1. Books in a hospital are for recreation, not for instruction, and therefore should consist principally of fiction, picture books, travel, biography, light and popular science and outdoor books.
2. They must be wholesome—not morbid, or gruesome, or depressing. Good detective stories and tales of adventure, however thrilling, if not horrible, and if they do not make vice attractive, are to be recommended, as they, more than almost anything else, hold the attention.
3. Illustrated books and books of pictures are invaluable, as a patient often will look at pictures when he is too ill to read.
4. The newest fiction is called for and read, yet the old favorites remain much in demand. With so much ephemeral stuff among the "best sellers," it is a delicate task to select the really good novels which will last, and there is a great temptation to fall back on the old and tried books to the exclusion of the more modern. The editors have tried to combine the two in just proportion, and also to give a few titles of the better class of the "second rate" which have proved popular.
5. It is not enough to provide books for those who wish to read. There are always many patients who are unable to take any initiative towards selecting any form of entertainment or employment for themselves, and for these should be provided light and simple stories which will not tax the brain or require any concentration of attention, but which will serve to stimulate their interest in things outside themselves. These are not necessarily children's books, but often the simple language and quiet wholesomeness of certain books for young people will bridge a patient over this period of mental inadequacy and pave the way towards a real enjoyment of maturer reading.
In addition to these five simple rules for selecting the reading for a hospital library, the editors would emphasize another very important point: Many of the readers will be elderly persons with failing eyesight, who demand large, clear type. This is hard to procure in cheap editions of standard authors and old favorites, but it is suggested that it is well worth while to take a little pains in selection and even to pay a higher price, in order to get an edition of convenient size, shape and weight, in serviceable binding, with large, clear type. Such an edition will last longer and will invite, not repel the reader.
Complete sets of the works of standard authors, with the exception of Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, and possibly George Eliot, are not recommended for hospitals. Only a few of the more popular stories of each will be read.
I want to say just a word in regard to the housing of hospital libraries. Of course the ideal arrangement is a separate building which is open all the time, but I know of only three or four such in the country. In most state hospitals the library was an afterthought and the books are crowded into one or two more or less inaccessible rooms to which the patients can come only once or twice a week and which can not possibly be made attractive. Often there is absolutely no other room to be had in the hospital and the librarian must make the most of it and do her utmost to beautify it with rugs and baskets made by the patients and flowers from the hospital greenhouses. But sometimes a little ingenuity will solve the problem in some such unique way as in the State Infirmary at Tewksbury, Mass., where the superintendent conceived the idea of moving their very good little library (classified and cataloged too) from its one small dark, inaccessible room in the administration house to the large, light chapel which hitherto stood idle six days in the week. Here low shelves have been built in between the windows on the wide side aisles and stacks fitted into the alcove rooms each side the chancel. Long narrow tables with plenty of books and magazines have been placed in these aisles and the library is now open practically all the time.
The Hospital for Epileptics at Monson, Mass., has met its problem somewhat differently. The superintendent here is having two large sunny rooms fitted up with bookshelves, one for the men where they can smoke and one for the women where they can sew. These shelves will be kept filled with books from the central library (in an office in the administration house which it shares with the medical library) administered by the stenographer-librarian, but under the direct supervision of a patient for each room. The patients themselves are very enthusiastic over the proposed change and have made out lists of books they want.
In Massachusetts, the ideal so far as use of the library goes, is found at the Foxborough Hospital for Inebriates, where only men patients are admitted. Here they have a separate building containing one large room with low bookcases all around it and two tables covered with periodicals and newspapers in the center. Here the men can come when their day's work is over or at the noon hour and read and smoke.