To trust to discretion alone, whether it be the discretion of a librarian or of a board, is to lean on a broken reed; and in most foreign libraries that discovery has long since been made: it is high time that we made it too, if we are foolish enough to sanction the practice of lending.
When it is said then that all great foreign libraries lend, let it always be remembered, in the first place, that strictly speaking all do not lend; and, in the second place, that those which lend restrict the practice in a way never dreamt of here.
Such then are the arguments for lending: they may be stated in other terms, and they may be indefinitely varied in shape, but when reduced to their ultimate forms they simply come to this—that by lending books out the utility of the library is increased, the convenience of readers is consulted, the progress of learning is facilitated, and international courtesy is promoted—all very good things in themselves and much to be desired, but, as always in this world, we have to balance good with evil, and to take that course which involves the least inconvenience on the whole.
I confess that it rather depresses me to have to argue the question at all, and if the genius loci affected all minds as it affects mine, the very faintest suspicion of degrading and vulgarising such an institution as the Bodleian would be enough, and more than enough, to settle the matter; and surely it is a degradation of that noble library to look on it, as some seem to do, as a sort of enlarged and diversified Mudie's. Our books may be all over Oxford, nay, all over Europe; they may be in Germany, in France, in India, in Russia, in London, at Cambridge, and heaven only knows where. What is all this but the first step towards turning the Bodleian into a vast and vulgar circulating library? I must say again, as I have said elsewhere, that the Bodleian Library is absolutely unlike any other library in the world; it is in its way peerless and unique; it was founded and augmented by learned men for learned men; it was never meant for the motley crew which in the present day crams the Camera and the Library itself. It is sad to one who can remember what the Bodleian was even thirty years ago to see such rapid decline, such manifest tokens of disregard for all that once rendered the place a sacred spot. But this is to wander from my immediate business, and what I conceive to be the abuse, I might even say the gross abuse of the Bodleian, for which the Curators are directly responsible, must be matter for some other paper.
It seems to be the notion of some people in this University that the Bodleian Library is a fit place for readers of any and of every kind. They have not knowledge enough of books or of libraries to see that a library suitable only to scholars of a high class is not a library adapted to learners and schoolboys.
Any one beginning microscopic work will find all, and more than all, his wants satisfied for a long time to come by a five guinea instrument, and he is not unlikely to damage even that. Suppose that, instead of such an instrument, you gave him at once a two hundred pound microscope by Smith and Beck, or Ross, what would happen? He would be utterly bewildered by the complexity of it, utterly unable to use it as it should be used, and he would most certainly before long so damage it as to render it useless to all who could make a proper use of it. Between a first-rate microscope by Ross and a three or five guinea instrument the difference is much less than is the difference between the Bodleian and a library fit for undergraduates, or generally for the unlearned. By introducing undergraduates, schoolboys, and girls into such a library as the Bodleian, you in fact degrade the library to base uses, and render it pro tanto inconvenient, to use a very mild term, to all who are fit to benefit by it, and who were intended by the founder to have the advantage of it.
'What my experience has taught me,' says a most learned bibliographer (1. R. 121)[15], 'is, that it ought never to be attempted to use, as a popular library, the large libraries intended in the first instance for a superior class of readers;' and he adds further, that 'on every occasion, when it has been tried, the greatest part of the riches accumulated in the old library have been rendered useless.'
[15] Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 23 July, 1849, quoted by pages as 1. R. A second volume ordered to be printed 1 August, 1850, is quoted also by pages as 2. R. These Blue books contain an immense amount of information on all the libraries of Europe, and although the information is some forty years old, it is still indispensable to all who wish to acquaint themselves with the subject. The evidence also given is of the most varied kind, and very instructive.
If it is in any sense useful to lend books out of the library, it is far more useful, all things considered, not to lend them.
Every man of the least intelligence can see the difference between a library of reference and one from which books are lent. A library of reference, or a library of deposit, is one where books are to be perpetually preserved as carefully as may be for the convenience of scholars and students, and for the promotion of sound and solid learning; and lending any book from such a library is obviously inconsistent with the very purpose for which it is founded. 'I think,' says the Solicitor-General for Scotland, speaking of the Advocates' Library, 'that (lending books out) is quite inconsistent with the proper preservation of a great library' (1. R. 95).[16] And another very able witness, Mr. Colles, one of the library committee of the Royal Dublin Society, gives it as the result of his experience that no lending should be allowed in such a library. 'I speak,' he says, 'against the interest of my own family when I say this: but I think that the public use of the library would be increased by not lending.' And again, 'The two (i. e. libraries of reference and of circulation) ought to be separated, just as banks of issue should be separated from banks of deposit. I wish to be understood on this point: an individual painter or sculptor might be greatly benefited by borrowing out a capital picture from the National Gallery, or the Torso, Venus, or Portland Vase from the British Museum; but such a loan would by no means benefit artists in general, or advance the ultimate interests of painting or sculpture. This holds good equally with regard to valuable books.' (1. R. 185.)