increasing their efficiency. Reprint from Library Association Record. 1906.

MINISTRY OF RECONSTRUCTION. Adult Education Committee. Third Interim Report. Libraries and Museums. H.M.S. Office. 1919.

MINISTRY OF RECONSTRUCTION. Adult Education Committee. Final Report. H.M. Stationery Office. 1919.

MOREL, Eugene. La Librairie Publique. Paris. A. Colin. 1912.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES ACT, 1919. H.M.S. Office. 1919.

RURAL LIBRARIES.

ANTRIM, Saida B. and Ernest I. The County Library. Ohio, Pioneer Press. 1914. 8vo. Illus.

CARNEGIE UNITED KINGDOM TRUST. Annual Reports. Dec. 1914--Dec. 1920. Edinburgh. Constable. 1921.

SAYLE, A. Village Libraries: a guide to their formation and upkeep. Grant Richards. 1919. 8vo.

WEAVER, Sir Lawrence. Village Clubs and Halls. Newnes. 1920. 8vo. Illus.

TRAINING IN LIBRARIANSHIP.

FRIEDEL, J. H. Training for Librarianship: library work as a career. Lippincott. 1921. 8vo. Illus.

ROSS, James. Technical Training in Librarianship in England and abroad. Reprint from Library Association Record. 1910.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] Samuel Butler: _Erewhon_, XXXV. “The Book of the Machines.”

[48] J. H. Friedel: _Training in Librarianship_, p. 92.

[49] See, _e.g._, the _Cambridge History of English Literature_, and compare it with the _Cambridge History of American Literature_, a model of arrangement, indexing, bibliography, and general editorial work.

[50] A. Sayle, _Village Libraries_.

[51] “Education should be preparation for life. Its purpose is to prepare the immature human being for the life he is to lead when he becomes mature. It is to fit the child for the life he is to live when he shall be no longer a child. That is, to my mind, the purpose of education.” Dr. C. A. Mercier (_The Principles of National Education_, 1917.)

[52] Adult Education Committee: _Third Interim Report_, par. 12.

INDEX

Adams, Prof. W. G. S., on library provision, 136-139

_Administration_, 14, 183-184, 200-210, 221

_Administration of Centralized Library System_, 179

_Adult Education_, 4-6, 98-99, 111, 149, 154, 202-204, 208-209

Adult Education Committee and Board of Education, 200-201

Adult Education Committee and Central Library for Students, 190-191

Adult Education Committee, centralization, 73, 171-2, 175, 194, 197, 198, 202

Adult Education Committee, fiction question, 230-235

Adult Education Committee, _Final Report_, 165-167

Adult Education Committee, on grants, 186-187

Adult Education Committee, on intelligence bureaux, 89-90

Adult Education Committee, on lectures, 111

Adult Education Committee, on reading Rooms, 62

Adult Education Committee, on reconstruction, Preface, 30, 31, 73, 171-172, 175, 194, 197, 198, 202

Adult Education Committee, Technical and Commercial Libraries, 78-80

_Advertising_, 48-49, 103

_Agricultural Libraries_, America, 160-161

Airdrie, adoption of Library Act, 22

America, books for the blind, 94

_America_, children’s libraries, 64, 68, 74, 131

America, Education Authorities a. Library Authorities, 201-202

America, indexing, 227-228

America, inspection of Libraries, 184-186

America, librarianship, 224

America, libraries, 25, 41, 118

America, library schools, 213, 216, 219-220

America, rural libraries, 156-162

America, school and library, 131

America, State Library Commissions, 156, 184-186, 209

America, travelling libraries, 156

American Library Association, 211

_Ancient Libraries_, 11

Andersonian Institute, Glasgow, 8

Antwerp, Institute of Commerce, 77

_Apparatus_, Library, 219

_Apprentice Classes_, America, 220

Archbishop Tenison’s Library, 12

Architecture, library, 219

_Assistants_, 212, 217-219

“Athenæum”, The, 181

Baillie’s Institution, Glasgow, 23

Bath, adoption of Library Act, 22

_Bibliography_, 131, 171, 220, 223, 225

Birkbeck, George, 8

Birkbeck College, 8

Birkenhead Public Library, 22, 64

Birmingham Commercial Library, 80

Birmingham, library rate, 27

Birmingham Public Libraries, reference library, 45, 48, 50

Bishopsgate Institute, reference library, 51

Blackburn, adoption of Library Act, 22

_Blind_, libraries for the, 91-95, 171

Board of Education, 208-209

Board of Education as central authority, 200-201

Bolton Public Library, 21, 80

Book issues, 25, 40, 41

_Book selection_, 34-36, 54, 97, 129-130, 179, 215, 223, 224, 228-235

_Book selection_ for children, 68, 70-72

_Book selection_, periodicals, 57, 59

_Book supply_, 41-43, 70, 105, 142

_Bookbinding_, 42, 180-181

_Bookbinding demonstrations_, 218-219

_Book-box system_, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 146, 149, 164, 165

_Books_, requirements of good, 72, 180-181, 227

Bootle Public Library, lectures, 101

_Borough councils_, 173

_Borrowers’ restrictions_, 40-41

Bradford Commercial Library, 80

_Braille system_, 93

_Branch libraries_, 37

Bright, John, 18, 21

Brighton, Local Act, 1850, 21

Brighton Public Library, 120

Bristol Commercial Library, 80, 81, 86, 85-87

Bristol Public Library, 11, 45, 50, 101

British Museum, 12, 13, 14, 170, 182

British Museum Library, 34, 54, 55, 195

Bromley Public Library, lectures, 101

Brotherton, Joseph, 13-19

Brougham, Lord, 1, 4, 9

Brown, James Duff, 54, 55

Buckinghamshire, village libraries, 135

_Bureaucracy_, dangers of, 7, 208, 222

Burslem, adoption of Library Act, 22

Bury, William, 11

_Business librarians_, courses for, 216

Camberwell Public Library, 22, 101

Cambridge, adoption of Library Act, 22

Canterbury, 16

Canterbury, adoption of Library Act, 22

Cardiff Public Libraries, 22, 45, 50, 89, 101

Cardiganshire Rural Library, 140

Carnegie, Andrew, 23, 25, 77

Carnegie Rural Library Scheme, 31, 139

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, annual report, 140-141, 145-146

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust and Central Library for Students, 145-146, 190

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust and National Library for the Blind, 92-93

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust and rural libraries, 31, 139

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, Scotland, 139-142

Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and training in librarianship, 213

_Catalogues_, 39, 40, 171, 182, 226, 232

_Cataloguing_, 179, 218

_Central clearing house_, 170

Central Library for Students, 111, 170, 177, 188, 190

Central Library for Students, relations with rural libraries, 143, 145, 147

_Central repository_, 139, 141, 142

_Centralization in library system_, 29-30 Rural, 137-138, 161 Urban, 169-210

_Chambers of Commerce_, 85

Chelsea Public Libraries, 51, 101

Cheltenham, adoption of Library Act, 22

Chetham Library, Manchester, 11, 17

_Children_, books for, 129-130

_Children_, library work with, 216, 219

_Children’s Libraries_, 63-74, 205-6

_Children’s Reading room_, 63, 64

_Choice of books_, _See_ Book Selection

Christian Socialists, 10

City and Guilds Institution, 194-195