182. Best Books.—A live library, in addition to the literary classics in all departments, should only select the best and most popular books. The question of selecting only the very best, or only what is in great demand, should be compromised by always getting the best, with a selection of the most popular, subject to the understanding that the latter are to be discarded when their day is past. Every movement which stirs the public mind and imagination produces a great crop of books, but only a very small proportion of these survive or are worthy of preservation. No one can argue against a moderate supply of such works at the time when public interest is aroused, but objection may be raised to the more ephemeral books of this kind being preserved long after all interest in their subjects has waned. If a municipal library founded in 1750, and steadily collecting for 156 years, could be found, its contents would be composed of enormous quantities of dead and forgotten theology, history, biography, science, fiction and every other class, which would not excite the slightest interest in the minds of five persons in a thousand. The skimmings of such a library would no doubt be valuable, and a fair proportion of it of interest and use to present-day readers, but the bulk of it would be of no practical service to anyone.
183.
183. The general public is comparatively indifferent to bibliographical rarities, and books which are merely curious or scarce should not be bought from the present restricted funds of British municipal libraries. There is a certain advantage in making a small special collection, on the museum plan, to trace and illustrate the evolution and history of printing and book production from the original manuscript forms, but the general connection of incunabula and rare specimens of typography by modern municipal libraries is neither possible nor desirable. There is infinitely more wisdom in spending £50 in a selection of modern works on technical subjects, which would be of immense service to living persons, than in spending the same amount in the purchase of a single rare Bible which will only appeal to a few students of typography. Books must not be regarded as an investment on which a profit can be made by a sale at some future date, because books of bibliographical rarity and much monetary value bought from public funds must remain public property, inalienable for all time. The books bought for a public library should rather be regarded as machinery or plant, to be renewed when necessary and kept thoroughly abreast of the times.
184.
184. Returning to the question of buying and preserving books of temporary interest. There are hundreds of subjects which in their day have excited great public interest, and in connexion with which an enormous literature exists, but which have faded into comparative insignificance with the lapse of time. Take subjects like the Jacobite Rebellions, French Revolution, American Civil War, the Slavery controversy, Crimean War or Disruption of the Church of Scotland. Every one of these subjects was represented in its day by cart-loads of books and pamphlets, but the whole of these have been sifted and epitomized by later historians in works of permanent value, and municipal libraries can simply buy these, and leave the preservation of the contemporary literature, which ranks as original authorities, to the care of the special libraries which exist for the purpose. The literature of the Boer War is a case in point, as also is much of the literature of the Great European War of 1914-1919 already. It is necessary for public libraries, while public interest is keen, to select the best, or what may seem best, from the mass of material pouring from the press, but presently all this will be condensed into a few classics, giving in a comprehensive and sufficient manner every fact of the slightest interest to posterity, and then all the ephemeral works can be discarded in their favour. What remains of any particular interest to students, or even ordinary readers, from the huge literature which arose from the Crimean War? Only Kinglake and perhaps two popular illustrated books. The same holds good with all subjects which have created immense contemporary literatures, and there need not be the slightest compunction about discarding any book when its usefulness is past unless it takes rank as a valuable original authority. At a later stage some suggestions on book discarding or library weeding are given, which may prove helpful.
185.
185. Book selection should be conducted upon the sound principle of buying only the best representative works on all subjects, whatever may be their cost or place of origin. A more haphazard and ineffectual method of building up a public library than buying cheap series and libraries of reprints can hardly be imagined. It is almost equivalent to advising a committee to buy cheap books by the yard in order to fill the shelves, and let the proper representation of great subjects depend on chance. Books published in “series” or “libraries” are too often mere commercial ventures of small literary or other value; and in the case of editions of standard authors, such uniform series are often the worst form in which a poet or novelist can be presented to a reader. They are full of errors and omissions, and whether the series is devoted to art, science, literature or history, it may be taken for granted that they are simply temporary text-books which possess the doubtful advantage of being bound uniformly, and the undoubted disadvantage of being often uniformly erroneous and misleading. Of course this statement does not apply all round, because there are several well-known series of works of quite exceptional value. Connected with this a word may be permitted on the nationality of text-books. Patriotism in literature and library management may be a fine thing, but it must occasionally lead to sorry results in a public library. The best and most recent scientific works, whether on biology, geology or any other subject, should be bought without regard to the nationality of the authors.
186. Popular Books.
186. Popular Books.—The duplication of popular or temporarily popular books is a policy to be adopted with the greatest of care. In some libraries the plan of multiplying copies of every book which becomes fashionable is carried to such an extreme that some injury must be done to the general work of the library by unduly fostering one class of literature at the expense of all the other classes. The practice of adding six or more copies of a new novel has the effect of decreasing the funds available for the purpose of buying other works, and it certainly gives rise to misleading conceptions of the stock of books possessed by the libraries. A reported stock of 5000 novels may easily mean an actual stock of only 3000 different works in libraries which buy three, six or twelve copies of a single popular work. This makes a vast difference in the field of choice offered to borrowers, because, after all, popular novels of the ordinary much-advertised class soon have their little day, and the duplicates become dead stock. For this reason caution should be exercised in the supply of extra copies of temporarily popular books, and a good plan is to provide a special stock or accessions book in which they can be registered and, when necessary, written off without complicating the other records of the library. These remarks apply almost exclusively to the duplication of novels and magazines. There is less need to trouble about other classes.