Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

I do not intend to dwell on the case where the books in a library are themselves treated as museum objects, although possibly this is the one that may first occur to the mind in this connection. Books that are curiosities on account of their rarity or for other reasons are limited usually to very large libraries. The Lenox Library in New York, now part of the Public Library, was almost entirely a book-museum and was so intended by its founder. The private libraries of great collectors, such as J. Pierpont Morgan, or the Huntingtons, are often largely book-museums, and in general, a book that brings a high price, brings it for its value as a curiosity, not as a book. The freer a book is the more value it has as a book; the more restricted it is the greater its value as a curiosity. Of course, even a small library may have one or two books that are worth display as curiosities, because they are old, or rare, or have interesting local associations either through the author, or the owner, or in some other way. The Hawthorne and Longfellow room in the Bowdoin College Library is an example of this latter case. But a book, or anything else, owned and displayed as a mere curiosity, is of not much real value, no matter what price it may bring at auction. The things that make a good museum what it is are not curiosities at all, in the vulgar sense. They illustrate some science or art and make its study easier and more interesting; they throw light on geology or history or sculpture. Once in a while we see a museum collection of books made for this object, to illustrate the art of binding or the history of printing, or the depredations of book-eating insects. The value of specimens like these has nothing to do with their rarity. Sometimes the smallest library may have books or pamphlets that may be displayed with this object, especially where the subject is local. It may for instance gather a collection of early pamphlets from local printing offices, or of books once the property of some eminent citizen.

These things belong to a museum pure and simple, which is the reason why I am mentioning them at first, to get them out of the way before treating my real subject, which is the debateable ground between library and museum. There is nothing debateable about a book-museum any more than about any other kind of a museum—a collection of historical or geological specimens, for instance, that often finds place in a library building, not because it is a library, but because it is a convenient place, or because it has been thought best to build a library and a museum under one roof, as has been done in Pittsburgh.

There is however a real debateable ground between library and museum, with somewhat hazy boundaries which I believe that either is justified in overstepping whenever such an act supplies an omission and does not duplicate. In other words, there is a boundary region between library and museum that may be occupied by either, but should not be occupied by both.

I shall try briefly to define this region and indicate how the library may occupy parts of it without legitimate criticism when the necessity arises.

Descriptive and illustrative material is to be found in both library and museum. Speaking generally, the former is of primary importance in the library and the latter in the museum. Many books consist of descriptive text alone, without pictures or diagrams, and on the other hand a museum might contain specimens without labels, although they would not be of much use. In general, text with illustrations belongs in a library and specimens with labels in a museum. The mere statement of the distinction as it has just been given, however, shows that it may be very difficult to draw a line between the two kinds of collections. A museum has been defined as “a collection of good labels accompanied by illustrative specimens.” Here the value of the descriptive text is emphasized, even in the museum collection. When descriptive treatises are shelved in connection with the specimens, as in some modern museums, we have an expansion of the label into the book; and the museum, in this one particular at least, crosses the dividing line between it and the library. No one would blame it for so doing.

Similarly the library may occasionally cross the line in the other direction without incurring blame. Let me repeat that both library and museum may contain descriptive and explanatory text and illustrative material. In the museum the text is usually in the form of labels, attached to the specimens, and these are generally material objects. In the library the text is in book form and the “specimens,” if we may so call them, are plates bound into the book.

The first step taken by the library toward the line that separates it from the museum is when the plates, instead of being bound into a book, are kept separately in a portfolio. The accompanying text, corresponding to the “labels” of museum collections, may be on the same sheet as the plates (often on the reverse side) or on separate sheets, which may be bound into a book even when the plates are separate.

In the St. Louis Public Library about a thousand volumes, forming one third of the collection kept regularly in our art room, have separate plates. These are of course not usually on display but are in the cases ready to be used in the room on demand. They thus correspond, not with museum material displayed in cases, but with specimens packed away in such manner that they may easily be secured for study by those who want them. One may imagine a whole museum equipped for students in this way, with nothing on display at all—no popular exhibition features. Probably no museum was ever so administered, as an entirety; and as you know the large museums are making more and more of features adding to the attractiveness of the collection as a popular spectacle. The public visits the Museum of Natural History in New York, much as it turns the pages of the National Geographic Magazine—just to look at the pictures. This treatment of material is justified because it increases popular interest in the subject-matter and brings people to the museum who would not otherwise enter it. Also, it predisposes public bodies to more generous support of the museum. This is true again of such institutions as botanical and zoological gardens, which have always been show-places for the public as well as laboratories for the student. The library can not afford to neglect such an opportunity of attracting the public and of stimulating interest in its own subject-matter—books. It can not continuously display any great part of its separate prints, as a museum does with its specimens, but it can exhibit them from time to time, so that one or another of them is always displayed in this way. Simple screens can be cheaply made and the prints fastened thereto with thumb-pins, taking care not to injure them by perforating with the pin, but letting the edge of the head lap over the edge of the print to hold it, and using sheets of transparent celluloid for protection, where necessary. After beginning such displays in our own library, we found them so popular with our readers and so helpful in our own work that we are now holding thirty or forty yearly, sometimes two or three at once in different parts of the library, supplementing our own material with loans from interested friends.

The value of exhibitions of plates is so highly estimated by some librarians that they are breaking up valuable volumes so that the plates may be used separately. This is a second step toward the museum use of the library. I have heard a well-known librarian assert that if permitted by his Board he would dismember every art book in his library, in this way. Most of us, especially if we are interested in the exhibition side of library work—which is distinctly a museum side—will be inclined to sympathize with him.

But although we hesitate, perhaps, to tear to pieces good books, even for such a good purpose as this, there is much material that can be so treated with a clear conscience. Many duplicates of art works can be thus used, and there is hardly an illustrated book which when the librarian is ready to throw it away does not contain plates or maps which can be saved and used. In St. Louis when we condemn books they are never destroyed and consigned to the old-paper dealer before passing through the hands and before the eyes of all those who might use still usable fragments of this kind. Taking the item of maps alone, some of the best special maps are attached to volumes of travel or history, as folders or in pockets. So long as the book is usable, the map, of course, must go with it, but if the map has been reinforced with linen when the book is purchased, as it ought to be, it will probably be in usable condition when the book is worn out, and may at once be transferred to the map collection. The same is true of other plate than pictures—fac-similes of handwriting, for instance. A very fair autograph collection may be made of such detached plates—not originals of course, but originals are valuable merely as curiosities, in the way that we have already noted. Fac-similes are as good for any other purpose.