Another rule, which should always be printed on the call-slips, or readers' tickets, is the requirement to return books and receive back their tickets always before leaving the library. This duty is very commonly neglected, from the utter carelessness of many readers, who do not realize that signing their ticket for any book holds them responsible for it until it is returned. Many are unwilling to spend a moment's time in waiting for a ticket to be returned to them. Many will leave their books on tables or seats where they were reading, and go away without reclaiming their receipts. While complete observance of this rule is of course hopeless of attainment in a country where free and easy manners prevail, every librarian should endeavor to secure at least an approximate compliance with a rule adopted alike for the security and good order of the library, and the efficient service of the reader.
All readers should be privileged to reserve books from day to day which they have not completed the use of, and instructed always to give notice of such reservation before leaving the library. This saves much time, both to the reader and to the librarian in sending repeatedly for books put away needlessly.
In a circulating library, a fixed rule limiting the time for which a book may be kept, is essential. This may be from three days to two weeks, according to the demand for the book, but it should not exceed the latter period. Still, a renewal term may be conceded, provided the book is not otherwise called for. A small fine of so much a day for each volume kept out beyond the time prescribed by the rule, will often secure prompt return, and is the usage in most libraries where books are lent out. In the Boston Public Library no renewals are allowed. A rule requiring the replacement or repair of books damaged while in the hands of a reader should be printed and enforced. It may properly be waived where the damage is slight or unavoidable.
In public circulating libraries, a rule of registration is required, and in some libraries of reference also; but in the Library of Congress all readers over sixteen are admitted without any formality or registration whatever.
In popular libraries, the need of a registry list of those entitled to borrow books, is obvious, to prevent the issue to improper or unauthorized persons; as, for example, residents of another town, or persons under the prescribed age of admission to library privileges. A printed library card should be issued to each person privileged to draw books; corresponding in number to the page or index-card of the library record. Each card should bear the full name and address of the applicant, and be signed with an obligation to obey the rules of the library. On this card all books drawn may be entered, always with month and day date, and credited with date of return, the parallel entries being at the same time made in the library charging record.
Library cards of registration should be issued for a limited period, say twelve months, in order to bring all persons to a systematic review of their privilege, and should be renewed annually, so long as the holder is entitled to registration. No books should be issued except to those presenting registration cards, together with a call-slip or ticket for the book wanted.
Another rule should fix a limit to the number of volumes to be drawn by any reader. Two volumes out at any one time would be a fair limit. If made more to all readers, there is likely to be sometimes a scarcity of books to be drawn upon; and if a few readers are permitted to draw more than others, the charge of undue favoritism will be justified.
Another rule should be that any incivility or neglect on the part of any library attendant should be reported to the librarian. In such cases, the attendant should always be heard, before any admonition or censure is bestowed.
An almost necessary rule in most libraries is that no book should be taken from the shelves by any person not employed in the library. The exceptions are of course, the books provided expressly for the free and open reference of the readers.
Another essential rule is that no writing or marks may be made in any library book or periodical; nor is any turning down of leaves permitted. A printed warning is important to the effect that any cutting or defacing of library books or periodicals is a penal offense, and will be prosecuted according to law.
The regulations for admission to library privileges are important. In this country the age limitation is more liberal than in Europe. The Boston Public Library, for example, is free to all persons over twelve years of age. In the Library of Congress, the age limit is sixteen years or upward, to entitle one to the privileges of a reader. In the Astor Library, none are admitted under nineteen, and in the British Museum Library none below twenty-one years.
The hours during which the library is open should be printed as part of the regulations.
All the library rules should be printed and furnished to the public. The most essential of them, if carefully expressed in few words, can be grouped in a single small sheet, of 16mo. size or less, and pasted in the inside cover of every book belonging to the library. Better still, (and it will save expense in printing) let the few simple rules, in small but legible type, form a part of the book plate, or library label, which goes on the left-hand inner cover of each volume. Thus every reader will have before him, in daily prominence, the regulations which he is to observe, and no excuse can be pleaded of ignorance of the rules.
As no law is ever long respected unless it is enforced, so no regulations are likely to be observed unless adhered to in every library. Rules are a most essential part of library administration, and it should be a primary object of every librarian or assistant to see that they are observed by all.
CHAPTER 19.
Library Reports and Advertising.
We now come to consider the annual reports of librarians. These should be made to the trustees or board of library control, by whatever name it may be known, and should be addressed to the chairman, as the organ of the board. In the preparation of such reports, two conditions are equally essential—conciseness and comprehensiveness. Every item in the administration, frequentation, and increase of the library should be separately treated, but each should be condensed into the smallest compass consistent with clear statement. Very long reports are costly to publish, and moreover, have small chance of being read. In fact, the wide perusal of any report is in direct proportion to its brevity.
This being premised, let us see what topics the librarian's report should deal with.
1. The progress of the library during the year must be viewed as most important. A statistical statement of accessions, giving volumes of books, and number of pamphlets separately, added during the year, should be followed by a statement of the aggregate of volumes and pamphlets in the collection. This is ascertained by actual count of the books upon the shelves, adding the number of volumes charged out, or in the bindery, or in readers' hands at the time of the enumeration. This count is far from a difficult or time-consuming affair, as there is a short-hand method of counting by which one person can easily arrive at the aggregate of a library of 100,000 volumes, in a single day of eight to ten hours. This is done by counting by twos or threes the rows of books as they stand on the shelves, passing the finger rapidly along the backs, from left to right and from top to bottom of the shelves. As fast as one hundred volumes are counted, simply write down a figure one; then, at the end of the second hundred, a figure two, and so on, always jotting down one figure the more for each hundred books counted. The last figure in the counter's memorandum will represent the number of hundreds of volumes the library contains. Thus, if the last figure is 92, the library has just 9,200 volumes. This rapid, and at the same time accurate method, by which any one of average quickness can easily count two hundred volumes a minute, saves all counting up by tallies of five or ten, and also all slow additions of figures, since one figure at the end multiplied by one hundred, expresses the whole.
2. Any specially noteworthy additions to the library should be briefly specified.
3. A list of donors of books during the year, with number of volumes given by each, should form part of the report. This may properly come at the end as an appendix.
4. A brief of the money income of the year, with sources whence derived, and of all expenditures, for books, salaries, contingent expenses, etc., should form a part of the report, unless reported separately by a treasurer of the library funds.
5. The statistics of a librarian's report, if of a lending library, should give the aggregate number of volumes circulated during the year, also the number of borrowers recorded who have used and who have not used the privilege of borrowing. The number of volumes used by readers in the reference or reading-room department should be given, as well as the aggregate of readers. It is usual in some library reports to classify the books used by readers, as, so many in history, poetry, travels, natural science, etc., but this involves labor and time quite out of proportion to its utility. Still, a comparative statement of the aggregate volumes of fiction read or drawn out, as against all other books, may be highly useful as an object lesson, if embodied in the library report.
6. A statement of the actual condition of the library, as to books, shelving accommodations, furniture, etc., with any needful suggestions for improvement, should be included in the annual report.
7. A well-considered suggestion of the value of contributions to the library in books or funds to enrich the collection, should not be overlooked.
8. The librarian should not forget a word of praise for his assistants, in the great and useful work of carrying on the library. This will tend to excite added zeal to excel, when the subordinates feel that their services are appreciated by their head, as well as by the public.
The preparation of an annual report affords some test of the librarian's skill and judgment. It should aim at plain and careful statement, and all rhetoric should be dispensed with. Divided into proper heads, a condensed statement of facts or suggestions under each should be made, and all repetition avoided.
Such a library report should never fail to set forth the great benefit to the community which a free use of its treasures implies, while urging the importance of building up the collection, through liberal gifts of books, periodicals, or money, thus enabling it to answer the wants of readers more fully, year by year. It will sometimes be a wise suggestion to be made in a librarian's report, that the library still lacks some specially important work, such as Larned's "History for Ready Reference," or the extensive "Dictionary of National Biography," or Brunet's Manuel du Libraire, or a set of Congressional Debates from the beginning; and such a suggestion may often bear fruit in leading some public-spirited citizen to supply the want by a timely contribution.
Of course, the annual report of every public library should be printed, and as pamphlets are seldom read, and tend rapidly to disappear, its publication in the newspapers is vastly more important than in any other form. While a pamphlet report may reach a few people, the newspaper reaches nearly all; and as a means of diffusing information in any community, it stands absolutely without rival. Whether the library reports shall be printed in pamphlet form or not is a matter of expediency, to be determined by the managing board. Funds are rarely ample enough, in the smaller town libraries, to justify the expense, in view of the small circulation which such reports receive, and it is much better to put the money into printing library catalogues, which every body needs and will use, than into library reports, which comparatively few will make any use of. A judicious compromise may be usefully made, by inducing some newspaper, which would print a liberal share of the report free of charge, as news, for public information, to put the whole in type and strike off a few hundred copies in sheet form or pages, at a moderate charge.
This would enable the library officers to distribute a goodly number, and to keep copies of each annual report for reference, without the expense of a pamphlet edition.
In some of the larger and more enterprising of city libraries, reports are made quarterly or monthly by the librarian. These of course are much more nearly up to date, and if they publish lists of books added to the library, they are correspondingly useful. Frequently they contain special bibliographies of books on certain subjects. Among these, the monthly bulletins of the Boston Public Library, Harvard University Library, New York Public Library, Salem, Mass., Public Library, and the Providence Public Library are specially numerous and important.
The relations of a public library to the local press of the city or town where it is situated will now be noticed. It is the interest of the librarian to extend the usefulness of the library by every means; and the most effective means is to make it widely known. In every place are found many who are quite ignorant of the stores of knowledge which lie at their doors in the free library. And among those who do know it and resort to it, are many who need to have their interest and attention aroused by frequent notices as to its progress, recent additions to its stores, etc. The more often the library is brought before the public by the press, the more interest will be taken in it by the community for whose information it exists.
It is of the utmost importance that the library conductors should have the active good will of all the newspaper editors in its vicinity. This will be acquired both by aiding them in all researches which the daily or frequent wants of their profession render necessary; and also, by giving them freely and often items of intelligence about the library for publication. Enterprising journals are perpetually on the hunt for new and varied matter to fill their columns. They send their reporters to the library to make "a story," as it is called, out of something in it or about it. These reporters are very seldom persons versed in books, or able to write understandingly or attractively about them. Left to themselves to construct "a story" out of a half hour's conversation with the librarian, the chances are that an article will be produced which contains nearly as many errors as matters of fact, with the names of authors or the titles of their books mis-spelled or altered, and with matters manufactured out of the reporter's fancy which formed no part of the interview, while what did form important features in it are perhaps omitted. The remedy, or rather the preventive of such inadequate reports of what the librarian would say to the public is to become his own reporter. The papers will willingly take for publication short "library notes," as they may be called, containing information about the library or its books, carefully type-written. This course at once secures accurate and authentic statements, and saves the time of the press reporters for other work.
Bear in mind always that the main object of such library notices is to attract attention, and encourage people to use the library. Thus there should be sought frequent opportunities of advertising the library by this best of all possible means, because it is the one which reaches the largest number. To do it well requires some skill and practice, and to do it often is quite as essential as to do it well. Keep the library continually before the public. What are the business houses which are most thronged with customers? They are those that advertise most persistently and attractively. So with the library; it will be more and more resorted to, in proportion as it keeps its name and its riches before the public eye.
A certain timeliness in these library notices should be cultivated. The papers are eager to get anything that illustrates what is uppermost in the public mind. If a local fair is in progress or preparing, give them a list of the best books the library has in that field; the history of the Philadelphia Exposition, the Chicago World's Fair, the Paris Expositions, &c. On another day, set forth the books on manufactures, horses, cattle, domestic animals, decorative art, &c. If there is a poultry exhibition, or a dog show, call public attention to the books on poultry or dogs. If an art exhibition, bring forward the titles of books on painting, sculpture, drawing, and the history of art, ancient and modern.
If some great man has died, as Bismarck or Gladstone, give the titles of any biographies or books about him, adding even references to notable magazine articles that have appeared. When the summer vacation is coming around, advertise your best books of travel, of summer resorts, of ocean voyages, of yachting, camping, fishing and shooting, golf and other out-door games, etc. If there is a Presidential campaign raging, make known the library's riches in political science, the history of administrations, and of nominating conventions, lives of the Presidents, books on elections, etc. If an international dispute or complication is on foot, publish the titles of your books on international law, and those on the history or resources of the country or countries involved; and when a war is in progress, books on military science, campaigns, battles, sieges, and the history of the contending nations will be timely and interesting.
Whatever you do in this direction, make it short and attractive. Organize your material, describe a specially interesting work by a reference to its style, or its illustrations, or its reputation, etc. Distribute your library notes impartially; that is, if several papers are published, be careful not to slight any of them. Find out the proper days to suit their want of matter, and never send in your notes when the paper is overcrowded. Always read a proof-slip of each article; time spent in going to a newspaper office to correct proof is well spent, for misprints always await the unwary who trusts to the accuracy of types.
If the library acquires any extensive or notable book, whether old or new, do not fail to make it known through the press. If any citizen gives a number of volumes to the library, let his good deeds have an appreciative notice, that others may go and do likewise.
Another feature of library advertising is the publication in the press of the titles of new books added to the library. As this is merely catalogue printing, however abbreviated in form the titles may be, it will usually (and very properly) be charged for by the newspapers. But it will pay, in the direction of inducing a much larger use of the library, and as the sole object of the institution is to contribute to public intelligence, it becomes library managers not to spare any expense so conducive to that result.
CHAPTER 20.
The Formation of Libraries.
In the widely extended and growing public interest in libraries for the people, and in the ever increasing gatherings of books by private collectors, I may be pardoned for some suggestions pertaining specially to the formation of libraries. I do not refer to the selection of books, which is treated in the first chapter, nor to the housing and care of libraries, but to some important points involved in organizing the foundation, so to speak, of a library.
The problem, of course, is a widely different one for the private collector of an individual or family library, and for the organizers of a public one. But in either case, it is important, first of all, to have a clearly defined and well considered plan. Without this, costly mistakes are apt to be made, and time, energy and money wasted, all of which might be saved by seeing the end from the beginning, and planning accordingly.
Let us suppose that a resident in a community which has never enjoyed the benefit of a circulating library conceives the idea of using every means to secure one. The first question that arises is, what are those means? If the State in which his residence lies has a Library law, empowering any town or city to raise money by taxation for founding and maintaining a free library, the way is apparently easy, at first sight. But here comes in the problem—can the requisite authority to lay the tax be secured? This may involve difficulties unforeseen at first. If there is a city charter, does it empower the municipal authorities (city council or aldermen) to levy such a tax? If not, then appeal must be made to a popular vote, at some election of municipal officers, at which the ballots for or against a Library tax should determine the question. This will at once involve a campaign of education, in which should be enlisted (1) The editors of all the local papers. (2) The local clergymen, lawyers and physicians. (3) All literary men and citizens of wealth or influence in the community. (4) All teachers in the public schools and other institutions of learning. (5) The members of the city or town government. These last will be apt to feel any impulse of public sentiment more keenly than their own individual opinions on the subject. In any case, the public-spirited man who originates the movement should enlist as many able coadjutors as he can. If he is not himself gifted with a ready tongue, he should persuade some others who are ready and eloquent talkers to take up the cause, and should inspire them with his own zeal. A public meeting should be called, after a goodly number of well-known and influential people are enlisted (not before) and addresses should be made, setting forth the great advantage of a free library to every family. Its value to educate the people, to furnish entertainment that will go far to supplant idleness and intemperance, to help on the work of the public schools, and to elevate the taste, improve the morals, quicken the intellect and employ the leisure hours of all, should be set forth.
With all these means of persuasion constantly in exercise, and unremitting diligence in pushing the good cause through the press and by every private opportunity, up to the very day of the election, the chances are heavily in favor of passing the library measure by a good majority. It must be a truly Bœotian community, far gone in stupidity or something worse, which would so stand in its own light as to vote down a measure conducing in the highest degree to the public intelligence. But even should it be defeated, its advocates should never be discouraged. Like all other reforms or improvements, its progress may be slow at first, but it is none the less sure to win in the end. One defeat has often led to a more complete victory when the conflict is renewed. The beaten party gathers wisdom by experience, finds out any weakness existing in its ranks or its management, and becomes sensible where its greatest strength should be put forth in a renewal of the contest. The promoters of the measure should at once begin a fresh agitation. They should pledge every friend of the library scheme to stand by it himself, and to secure at least one new convert to the cause. And the chances are that it will be carried triumphantly through at the next trial, or, if not then, at least within no long time.
But we should consider also the case of those communities where no State Library law exists. These are unhappily not a few; and it is a remarkable fact that even so old, and rich, and well-developed a State as Pennsylvania had no such provision for public enlightenment until within three years. In the absence of a law empowering local governments or voters to lay a tax for such a purpose, the most obvious way of founding a library is by local subscription. This is of course a less desirable method than one by which all citizens should contribute to the object in proportion to their means. But it is better to avail of the means that exist in any place than to wait an indefinite period for a State Legislature to be educated up to the point of passing measures which would render the formation of libraries easy in all places.
Let the experiment be tried of founding a library by individual effort and concert. With only two or three zealous and active promoters, even such a plan can be carried into successful operation in almost any community. A canvass should be made from house to house, with a short prospectus or agreement drawn up, pledging the subscribers to give a certain sum toward the foundation of a library. If a few residents with large property can be induced to head the list with liberal subscriptions, it will aid much in securing confidence in the success of the movement, and inducing others to subscribe. No contributions, however small, should fail to be welcomed, since they stand for a wider interest in the object. After a thorough canvass of the residents of the place, a meeting of those subscribing should be called, and a statement put before them of the amount subscribed. Then an executive committee, say of three or five members, should be chosen to take charge of the enterprise. This committee should appoint a chairman, a secretary, and a treasurer, the latter to receive and disburse the funds subscribed. The chairman should call and preside at meetings of the committee, of which the secretary should record the proceedings in a book kept for the purpose.
The first business of the Library committee should be to confer and determine upon the ways and means of organizing the library. This involves a selection of books suitable for a beginning, a place of deposit for them, and a custodian or librarian to catalogue them and keep the record of the books drawn out and returned. Usually, a room can be had for library purposes in some public building or private house, centrally located, without other expense than that of warming and lighting. The services of a librarian, too, can often be secured by competent volunteer aid, there being usually highly intelligent persons with sufficient leisure to give their time for the common benefit, or to share that duty with others, thus saving all the funds for books to enrich the library.
The chief trouble likely to be encountered by a Library committee will lie in the selection of books to form the nucleus or starting point of the collection. Without repeating anything heretofore suggested, it may be said that great care should be taken to have books known to be excellent, both interesting in substance and attractive in style. To so apportion the moderate amount of money at disposal as to give variety and interest to the collection, and attract readers from the start, is a problem requiring good judgment for its solution. Much depends upon the extent of the fund, but even with so small a sum as two or three hundred dollars, a collection of the very best historians, poets, essayists, travellers and voyagers, scientists, and novelists can be brought together, which will furnish a range of entertaining and instructive reading for several hundred borrowers. The costlier encyclopaedias and works of reference might be waited for until funds are recruited by a library fair, or lectures, or amateur concerts, plays, or other evening entertainments.
Another way of recruiting the library which has often proved fruitful is to solicit contributions of books and magazines from families and individuals in the vicinity. This should be undertaken systematically some time after the subscriptions in money have been gathered in. It is not good policy to aim at such donations at the outset, since many might make them an excuse for not subscribing to the fund for founding the library, which it is to the interest of all to make as large as possible. But when once successfully established, appeals for books and periodicals will surely add largely to the collection, and although many of such accessions may be duplicates, they will none the less enlarge the facilities for supplying the demands of readers. Families who have read through all or nearly all the books they possess will gladly bestow them for so useful a purpose, especially when assured of reaping reciprocal benefit by the opportunity of freely perusing a great variety of choice books, new and old, which they have never read. Sometimes, too, a public-spirited citizen, when advised of the lack of a good cyclopaedia, or of the latest extensive dictionary, or collective biography, in the library, will be happy to supply it, thereby winning the gratitude and good will of all who frequent the library. All donations should have inserted in them a neat book-plate, with the name of the donor inscribed, in connection with the name of the Library.
Many a useful library of circulation has been started with a beginning of fifty to a hundred volumes, and the little acorn of learning thus planted has grown up in the course of years to a great tree, full of fruitful and wide-spreading branches.
CHAPTER 21.
Classification.
If there is any subject which, more than all others, divides opinion and provokes endless controversy among librarians and scholars, it is the proper classification of books. From the beginning of literature this has been a well-nigh insoluble problem. Treatise after treatise has been written upon it, system has been piled upon system, learned men have theorised and wrangled about it all their lives, and successive generations have dropped into their graves, leaving the vexed question as unsettled as ever. Every now and then a body of savans or a convention of librarians wrestles with it, and perhaps votes upon it,
since the dissatisfied minority, nearly as numerous and quite as obstinate as the majority, always refuses to be bound by it. No sooner does some sapient librarian, with the sublime confidence of conviction, get his classification house of cards constructed to his mind, and stands rapt in admiration before it, when there comes along some wise man of the east, and demolishes the fair edifice at a blow, while the architect stands by with a melancholy smile, and sees all his household gods lying shivered around him.
Meanwhile, systems of classification keep on growing, until, instead of the thirty-two systems so elaborately described in Edwards's Memoirs of Libraries, we have almost as many as there are libraries, if the endless modifications of them are taken into account. In fact, one begins to realise that the schemes for the classification of knowledge are becoming so numerous, that a classification of the systems themselves has fairly become a desideratum. The youthful neophyte, who is struggling after an education in library science, and thinks perhaps that it is or should be an exact science, is bewildered by the multitude of counsellors, gets a head-ache over their conflicting systems, and adds to it a heart-ache, perhaps, over the animosities and sarcasms which divide the warring schools of opinion.
Perhaps there would be less trouble about classification, if the system-mongers would consent to admit at the outset that no infallible system is possible, and would endeavor, amid all their other learning, to learn a little of the saving grace of modesty. A writer upon this subject has well observed that there is no man who can work out a scheme of classification that will satisfy permanently even himself. Much less should he expect that others, all having their favorite ideas and systems, should be satisfied with his. As there is no royal road to learning, so there can be none to classification; and we democratic republicans, who stand upon the threshold of the twentieth century, may rest satisfied that in the Republic of Letters no autocrat can be allowed.
The chief difficulty with most systems for distributing the books in a library appears to lie in the attempt to apply scientific minuteness in a region where it is largely inapplicable. One can divide and sub-divide the literature of any science indefinitely, in a list of subjects, but such exhaustive sub-divisions can never be made among the books on the shelves. Here, for example, is a "Treatise on diseases of the heart and lungs." This falls naturally into its two places in the subject catalogue, the one under "Heart," and the second under "Lungs;" but the attempt to classify it on the shelves must fail, as regards half its contents. You cannot tear the book to pieces to satisfy logical classification. Thousands of similar cases will occur, where the same book treats of several subjects. Nearly all periodicals and transactions of societies of every kind refuse to be classified, though they can be catalogued perfectly on paper by analysing their contents. To bring all the resources of the library on any subject together on the shelves is clearly impossible. They must be assembled for readers from various sections of the library, where the rule of analogy or of superior convenience has placed them.
What is termed close classification, it will be found, fails by attempting too much. One of the chief obstacles to its general use is that it involves a too complicated notation. The many letters and figures that indicate position on the shelves are difficult to remember in the direct ratio of their number. The more minute the classification, the more signs of location are required. When they become very numerous, in any system of classification, the system breaks down by its own weight. Library attendants consume an undue amount of time in learning it, and library cataloguers and classifiers in affixing the requisite signs of designation to the labels, the shelves, and the catalogues. Memory, too, is unduly taxed to apply the system. While a superior memory may be found equal to any task imposed upon it, average memories are not so fortunate. The expert librarian, in whose accomplished head the whole world of science and literature lies coördinated, so that he can apply his classification unerringly to all the books in a vast library, must not presume that unskilled assistants can do the same.
One of the mistakes made by the positivists in classification is the claim that their favorite system can be applied to all libraries alike. That this is a fallacy may be seen in an example or two. Take the case of a large and comprehensive Botanical library, in which an exact scientific distribution of the books may and should be made. It is classified not only in the grand divisions, such as scientific and economic botany, etc., but a close analytical treatment is extended over the whole vegetable kingdom. Books treating of every plant are relegated to their appropriate classes, genera, and species, until the whole library is organised on a strictly scientific basis. But in the case, even of what are called large libraries, so minute a classification would be not only unnecessary, but even obstructive to prompt service of the books. And the average town library, containing only a shelf or two of botanical works, clearly has no use for such a classification. The attempt to impose a universal law upon library arrangement, while the conditions of the collections are endlessly varied, is foredoomed to failure.
The object of classification is to bring order out of confusion, and to arrange the great mass of books in science and literature of which every library is composed, so that those on related subjects should be as nearly as possible brought together. Let us suppose a collection of some hundred thousand volumes, in all branches of human knowledge, thrown together without any classification or catalogue, on the tables, the shelves, and the floor of an extensive reading-room. Suppose also an assemblage of scholars and other readers, ready and anxious to avail themselves of these literary treasures, this immense library without a key. Each wants some certain book, by some author whose name he knows, or upon some subject upon which he seeks to inform himself. But how vain and hopeless the effort to go through all this chaos of learning, to find the one volume which he needs! This illustration points the prime necessity of classification of some kind, before a collection of books can be used in an available way.
Then comes in the skilled bibliographer, to convert this chaos into a cosmos, to illumine this darkness with the light of science. He distributes the whole mass, volume by volume, into a few great distinct classes; he creates families or sub-divisions in every class; he assembles together in groups all that treat of the same subject, or any of its branches; and thus the entire scattered multitude of volumes is at length coördinated into a clear and systematic collection, ready for use in every department. A great library is like a great army: when unorganized, your army is a mere undisciplined mob: but divide and sub-divide it into army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and companies, and you can put your finger upon every man.
To make this complete organization of a library successful, one must have an organising mind, a wide acquaintance with literature, history, and the outlines, at least, of all the sciences; a knowledge of the ancient and of various modern languages; a quick intuition, a ripe judgment, a cultivated taste, a retentive memory, and a patience and perseverance that are inexhaustible.
Even were all these qualities possessed, there will be in the arrangement elements of discord and of a failure. A multitude of uncertain points in classification, and many exceptions will arise; and these must of necessity be settled arbitrarily. The more conversant one becomes with systems of classification, when reduced to practice, the more he becomes assured that a perfect bibliographical system is impossible.
Every system of classification must find its application fraught with doubts, complications, and difficulties; but the wise bibliographer will not pause in his work to resolve all these insoluble problems; he will classify the book in hand according to his best judgment at the moment it comes before him. He can no more afford to spend time over intricate questions of the preponderance of this, that, or the other subject in a book, than a man about to walk to a certain place can afford to debate whether he shall put his right foot forward or his left. The one thing needful is to go forward.
Referring to the chapter on bibliography for other details, I may here say that the French claim to have reached a highly practical system of classification in that set forth in J. C. Brunet's Manuel du Libraire. This is now generally used in the arrangement of collections of books in France, with some modifications, and the book trade find it so well adapted to their wants, that classified sale and auction catalogues are mostly arranged on that system. It has only five grand divisions: Theology, Law, Arts and Sciences, Belles-lettres, and History. Each of these classes has numerous sub-divisions. For example, geography and voyages and travels form a division of history, between the philosophy of history and chronology, etc.
The classification in use in the Bibliothèque nationale of France places Theology first, followed by Law, History, Philosophy and Belles-lettres. The grand division of Philosophy includes all which is classified under Arts and Sciences in the system of Brunet.
In the Library of the British Museum the classification starts with Theology, followed by 2. Jurisprudence; 3. Natural History (including Botany, Geology, Zoölogy, and Medicine); 4. Art (including Archaeology, Fine Arts, Architecture, Music, and Useful Arts); 5. Philosophy (including Politics, Economics, Sociology, Education, Ethics, Metaphysics, Mathematics, Military and Naval Science, and Chemistry); 6. History (including Heraldry and Genealogy); 7. Geography (including Ethnology); 8. Biography (including Epistles); 9. Belles-lettres (including Poetry, Drama, Rhetoric, Criticism, Bibliography, Collected Works, Encyclopaedias, Speeches, Proverbs, Anecdotes, Satirical and facetious works, Essays, Folklore and Fiction); 10. Philology.
Sub-divisions by countries are introduced in nearly all the classes.
In the Library of Congress the classification was originally based upon Lord Bacon's scheme for the division of knowledge into three great classes, according to the faculty of the mind employed in each. 1. History (based upon memory); 2. Philosophy (based upon reason); 3. Poetry (based upon imagination). This scheme was much better adapted to a classification of ideas than of books. Its failure to answer the ends of a practical classification of the library led to radical modifications of the plan, as applied to the books on the shelves, for reasons of logical arrangement, as well as of convenience. A more thorough and systematic re-arrangement is now in progress.
Mr. C. A. Cutter has devised a system of "Expansive classification," now widely used in American libraries. In this, the classes are each indicated by a single letter, followed by numbers representing divisions by countries, and these in turn by letters indicating sub-divisions by subjects, etc. It is claimed that this method is not a rigid unchangeable system, but adaptable in a high degree, and capable of modification to suit the special wants of any library. In it the whole range of literature and science is divided into several grand classes, which, with their sub-classes, are indicated by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Thus Class A embraces Generalia; B to D, Spiritual sciences (including philosophy and religion); E to G, Historical sciences (including, besides history and biography, geography and travels); H to K, Social sciences (including law and political science and economics); L to P, Natural sciences; Q, Medicine; and R to Z, Arts (including not only mechanical, recreative and fine arts, but music, languages, literature, and bibliography).
The sub-divisions of these principal classes are arranged with progressive fullness, to suit smaller or larger libraries. Thus, the first classification provides only eleven classes, suited to very small libraries: the second is expanded to fifteen classes, the third to thirty classes, and so on up to the seventh or final one, designed to provide for the arrangement of the very largest libraries.
This is the most elaborate and far-reaching library classification yet put forth, claiming superior clearness, flexibility, brevity of notation, logical coördination, etc., while objections have been freely made to it on the score of over-refinement and aiming at the unattainable.
What is known as the decimal or the Dewey system of classification was originally suggested by Mr. N. B. Shurtleff's "Decimal system for the arrangement and administration of libraries," published at Boston in 1856. But in its present form it has been developed by Mr. Melvil Dewey into a most ingenious scheme for distributing the whole vast range of human knowledge into ten classes, marked from 0 to 9, each of which sub-divides into exactly ten sub-classes, all divisible in their turn into ten minor divisions, and so on until the material in hand, or the ingenuity of the classifier is exhausted. The notation of the books on the shelves corresponds to these divisions and sub-divisions. The claims of this system, which has been quite extensively followed in the smaller American libraries, and in many European ones, are economy, simplicity, brevity of notation, expansibility, unchanging call-numbers, etc. It has been criticised as too mechanical, as illogical in arrangement of classes, as presenting many incongruities in its divisions, as procrustean, as wholly inadequate in its classification of jurisprudence, etc. It is partially used by librarians who have had to introduce radical changes in portions of the classification, and in fact it is understood that the classification has been very largely made over both in Amherst College library and in that of Columbia University, N. Y., where it was fully established.
This only adds to the cumulative proofs that library classification cannot be made an exact science, but is in its nature indefinitely progressive and improvable. Its main object is not to classify knowledge, but books. There being multitudes of books that do not belong absolutely to any one class, all classification of them is necessarily a compromise. Nearly all the classification schemers have made over their schemes—some of them many times. I am not arguing against classification, which is essential to the practical utility of any library. An imperfect classification is much better than none: but the tendency to erect classification into a fetish, and to lay down cast-iron rules for it, should be guarded against. In any library, reasons of convenience must often prevail over logical arrangement; and he who spends time due to prompt library service in worrying over errors in a catalogue, or vexing his soul at a faulty classification, is as mistaken as those fussy individuals who fancy that they are personally responsible for the obliquity of the earth's axis.
It may be added that in the American Library Association's Catalogue of 5,000 books for a popular library, Washington, 1893, the classification is given both on the Dewey (Decimal) system, and on the Cutter expansive system, so that all may take their choice.
The fixed location system of arrangement, by which every book is assigned by its number to one definite shelf, is objectionable as preventing accessions from being placed with their cognate books. This is of such cardinal importance in every library, that a more elastic system of some kind should be adopted, to save continual re-numbering. No system which makes mere arithmetical progression a substitute for intrinsic qualities can long prove satisfactory.
The relative or movable location on shelves is now more generally adopted than the old plan of numbering every shelf and assigning a fixed location to every volume on that shelf. The book-marks, if designating simply the relative order of the volumes, permit the books to be moved along, as accessions come in, from shelf to shelf, as the latter become crowded. This does not derange the numbers, since the order of succession is observed.
For small town libraries no elaborate system of classification can properly be attempted. Here, the most convenient grouping is apt to prove the best, because books are most readily found by it. Mr. W. I. Fletcher has outlined a scheme for libraries of 10,000 volumes or less, as follows:
A. Fiction (appended, J. Juvenile books); B. English and American literature; C. History; D. Biography; E. Travels; F. Science; G. Useful arts; H. Fine and recreative arts; I. Political and social science; K. Philosophy and religion; L. Works on language and in foreign languages; R. Reference books.
Numerous sub-divisions would be required to make such a scheme (or indeed any other) fit any collection of books.
In arranging the main classes, care should be taken to bring those most drawn upon near to the delivery desk, or charging system of the library.
The alphabet is usefully applied in the arrangement of several of the great classes of books, and in many sub-divisions of other classes. Thus, all English and American fiction may be arranged in a single alphabet of authors, including English translations of foreign works. All collected works, or polygraphy, may form an alphabet, as well as poetry, dramatic works, collections of letters, and miscellanea, arranged by authors' names. In any of these classes, sub-divisions by languages may be made, if desired.
The class biography may best be arranged in an alphabet of the subjects of the biographies, rather than of writers, for obvious reasons of convenience in finding at once the books about each person.
CHAPTER 22.
Catalogues.
Catalogues of libraries are useful to readers in direct proportion to their fulfilment of three conditions: (1) Quick and ready reference. (2) Arranging all authors' names in an alphabet, followed by titles of their works. (3) Subjects or titles in their alphabetical order in the same alphabet as the authors. This is what is known as a "Dictionary catalogue"; but why is it preferable to any other? Because it answers more questions in less time than any other.
The more prevalent styles of catalogues have been, 1. A list of authors, with titles of their works under each. 2. A catalogue of subjects, in a classified topical or alphabetical order, the authors and their works being grouped under each head. 3. A catalogue attempting to combine these two, by appending to the author-catalogue a classed list of subjects, with a brief of authors under each, referring to the page on which the titles of their works may be found; or else, 4. Appending to the subject-catalogue an alphabet of authors, with similar references to pages under subjects.
Each of these methods of catalogue-making, while very useful, contrives to miss the highest utility, which lies in enabling the reader to put his finger on the book he wants, at one glance of the eye. The catalogue of authors will not help him to subjects, nor will the catalogue of subjects, as a rule, give the authors and titles with the fullness that may be needed. In either case, a double reference becomes necessary, consuming just twice the time, and in a two-column catalogue, three times the time required in a dictionary catalogue.
The reader who wants Darwin's "Origin of Species" finds it readily enough by the author-catalogue; but he wants, at the same time, to find other works on the same subject, and all the author-catalogues in the world will not help him to them. But give him a dictionary catalogue, and he has, in the same alphabet with his Darwin, (if the library is large) dozens of books discussing the theory of that great naturalist, under species, evolution, Darwinism, etc.
Thus he finds that there is no key which so quickly unlocks the stores of knowledge which a library contains, as a dictionary catalogue.
The objections to it are chiefly brought by minds schooled in systems, who look askance on all innovations, and instinctively prefer round-about methods to short-hand ones.
Ask such an objector if he would prefer his dictionary of the English language arranged, not alphabetically, but subjectively, so that all medical terms should be defined only under medicine, all species of fish described only under fishes, etc., and he will probably say that there is no analogy in the case. But the analogy becomes apparent when we find, in what are called systematic catalogues, no two systems alike, and the finding of books complicated by endless varieties of classification, with no common alphabet to simplify the search. The authors of systems doubtless understand them themselves, but no one else does, until he devotes time to learn the key to them; and even when learned, the knowledge is not worth the time lost in acquiring it, since the field covered in any one catalogue is so small. Alphabetical arrangement, on the other hand, strictly adhered to, is a universal key to the authors and subjects and titles of all the books contained in the library it represents. The devotee of a bibliographical system may be as mistaken as the slave of a scientific terminology. He forgets that bibliography is not a school for teaching all departments of knowledge, but a brief and handy index to books that may contain that knowledge. A student who has once made a thorough comparative test of the merits, as aids to wide and rapid research, of the old-fashioned bibliographies and the best modern dictionary catalogues, will no more deny the superiority of the latter, than he will contest the maxim that a straight line is the nearest road between two points. Meantime, "while doctors disagree, disciples are free;" and the disciples who would follow the latest guides in the art "how to make and use a catalogue," must get rid of many formulas.
The reader will find in the chapter on bibliography, notes on some classes of catalogues, with the more notable examples of them. We are here concerned with the true method of preparing catalogues, and such plain rules as brevity will permit to be given, will be equally adapted to private or public libraries. For more ample treatment, with reasons for and against many rules laid down, reference is made to the able and acute work, "Rules for a Dictionary Catalogue," by C. A. Cutter, published by the U. S. Bureau of Education, 3d ed. 1891.
CONDENSED RULES FOR AN AUTHOR AND TITLE CATALOGUE.
Prepared by the Co-operation Committee of the American Library Association.
entry.