470. Other fittings for newspaper slopes which are sometimes used are metal leaning bars or fences to keep readers from leaning on the papers and tearing them. These must be very strongly fastened at the foot of the slope in such a position as to project about four to six inches from the front. They should be held in strong brackets, as they have to support a very considerable weight.
The sticks and rods for holding single or several newspapers, such as are used for clubs and restaurants, are not particularly suitable for public library use, unless under very exceptional circumstances.
One of the commonest abuses of the newsroom is the tearing or cutting out of parts of newspapers (ladies frequently remove them with the scratching of the point of a hat-pin!), especially of advertisements. It is well to have a notice prominently displayed to the effect that this is a penal offence, and that persons desiring to copy advertisements may borrow pencil and paper for the purpose on application.
471. Magazine Rooms and Periodicals.
471. Magazine Rooms and Periodicals.—The newsroom may be made the store for all the trade, technical and other weeklies which in any way convey news in their own particular fields; while the magazine room, if provided separately, may be reserved for the monthly and quarterly magazines, reviews and other miscellanies, which are not so much vehicles for the spread of current news. This is a rough division, but it seems a reasonable one for libraries where some distinction must be made between newsrooms and magazine rooms. In the selection of periodicals and magazines the same care should be taken as with newspapers to choose only the best and most representative. Committees should make it an invariable rule never to take any sectarian paper, save as a donation, or in response to a widespread public demand. Church and chapel papers are often forced upon libraries by their respective partisans out of sheer rivalry, and when this sort of thing once begins the library is sure to suffer by having to pay dearly for the gratification of mere sectarian feeling. It is waste of money to subscribe for the papers of this, that, and the other sect, on the sentimental grounds of fair play all round, and of meeting the views of large bodies of ratepayers in the same spirit as the wishes of trades or professions are met by providing technical and other journals. But there is this difference. A technical journal appeals to all sects, while a sectarian journal does not, and, as a matter of fact, is seldom read by its adherents once the honour of the faith is vindicated by having it placed in the public library. Some libraries adopt the rule of refusing all donations of periodicals in order to prevent the difficulties that arise.
472.
472. The arrangement of periodicals and magazines in their respective rooms calls for some notice. There are several ways in actual use which all prove satisfactory, and which are, nevertheless, very different in application. The most common plan of displaying periodicals is to spread them loose all over the tables in strong covers lettered with the titles, and to try to maintain a rough alphabetical order. Another method is to place the periodicals in their covers in racks as described in [Sections 162]-[65]. The readers are expected to take what periodical they want from these racks, read it at the tables, and return it to its place in the rack. As a rule they either do not return them accurately or they leave them lying on the tables. But in any case this method is preferable to the plan of spreading them over the tables, as it acts in a measure as an indicator to the periodicals in use. A third method is to keep the whole of the periodicals off the tables or racks, and to issue them from a counter or rack which is superintended by an assistant. This can be done in a number of ways, but preferably by means of an indicator such as is described in [Section 393]. The last plan is one which has the advantage of providing each periodical with a fixed place where it can always be found, though it entails the provision of a separate chair and table space for every magazine, and so requires a much greater amount of space than any of the other methods.
Fig. 170.—Adjustable Periodicals List ([Section 474]).