Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

The second grade of expert aid is that which pronounces on concrete cases, which decides whether a given book (either from inspection of the mere title or of the volume itself) is suitable for the library. This kind of aid is not difficult to obtain, and there are persons in almost every place qualified in some degree to give it. It requires, however, a preliminary selection and generally the obtaining of books on approval, which is easier in a large place than a small one.

The library is only one of various institutions that must use expert aid of this kind. The same limitations apply to all. Take, for instance, the work of reference, the cyclopedia, we will say. Its editor cannot write of his own knowledge the articles on Venezuela, and open-hearth steel, and Plato. He must rely on the information, direct or secondhand, of experts. But he cannot allow his experts to write his cyclopedia. Some cyclopedias are written very nearly in that way, and they are not the best. The expert must be coached before he does his work and the work must be edited when finished. It is on the proper combination of expert and editorial work that the value of the finished volumes will depend. So it is with library selection. The librarian is the editor of a big cyclopedia of thousands of volumes. He must have expert aid in selection, but he must not allow his experts to select the library uncontrolled. They must be instructed beforehand, and their advice must be carefully considered after it has been given. It must, in short, be edited. This brings us to the consideration that we have ultimately to face in discussing any phase of human activity—the question of personality. If the librarian and the book committee are incompetent and believe themselves to be competent—then the collection, in spite of all efforts, will reflect their faults—it will be intolerant, or trivial or ill-balanced.

Much, therefore, depends upon the actual book selector for the library. Should this be the librarian, or a committee of the trustees, or the board itself, or an advisory committee of outsiders? Probably the best results are obtained through a preliminary selection made by the librarian with the aid of lists and the advice of individual experts—not committees—as suggested above, and then submitted to some person or committee representing the Board of trustees. This places the final responsibility where it belongs—on the trustees; but with a satisfactory librarian, the duties of the reviewing committee would consist chiefly of deciding on matters of policy—rarely of considering individual titles. It would decide, for instance, on how closely fiction is to be censored, on how far the library is to go in the purchase of recent fiction, on the extent to which foreign languages are to be recognized, on the purchase and duplication of text-books, on the policy of the library with regard to denominational religious works or of controversial books generally—and so on.

Going back for a moment to the question of experts, probably the most difficult advice to procure, with any degree of satisfaction, is regarding fiction, whether in English or in foreign languages. It has been said that one may approve a book simply on the author’s name, or even on that of the publisher, and this is still true in isolated cases, but in these days, when both author and publisher are continually trying experiments, continually varying standards and style, each book must be dealt with individually. I do not see how one can decide whether a given novel should or should not be bought for a library without reading it through from cover to cover or hearing a report from someone who has so read it and who understands the wants and limitations of the American public library. This is a line, it seems to me, along which great improvement in our selection is possible; but I confess I do not see my way to an immediate solution of the problem. Possibly this is a good opportunity to say a word for a method of testing the adequacy of one’s collection which has scarcely been used as it deserves. One of the most difficult things for a librarian to ascertain is whether his collection is properly distributed among the different classes, and by this I mean, as before, distributed in accordance with the legitimate requirements of the community. It is not possible to find by a statistical method exactly what people need, but it is possible to find out what they want, as indicated by the kind of books that they read. The statistical record of this will be found in the class percentages of circulation. Whether or not the library is equipped to supply this need is indicated by the class percentages of books on the shelves. A comparison of these two percentage tables is always most interesting to the book selector. It does not enable him automatically to select books, but it does indicate points for fruitful investigation. To take some actual cases, I find a library with four per cent of history and six per cent of literature on the shelves, whereas the corresponding circulation percentages are five and seven. This is prima facie evidence that the collections in those two subjects are used rather more than the others and could well be increased. In cases where it is not desirable to encourage circulation in a given class, such an indication should evidently meet with no response. The circulation of fiction always runs far beyond its proportion, and it is neither proper nor desirable for the library to try to keep up. Thus in three libraries where the percentage of adult fiction on the shelves is 20, 19 and 17, respectively, I find the corresponding circulation percentages to be 34, 35 and 27. What, let us ask ourselves, are library statistics for? Is all the labor concerned in their collection and assemblage to result simply in a table that is to be glanced at for a moment with more or less interested curiosity, or do we intend to do something with them? It sometimes seems that the foreign reproach that we Americans care only for money, which we are properly disposed to resent, is partly justified by the fact that the only statistics that appear to mean anything to us are financial. When a man learns that he is living beyond his income or that he is getting a smaller per cent for his investments than his neighbor, or that the man at the desk next to him is receiving a larger salary for doing the same work, he does not sit still and say, “Ah! how interesting!” He gets up and does something about it. But statistics that convict him of all sorts of incompetency and foolishness along lines other than monetary ones, he regards simply as objects for intellectual absorption.

These percentages, of course, are not the only indications by which a librarian may adjust the proportions of the classes in his collection. If his library has the reserve system, for instance, the call for books in circulation is an unfailing index of the popular demand. If that demand is one that should be heeded, the number of copies in the library may well be proportionate to the number of names on the reserve list.

But a librarian who keeps in continual touch with the public by contact with users at the desk needs none of these somewhat mechanical indications. It is the inestimable privilege of the librarian of a small library in a small community to know her public, its wants, its needs, its abilities and its limitations in a way that is denied to custodians of huge collections.

In closing, let me suggest the following “Don’ts” for selectors of library books:

(1) Don’t buy books that are intellectually far above your readers, in the hope of improving their minds; a man may walk up stairs, but he can’t jump from the sidewalk to the roof.

(2) Don’t buy fine editions of books that need rather to be extensively duplicated; better two good souls than one fine body.

(3) Don’t buy McGrath and McCutcheon when you have reserves on file for Dickens and George Eliot.