Never fear criticism of those who find fault with the absence from your library of books that you know to be nearly worthless; their absence will be a silent but eloquent protest against them, sure to be vindicated by the utter oblivion into which they will fall. Many a flaming reputation has been extinguished after dazzling callow admirers for six months, or even less. Do not dread the empty sarcasm, that may grow out of the exclusion of freshly printed trash, that your library is a "back number." To some poor souls every thing that is great and good in the world's literature is a "back number"; and the Bible itself, with its immortal poetry and sublimity, is the oldest back number of all. It is no part of your business as a librarian to cater to the tastes of those who act as if the reading of endless novels of sensation were the chief end of man. As one fed on highly spiced viands and stimulating drinks surely loses the appetite for wholesome and nourishing food, so one who reads only exciting and highly wrought fictions loses the taste for the master-pieces of prose and poetry.
Let not the fear of making many mistakes be a bug-bear in your path. If you are told that your library is too exclusive, reply that it has not means enough to buy all the good books that are wanted, and cannot afford to spend money on bad or even on doubtful ones. If you have excluded any highly-sought-for book on insufficient evidence, never fail to revise the judgment. All that can be expected of any library is approximately just and wise selection, having regard to merit, interest, and moral tone, more than to novelty or popularity.
In the matter of choice, individual opinions are of small value. Never buy a book simply because some reader extols it as very fine, or "splendid," or "perfectly lovely." Such praises are commonly to be distrusted in direct proportion to their extravagance.
A good lesson to libraries is furnished in the experience of the Cleveland (Ohio) Public Library. In 1878, out of 16,000 volumes in that library, no less than 6,000 were novels. The governing board, on the plea of giving people what they wanted, bought nearly all new books of fiction, and went so far, even, as to buy of Pinkerton's Detective stories, fifteen copies each, fifteen of all Mrs. Southworth's novels, etc. But a change took place in the board, and the librarian was permitted to stop the growing flood of worthless fiction, and as fast as the books were worn out, they were replaced by useful reading. It resulted that four years later, with 40,000 volumes in the library, only 7,000 were novels, or less than one-fifth, instead of more than one-third of the whole collection, as formerly. In the same time, the percentage of fiction drawn out was reduced from 69 per cent. of the aggregate books read, to 50 per cent.
Libraries are always complaining that they cannot buy many valuable books from lack of funds. Yet some of them buy a great many that are valueless in spite of this lack. Can any thing be conceived more valueless than a set of Sylvanus Cobb's novels, reprinted to the number of thirty-five to forty, from the New York Ledger? Yet these have been bought for scores of libraries, which could not afford the latest books in science and art, or biography, history, or travel. There are libraries in which the latest books on electricity, or sewerage, or sanitary plumbing, might have saved many lives, but which must go without them, because the money has been squandered on vapid and pernicious literature.
In almost every library, while some branches of knowledge are fairly represented, others are not represented at all. Nearly all present glaring deficiencies, and these are often caused by want of systematic plan in building up the collection. Boards of managers are frequently changed, and the policy of the library with them. All the more important is it that the librarian should be so well equipped with a definite aim, and with knowledge and skill competent to urge that aim consistently, as to preserve some unity of plan.
I need not add that a librarian should be always wide awake to the needs of his library in every direction. It should be taken for granted that its general aim is to include the best books in the whole range of human knowledge. With the vast area of book production before him, he should strengthen every year some department, taking them in order of importance.
Some scholarly writers tell us that very few books are essential to a good education. James Russell Lowell named five, which in his view embraced all the essentials; namely, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Goethe's Faust. Prof. Charles E. Norton of Harvard remarked that this list might even be abridged so as to embrace only Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. I can only regard such exclusiveness as misleading, though conceding the many-sidedness of these great writers. To extend the list is the function of all public libraries, as well as of most of the private ones. Next after the really essential books, that library will be doing its public good service which acquires all the important works that record the history of man. This will include biography, travels and voyages, science, and much besides, as well as history.
Special pains should be taken in every library to have every thing produced in its own town, county, and State. Not only books, but all pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, and even broadsides or circulars, should be sought for and stored up as memorials of the present age, tending in large part rapidly to disappear.
In selecting editions of standard authors, one should always discriminate, so as to secure for the library, if not the best, at least good, clear type, sound, thick paper, and durable binding. Cheap and poor editions wear out quickly, and have to be thrown away for better ones, which wise economy should have selected in the first place. For example, a widely circulated edition of Scott's novels, found in most libraries, has the type so worn and battered by the many large editions printed from the plates, that many letters and words are wanting, thus spoiling not only the pleasure but abridging the profit of the reader in perusing the novels. The same is true of one edition of Cooper. Then there are many cheap reprints of English novels in the Seaside and other libraries which abound in typographical errors. A close examination of a cheap edition of a leading English novelist's works revealed more than 3,000 typographical errors in the one set of books! It would be unpardonable carelessness to buy such books for general reading because they are cheap.
