A Book for All Readers Part 12

How far the librarian should place himself in direct communication with readers, must depend largely upon the extent of the library, the labor required in managing its various departments, the amount and value of a.s.sistance at his command, and upon various other circ.u.mstances, depending upon the different conditions with different librarians. But it may be laid down as a safe general rule, that the librarian should hold himself perpetually as a public servant, ready and anxious to answer in some way, all inquiries that may come to him. Thus, and thus only, can he make himself, and the collection of books under his charge, useful in the highest degree to the public. He will not indeed, in any extensive library, find it convenient, or even possible, to answer all inquiries in person; but he should always be ready to enable his a.s.sistants to answer them, by his superior knowledge as to the best sources of information, whenever they fail to trace out what is wanted. In any small library, he should be always accessible, at or near the place where people are accustomed to have their wants for books or information supplied: and the public resorting to the library will thus come not only to rely upon him for aid in their intellectual researches, but to appreciate and respect him for the wide extent of his knowledge, and to consider him, in time, an indispensable guide, if not leader, in the community. His reputation, in fact, will depend upon the extent to which he has been able to help others, as well as upon the number of people whom he has thus aided.

In a very high sense, the true librarian is an educator; his school is as large as the town in which his library is situated. Very few people in that town know what he is always presumed to know,--namely--to what books to go to get answers to the questions they want answered. In supplying continually the means of answering these countless questions, the library becomes actually a popular university, in which the librarian is the professor, the tuition is free, and the course is optional, both as to study and as to time.

Most persons who come to make any investigation in a public library require a good deal of a.s.sistance. For example, a reader is in need of the latest information as to the amount of steel and iron made in this country, and what State produces these important manufactures. He has not the faintest idea where to look for the information, except that it may be in the census, but the census is nine years old, and he wants recent facts. It is vain to turn him over to the cyclopaedias, for there is not one whose information upon such statistics comes anywhere near up to date. You have to put before him a pamphlet annual, published by the American Iron and Steel a.s.sociation, which contains exactly what he wants; and no other source of information does contain it.

Another inquirer seeks to know how to treat some disease. In such cases, of course, the librarian should not go farther than to put before the reader a work on domestic medicine, for it is not his function to deal in recommendations of this, that, or the other method of treatment, any more than it is to give legal opinions, if asked--although he may have studied law. So, if the reader wants to know about the religious tenets of the Presbyterians, or the Mormons, or the Buddhists, or the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and asks the librarian's opinion about any controverted question of belief, he is to be answered only by the statement that the library is there to supply information, not opinions, and then pointed to the religious cyclopaedias, which give full summaries of all the sects.

He may frequently be asked for information on a subject which he knows nothing about; and I have heard a librarian declare, that he often found himself able to give fuller and better information on a subject of which he was previously ignorant, than upon one he had long been familiar with.

The reason was that in the one case he had freshly looked up all the authorities, and put them before the reader, while in the other, giving the references from a memory, more or less imperfect, he had overlooked some of the most important means of information.

The constant exercise of the habit of supplying helps to readers is a splendid intellectual school for the librarian himself. Through it, his memory is quickened and consequently improved, (as every faculty is by use) his habits of mental cla.s.sification and a.n.a.lysis are formed or strengthened, and his mind is kept on the alert to utilize the whole a.r.s.enal of the knowledge he has already acquired, or to acquire new knowledge.

Another very important benefit derived by the librarian from his constantly recurring attention to the calls of readers for aid, is the suggestion thereby furnished of the deficiencies in the collection in his charge. This will be a continual reminder to him, of what he most needs, namely, how to equip the library with the best and most recent sources of information in every field of inquiry. Whether the library be a large or a small one, its deficiencies in some directions are sure to be very considerable: and these gaps are more conspicuously revealed in trying to supply readers with the means of making what may be termed an exhaustive research upon a given subject, than in any other way. You find, for example, in looking up your authorities in what has come to be called Egyptology, that while you have Wilkinson's Ancient Egypt, and Lane's Modern Egyptians, both of which are very valuable works, you have not the more modern books of Brugsch-Bey, or of A. H. Sayce, or of Maspero. You may also find out, by mingling freely with a good part of the readers, what subjects are most frequently looked into or inquired about, and you can thus secure valuable information as to the directions in which the library most needs strengthening. Thus, in a community largely made up of people connected with manufacturing interests, the inquiries are liable to be much concerned with the mechanic arts; and you would therefore naturally seek to acquire a liberal selection of the best and latest works in technical science, or the useful arts. If you have, on the other hand, very few inquiries, indeed, for theological works, you take it as some evidence that that department of the collection needs little enlargement, and you may devote your funds in other directions. Then too, the great value of popularising the library by the hearty interest shown by the librarian in the wants of the people can hardly be over-rated.

This interest, being a perennial one, and continued through a series of years, the number of citizens and their families a.s.sisted will be constantly on the increase, and the public opinion of the town will come in time, to regard the library as a great popular necessity. Hence, if it is an inst.i.tution supported in whole or in part by town or munic.i.p.al funds, its claims to liberal consideration will be immeasurably strengthened. If an enlargement of room for the books, or even a new library building comes to be needed, its chances for securing the funds requisite will be excellent. If a more liberal supply of new books, or an extended range of older ones of great value is reported by the librarian as wanted to increase the usefulness of the library, the authorities will more cheerfully consider the claim. And if it is proposed that additional and competent a.s.sistance shall be given to the librarian, or that he should be more liberally compensated for his highly useful and important labors, that, too, may be accomplished--especially if it has come to be recognized that by his wide knowledge, and skilful management, and helpful devotion to the service of the reading public, he has rendered himself indispensable.

In the supply of information desired by readers, it is better to leave them to their own search, once you have put before them the proper authorities, than to spend your time in turning for them to the volume and page. This, for two reasons--first, it leaves your own time free to help other readers, or to attend to the ever-waiting library work; and, secondly, it induces habits of research and self-help on the part of the reader. It is enough for the librarian to act as an intelligent guide-post, to point the way; to travel the road is the business of the reader himself. Therefore, let the visitor in quest of a quotation, look it out in the index of the volumes you put before him. If he fails to find it, it will then be time for you to intervene, and lend the aid of your more practiced eye, and superior knowledge of how to search; or else, let the reader look for it in some more copious anthology, which you may put before him. There are mult.i.tudes of inquiries for the authors of poems, which are in no sense "familiar quotations," nor even select quotations, but which are merely common-place sentiments expressed in language quite unpoetic,--and not the work of any notable writer at all.

They are either the production of some utterly obscure author of a volume of verse, quite unknown to fame, or, still more probably, the half-remembered verses of some anonymous contributor to the poet's corner of the newspaper or magazine. In such cases, where you see no poetic beauty or imaginative power in the lines, it is well to inform the inquirer at once that you do not think them the production of any noted writer, and thus end the fruitless search for memorizing what is not at all memorable. What may strike uncultivated readers as beautiful, may be set down as trash, by a mind that has been fed upon the masterpieces of poetry. Not that the librarian is to a.s.sume the air of an oracle or a censor, (something to be in all circ.u.mstances avoided) or to p.r.o.nounce positive judgment upon what is submitted: he should inform any admiring reader of a pa.s.sage not referred to in any of the anthologies, and not possessing apparent poetic merit, that he believes the author is unknown to fame. That should be sufficient for any reasonably disposed reader, who, after search duly completed, will go away answered, if not satisfied.

I gave some instances of the singular variety of questions asked of a librarian. Let me add one, reported by Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London Library, as asked of him by William M. Thackeray. The distinguished author of Esmond and The Virginians wanted a book that would tell of General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. "I don't want to know about his battles", said the novelist. "I can get all that from the histories. I want something that will tell me the color of the breeches he wore."

After due search, the librarian was obliged to confess that there was no such book.

A librarian is likely to be constantly in a position to aid the uninformed reader how to use the books of reference which every public library contains. The young person who is new to the habit of investigation, or the adult who has never learned the method of finding things, needs to be shown how to use even so simple a thing as an index.

Do not be impatient with his ignorance, although you may find him fumbling over the pages in the body of the book in vain, to find what you, with your acquired knowledge of indexes and their use, can find in half a minute or less. Practice alone can make one perfect in the art of search and speedy finding. The tyro who tries your patience this year, will very likely become an expert reader the next. Wide as is the domain of ignorance, there are few among those intelligent enough to resort to a library at all, who cannot learn. You will find some who come to the library so unskilled, that they will turn over the leaves even of an index, in a blind, hap-hazard way, evidently at a loss how to use it.

These must be instructed first, that the index is arranged just like a dictionary, in the alphabetical order of the names or subjects treated, and secondly, that after finding the word they seek in it, they must turn to the page indicated by the figure attached to that word. This is the very primer of learning in the use of a library, but the library in any town, used as it is by many boys and girls of all ages, has to be a primary school for beginners, as well as a university for advanced students. Despise not the day of small things, however you may find it more agreeable to be occupied with great ones.

On the other hand, you will find at the other extreme of intelligence, among your clientage of readers, those who are completely familiar with books and their uses. There are some readers frequenting public libraries, who not only do not need a.s.sistance themselves, but who are fully competent to instruct the librarian. In meeting the calls of such skilled readers, who always know what they require, it is never good policy to obtrude advice or suggestion, but simply to supply what they call for. You will readily recognize and discriminate such experts from the ma.s.s of readers, if you have good discernment. Sometimes they are quite as sensitive as they are intelligent, and it may annoy them to have offered them books they do not want, in the absence of what they require.

An officious, or super-serviceable librarian or a.s.sistant, may sometimes prejudice such a reader by proffering help which he does not want, instead of waiting for his own call or occasion.

Let us look at a few examples of the numerous calls at a popular library.

For example, a reader asks to see a book, giving an account of the marriage of the Adriatic. You know that this concerns the history of Venice and its Doges, and you turn to various books on Venice, and its history, until you find a description of the strange festival. It may be, and probably is the case, that the books, like most descriptive works and narratives of travellers, are without index. This is a disability in the use of books which you must continually encounter, since mult.i.tudes of volumes, old and new, are sent out without a vestige of an index to their contents. Some writers have urged that a law should be made refusing copyright to the author of any book who failed to provide it with an index; a requirement highly desirable, but also highly impracticable. Yet you will find in most books, a division of the contents into chapters, and in the beginning of the volume a table of the contents of each chapter, giving its leading topics. This is a subst.i.tute for an index, although (not being arranged in alphabetical order) it is far less useful than that time-saving aid to research. But you have to learn to take advantage of even poor and inferior helps, when you cannot have the best, (as a poor guide is better than no guide at all, unless it misguides,) and so you run your eye quickly through the table of contents to find what you seek. In the case supposed, of the ceremony at Venice, you will be aided in the search by having in mind that the catch-words involved are "Adriatic," and "Doge," and as these begin with capital letters, which stand out, as it were, from the monotonous "lower case" type (as printers call all the letters that are not capitals) your search will be much abridged by omitting to read through all the sentences of your table of contents, and seizing only the pa.s.sage or pa.s.sages where "Doge," or "Adriatic," may occur.

This remark will apply as well to numerous other searches which you will have to make in books. The table of contents will commonly take note of all the more salient topics that are treated in the book, whether of persons, of places, of notable scenes, historic events, etc., and so will aid you in finding what you seek. In the last resort only, in the books whose table of contents fails you, will you have to turn the leaves page by page, which, while not equivalent to reading the book through, is a time-consuming business.

Of course no librarian can devote hours of his precious time to searches in such detail for readers. They are to be supplied with the books likely to contain what they are in search of, and left to seek it in their own way, with such hints and cautions as to saving time by taking the shortest road, as the experience of the librarian enables him to supply.

The suggestions here given are not needed by scholarly readers, but are the fruits of long experience in searching books for what they contain.

Again, let us take the case of a call by a reader who happens to be a decorative painter, for patterns which may furnish him hints in finis.h.i.+ng an interior of a house. Of course he wants color--that is, not theory only, but ill.u.s.tration, or practical examples. So you put before him Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament, or Racinet's _L'Ornement polychrome_, both ill.u.s.trated with many beautiful designs in color, which he is delighted to find.

Another reader is anxious to see a picture of "St. George and the Dragon." If you have the "Museum of Painting and Sculpture," in 17 volumes, or Champlin's "Cyclopaedia of Painters and Painting," a dictionary of art in four volumes, you find it in either work, in the alphabet, under "St. George," and his want is satisfied.

A youngster wants to know how to build a boat, and you find him Folkard on Boats, or Frazar's Sail-boats, which describe and figure various styles of water-craft.

Perhaps an inquisitive reader wants to find out all about the families of the various languages, and what is known of their origin, and you supply him with W. D. Whitney's "Life and Growth of Language," or Max Muller's "Science of Language," either of which furnishes full information.

Another inquirer seeks for information about the aggregate debts of nations. You give him the great quarto volume of the last Census on Wealth and Indebtedness, or for still later information the Statesman's Year Book for 1899, or the Almanach de Gotha for the current year, both of which contain the comparative debts of nations at the latest dates.

The inquirer who seeks to know the rates of wages paid for all kinds of labor in a series of several years, can be supplied with the elaborate Report on Labor and Wages for fifty-two years, published by the U. S.

Government in 1893, in four volumes.

Another reader wishes, we will suppose, to hunt up the drawings of all patents that have been issued on type-writers, and type-writing inventions. You put before him the many indexes to the Patent Specifications and Patent Office Gazette; he makes out from these his list of volumes wanted, which are at once supplied, and he falls to work on his long, but to him interesting job.

A reader who has seen in the library or elsewhere a book he would much like to own, but cannot find a copy in town, wants to know what it will cost: you turn to your American or foreign catalogue, covering the year of publication, and give him not only the price, but the publisher's name from whom he can order it, and he goes on his way rejoicing.

An artist engaged upon a painting in which he wishes to introduce a deer, or a group of rabbits, or an American eagle, or a peac.o.c.k, asks for an accurate picture of the bird or animal wanted. You put before him J. S.

Kingsley's Riverside Natural History, in six volumes, and his desire is satisfied.

In dealing with books of reference, there will often be found very important discrepancies of statement, different works giving different dates, for example, for the same event in history or biography.

Next to a bible and a dictionary of language, there is no book, perhaps, more common than a biographical dictionary. Our interest in our fellow-men is perennial; and we seek to know not only their characteristics, and the distinguis.h.i.+ng events of their lives, but also the time of their birth into the world and their exit from it. This is a species of statistics upon which one naturally expects certainty, since no person eminent enough to be recorded at all is likely to have the epoch of his death, at least, unremarked. Yet the seeker after exact information in the biographical dictionaries will find, if he extends his quest among various authorities, that he is afloat on a sea of uncertainties. Not only can he not find out the date of decease of some famous navigators, like Sir John Franklin and La Perouse, who sailed into unexplored regions of the globe, and were never heard of more, but the men who died at home, in the midst of friends and families, are frequently recorded as deceased at dates so discrepant that no ingenuity can reconcile them.

In Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, Sir Henry Havelock was said to have died November 25th, 1857, while Maunder's Treasury of Biography gives November 21st, the London Almanac, November 27th, and the Life of Havelock, by his brother-in-law, November 24th. Here are four distinct dates of death given, by authorities apparently equally accredited, to a celebrated general, who died within forty years of our own time. Of the death of the notorious Robespierre, guillotined in 1794, we find in Chalmers'

Biographical Dictionary that he died July 10th, in Rees's Cyclopaedia, July 28th, and in Alison's History of Europe, July 29th. Doubtless it is some comfort to reflect, in view of his many crimes, that the b.l.o.o.d.y tyrant of the Jacobins is really dead, irrespective of the date, about which biographers may dispute. Of the English mechanician Joseph Bramah, inventor of the Bramah lock, we learn from the English Cyclopaedia, that he died in 1814, and from Rose's Biographical Dictionary, that he died in 1815.

Now, although a large share of the errors and discrepancies that abound in biographical dictionaries and other books of reference may be accounted for by misprints, others by reckoning old style instead of new, and many more by carelessness of writers and transcribers, it is plain that all the variations cannot be thus accounted for. Nothing is more common in printing offices than to find a figure 6 inverted serving as a 9, a 5 for a 3, or a 3 for an 8, while 8, 9, and O, are frequently interchanged. In such cases, a keen-eyed proof-reader may not always be present to prevent the falsification of history; and it is a fact, not sufficiently recognized, that to the untiring vigilance, intelligence, and hard, conscientious labors of proof-readers, the world owes a deeper debt of grat.i.tude than it does to many a famous maker of books. It is easy enough to make books, Heaven knows, but to make them correct, "_Hic labor, hoc opus est_."

A high authority in encyclopaedical lore tells us that the best accredited authorities are at odds with regard to the birth or death of individuals in the enormous ratio of from twenty to twenty-five per cent.

of the whole number in the biographical dictionaries. The Portuguese poet Camoens is said by some authorities to have been born in 1517, and by others in 1525; a discrepancy of eight years. Chateaubriand is declared by the English Cyclopaedia to have been born September 4th, 1768; September 14th, 1768, by the Nouvelle Biographie generale of Dr. Hoefer; and September 4th, 1769, by the Conversations-Lexicon. Of course it is clear that all these authorities cannot be right; but which of the three is so, is matter of extreme doubt, leaving the student of facts perplexed and uncertain at the very point where certainty is not only most important, but most confidently expected.

Of another kind are the errors that sometimes creep into works of reference of high credit, by accepting too confidently statements publicly made. In one edition of the Dictionary of Congress a certain honorable member from Pennsylvania, in uncommonly robust health, was astonished to find himself recorded as having died of the National Hotel disease, contracted at Was.h.i.+ngton in 1856. In this case, the editor of the work was a victim of too much confidence in the newspapers. In the Congressional Directory, where brief biographies of Congressmen are given, one distinguished member was printed as having been elected to Congress at a time which, taken in connection with his birth-date in the same paragraph, made him precisely one year old when he took his seat in Congress.

Even in reporting the contents of public and private libraries, exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to contain about 120,000 volumes. But an actual enumeration when the books were lodged in the King's library at the British Museum, where they have ever since remained, showed that there were only 65,250 volumes, being but little more than half the reported number. Many libraries, public and private, are equally over-estimated. It is so much easier to guess than to count, and the stern test of arithmetic is too seldom applied, notwithstanding the fact that 100,000 volumes can easily be counted in a day by a single person, and so on in the same proportion. Here, as in the statistics of population, the same proverb holds good, that the unknown is always the magnificent, and on the surface of the globe we inhabit, the unexplored country is always the most marvellous, since the world began.

These discrepancies in authorities, and exaggerations of writers, are not referred to for the purpose of casting doubt upon all published history, but only to point out that we cannot trust implicitly to what we find in books. Bearing in mind always, that accuracy is perhaps the rarest of human qualities, we should hold our judgment in reserve upon controverted statements, trusting no writer implicitly, unless sustained by original authorities. When asked to recommend the best book upon any subject, do not too confidently a.s.sert the merits of the one you may think the best, but say simply that it is well accredited, or very popular. It is not always safe to recommend books, and the librarian does well to speak with proper reservations as to most of them, and to recommend only what are well known to him to be good, by his own intimate acquaintance with them, or, which is the surest test of all, by the verdicts of critical reviews, or by the constant reprinting of them in many successive years.

It was the well-nigh unanimous report at a Conference of American librarians, upon the subject of "aids to readers", that "nothing can take the place of an intelligent and obliging a.s.sistant at the desk." This was after a thorough canva.s.s of the relative merits of the various reference books and helps to readers in book form. Not only the casual reader, and the reader with a purpose may be constantly aided by the librarian's knowledge, and larger experience in the art of finding things, but teachers in the schools, clergymen preparing discourses, and every one seeking to know anything, should find the librarian a living catalogue.

There is nothing so effective in the world as individual effort.

CHAPTER 11.

ACCESS TO LIBRARY SHELVES.

The matter of free or unrestricted access to the books on the shelves is a vexed question in libraries. Open and unprotected shelves, either in alcoves or the main reading room, while they appear to be a boon to readers, who can thus browse at will through the literary pastures, and turn over volumes at their pleasure, furnish by no means good security for the books. Some of the smaller public libraries protect their books from access by gla.s.s doors in front of the shelves, which form also a partial protection against dust. Others again, use wire screen doors, opened, like the others, by lock and key when books are wanted. Both of these arrangements give to readers the advantage of reading the t.i.tles on the backs of most of the books in the library, while protecting them from being handled, disarranged, or removed. But they are also open to the objection that they obstruct the prompt service of the books, by just the amount of time it takes to open the doors or screens, and close them again. This trouble and delay may overbalance the supposed advantages.

Certainly they must do so in all large libraries, where the frequentation is great, and where every moment's delay in the book service works disadvantage to numerous readers. While private libraries, or quite small public ones, can indulge in the luxury of gla.s.s cases, no extensive collection can be managed with the requisite prompt.i.tude under their obstructions.

But how to avoid the indiscriminate and usually careless handling of the books on shelves, by the people frequenting the library, and still extend to readers prompt and full service of all the books they wish to consult on any subject, is a problem. In a few of the great libraries, where that modern improvement, the stack system, prevails, the difficulty is solved by the storing of the books in the outside repositories, or iron book-stacks to which readers are not admitted. In this case the reading room is only for books in use by those frequenting it, or is supplied with a selection of reference books simply, the stacks being drawn upon for all the rest. This of course secures the books both from misplacement and from pillage.

In smaller libraries which have no stack system (and this includes by far the greater number) a variety of treatment prevails. Most of them are unprovided with any effective means of guarding the books on the shelves from handling. The result is great insecurity, and inevitable misplacement of books, amounting often to confusion and chaos on the shelves, unless corrected by much daily re-arrangement by the librarian or a.s.sistants. This consumes much valuable time, which ought to be devoted to other pressing duties.

One remedy is to guard the shelves by a railing of some kind, which cannot be pa.s.sed, except at the gates or pa.s.sage-ways provided for the attendants. This simple provision will protect the orderly arrangement as well as the safety of the library--two objects both of cardinal importance. Absolutely free access to all the shelves means, sooner or later, loss to the library. And the books most certain to be taken or mutilated are those which it is costly, or difficult, or in some cases, impossible to replace. The chances of abstracting engravings from books are much greater in the shadow of the shelves, than in the open reading-room, under the eyes of many. In any library but the smaller ones, the difficulties and dangers of unrestricted handling of all the books by the public will be developed in the direct ratio of the size of the library. Nor will it do to admit one cla.s.s of readers to the shelves, and exclude others. It often happens that persons claiming to have special literary or scientific objects, and who profess that they cannot get along at all by having books brought to them, are favored in their wish to go to the shelves, while others are disfavored. This raises at once the just complaint that invidious distinctions are made. The only safe rule to follow is that of universal free access, or impartial and uniform exclusion from the shelves. In the latter case, no one can complain, especially when made aware that he can have all the works on a given subject brought to his seat in a brief time, and can work upon them to much greater comfort and advantage, seated where there is good light and ample room, than if standing up in the shadow of the shelves to pursue his researches.

It is also to be considered that such disarrangement of books as inevitably follows free admission to the shelves deprives the very persons who claim this privilege, of finding what they seek, until a complete replacement takes place, throughout the library, and this is necessarily a work of time. That it involves much more time and consequent delay than is occasioned by the re-shelving of books used in a day, is apparent when we consider that in the latter case, only the number of volumes actually withdrawn from shelves by the library attendants have to be replaced, and that these are in conveniently a.s.sorted piles all ready to go to their respective shelves; while in the other case, the displacement is made by many hands, most of them careless of any convenience but their own, and moreover, the disarranged books are, or are liable to be, scattered on the wrong shelves, thus throwing the entire library into disorder, requiring great pains, knowledge, and time to repair.

In any well-regulated library, the absence of any book from its place can almost always be accounted for. Thus it is either--1. In the reading room, in use; or 2. Charged out to a borrower; or 3. Sent to the binder for rebinding, or repair; or 4. Reserved for some reader's use; or 5. In temporary use by a cataloguer, or some other library a.s.sistant; or 6.

Among the books not yet re-shelved from recent use.