THE ENEMIES OF BOOKS.
We have seen in former chapters how the books of a library are acquired,
how they are prepared for the shelves, or for use, and how they are or
should be bound. Let us now consider the important questions which
involve the care, the protection, and the preservation of the books.
Every librarian or book owner should be something more than a custodian
of the books in his collection. He should also exercise perpetual
vigilance with regard to their safety and condition. The books of every
library are beset by dangers and by enemies. Some of these are open and
palpable; others are secret, illusive, little suspected, and liable to
come unlooked for and without warning. Some of these enemies are
impersonal and immaterial, but none the less deadly; others are
personally human in form, but most inhuman in their careless and brutal
treatment of books. How far and how fatally the books of many libraries
have been injured by these ever active and persistent enemies can never
be adequately told. But we may point out what the several dangers are
which beset them, and how far the watchful care of the librarian and his
assistants may fore-stall or prevent them.
One of the foremost of the inanimate enemies of books is dust. In some
libraries the atmosphere is dust-laden, to a degree which seems
incredible until you witness its results in the deposits upon books,
which soil your fingers, and contaminate the air you breathe, as you
brush or blow it away. Peculiarly liable to dust are library rooms
located in populous towns, or in business streets, and built close to
the avenues of traffic. Here, the dust is driven in at the windows and
doors by every breeze that blows. It is an omnipresent evil, that cannot
be escaped or very largely remedied. As preventive measures, care should
be taken not to build libraries too near the street, but to have ample
front and side yards to isolate the books as far as may be consistent
with convenient access. Where the library is already located immediately
on the street, a subscription for sprinkling the thoroughfare with water,
the year round, would be true economy.
In some cities, the evils of street dust are supplemented by the
mischiefs of coal smoke, to an aggravated degree. Wherever soft coal is
burned as the principal fuel, a black, fuliginous substance goes floating
through the air, and soils every thing it touches. It penetrates into
houses and public buildings, often intensified by their own interior use
of the same generator of dirt, and covers the books of the library with
its foul deposits. You may see, in the public libraries of some western
cities, how this perpetual curse of coal smoke has penetrated the leaves
of all the books, resisting all efforts to keep it out, and slowly but
surely deteriorating both paper and bindings. Here, preventive measures
are impossible, unless some device for consuming the coal smoke of
chimneys and factories were made compulsory, or the evil somewhat
mitigated by using a less dangerous fuel within the library.
But, aside from these afflictions of dust, in its most aggravated form,
every library and every room in any building is subject to its persistent
visitations. Wherever carpets or rugs cover the floors, there dust has an
assured abiding-place, and it is diffused throughout the apartment in
impalpable clouds, at every sweeping of the floors. Hence it would be
wise to adopt in public libraries a floor-covering like linoleum, or some
substance other than woolen, which would be measurably free from dust,
while soft enough to deaden the sound of feet upon the floors. Even with
this preventive precaution, there will always be dust enough, and too
much for comfort, or for the health of the books. Only a thorough
dusting, carried on if possible daily, can prevent an accumulation of
dust, at once deleterious to the durability of the books, and to the
comfort both of librarians and readers. Dust is an insidious foe,
stealing on its march silently and unobserved, yet, however impalpable in
the atmosphere of a library, it will settle upon the tops of every shelf
of books, it will penetrate their inner leaves, it will lodge upon the
bindings, soiling books and readers, and constituting a perpetual
annoyance.
It is not enough to dust the tops of the books periodically; a more full
and radical remedy is required, to render library books presentable. At
no long intervals, there should be a thorough library cleaning, as
drastic and complete as the house-cleaning which neat housewives
institute twice a year, with such wholesome results. The books are to be
taken down from the shelves, and subjected to a shaking-up process, which
will remove more of the dust they have absorbed than any brush can reach.
To do this effectually, take them, if of moderate thickness, by the
half-dozen at a time from the shelf, hold them loosely on a table, their
fronts downward, backs uppermost, then with a hand at either side of the
little pile, strike them smartly together a few times, until the dust,
which will fly from them in a very palpable cloud, ceases to fall. Then
lay them on their ends, with the tops uppermost on the table, and repeat
the concussion in that posture, when you will eliminate a fresh crop of
dust, though not so thick as the first. After this, let each volume of
the lot be brushed over at the sides and back with a soft (never stiff)
brush, or else with a piece of cotton or woolen cloth, and so restored
clean to the shelves. While this thorough method of cleansing will take
time and pains, it will pay in the long run. It will not eliminate all
the dust (which in a large collection is a physical impossibility) but it
will reduce it to a minimum. Faithfully carried out, as a periodical
supplement to a daily dusting of the books as they stand on the shelves,
it will immensely relieve the librarian or book-owner, who can then, (and
then only) feel that he has done his whole duty by his books.
Another dangerous enemy of the library book is damp, already briefly
referred to. Books kept in any basement room, or near any wall, absorb
moisture with avidity; both paper and bindings becoming mildewed, and
often covered with blue mould. If long left in this perilous condition,
sure destruction follows; the glue or paste which fastens the cover
softens, the leather loses its tenacity, and the leaves slowly rot, until
the worthless volumes smell to heaven. Books thus injured may be
partially recovered, before the advanced stage of decomposition, by
removal to a dry atmosphere, and by taking the volumes apart, drying the
sheets, and rebinding--a very expensive, but necessary remedy, provided
the books are deemed worth preserving.
But a true remedy is the preventive one. No library should ever be kept,
even in part, in a basement story, nor should any books ever be located
near the wall of a building. All walls absorb, retain, and give out
moisture, and are dangerous and oft-times fatal neighbors to books. Let
the shelves be located at right angles to every wall--with the end
nearest to it at least twelve to eighteen inches removed, and the danger
will be obviated.
A third enemy of the book is heat. Most libraries are unfortunately
over-heated,--sometimes from defective means of controlling the
temperature, and sometimes from carelessness or want of thought in the
attendant. A high temperature is very destructive to books. It warps
their covers, so that volumes unprotected by their fellows, or by a book
support, tend to curl up, and stay warped until they become a nuisance.
It also injures the paper of the volumes by over-heating, and weakening
the tenacity of the leaves held together by the glue on the back, besides
drying to an extreme the leather, till it cracks or crumbles under the
heat. The upper shelves or galleries of any library are most seriously
affected by over-heating, because the natural law causes the heat to rise
toward the ceiling. If you put your hand on some books occupying the
highest places in some library rooms, in mid-winter, when the fires are
kept at their maximum, the heat of the volume will almost burn your
fingers. If these books were sentient beings, and could speak, would they
not say--"our sufferings are intolerable?"
The remedy is of course a preventive one; never to suffer the library to
become over-heated, and to have proper ventilation on every floor,
communicating with the air outside. Seventy degrees Fahrenheit is a safe
and proper maximum temperature for books and librarian.
The mischief arising from gas exhalations is another serious source of
danger to books. In many well-lighted libraries, the heat itself from the
numerous gas-burners is sufficient to injure them, and there is besides a
sulphuric acid escaping from the coal-gas fluid, in combustion, which is
most deleterious to bindings. The only remedy appears to be, where
libraries are open evenings, to furnish them with electric lights. This
improved mode of illumination is now so perfected, and so widely
diffused, that it may be reckoned a positive boon to public libraries, in
saving their books from one of their worst and most destructive enemies.
Another of the potent enemies of books is fire. I refer, not to
over-heating the rooms they occupy, but to the risk they continually run,
in most libraries, of total destruction. The chronicle of burned
libraries would make a long and melancholy record, on which there is no
space here to enter. Irreparable losses of manuscripts and early printed
books, and precious volumes printed in small editions, have arisen from
men's neglect of building our book-repositories fire-proof. In all
libraries not provided with iron or steel shelves, there is perpetual
danger. Books do not burn easily, unless surrounded with combustibles,
but these are furnished in nearly all libraries, by surrounding the books
on three sides with wooden shelves, which need only to be ignited at any
point to put the whole collection in a blaze. Then follows the usual
abortive endeavor to save the library by the aid of fire engines, which
flood the building, until the water spoils nearly all which the fire does
not consume. The incalculable losses which the cause of learning has
sustained from the burning of public, university and ecclesiastical
libraries are far greater than the cost which the provision of fire-proof
repositories would have entailed.
Of late years, there has been a partial reform in library construction.
Some have been built fire-proof throughout, with only stone, brick,
concrete and iron material, even to the floors and window casings. Many
more have had iron shelves and iron stacks to hold the shelves
constructed, and there are now several competing manufacturers of these
invaluable safeguards to books. The first library interior constructed
wholly of iron was that of the Library of Congress at Washington, which
had been twice consumed, first when the Capitol was burned by the British
army in 1814, and again in 1851, through a defective flue, when only
20,000 volumes were saved from the flames, out of a total of 55,000. The
example of iron construction has been slowly followed, until now the
large cities have most of their newly-constructed libraries approximately
fire-proof, although many are exposed to fire in parts, owing to a
niggardly and false economy. The lesson that what is worth doing at all
is worth doing well, and that every neglect of security brings sooner or
later irreparable loss, is very slowly learned. Whole hecatombs of books
have been sacrificed to the spirit of commercial greed, blind or
short-sighted enough not to see that secure protection to public
property, though costlier at first, is far cheaper in the end. You may
speak of insurance against library losses by fire, but what insurance
could restore the rare and costly Shakespearean treasures of the
Birmingham Free Library, or the unique and priceless manuscripts that
went up in flames in the city library of Strasburg, in 1870, or the many
precious and irreplaceable manuscript archives of so many of our States,
burned in the conflagration of their capitols?
One would think that the civilized world had had lessons enough, ever
since that seventh century burning of the Alexandrian library by the
Caliph Omar, with that famous but apocryphal rhetorical dilemma, put in
his mouth perhaps by some nimble-witted reporter:--"If these books agree
with the Koran, they are useless, and should be burned: if not, they are
pernicious, and must not be spared." But the heedless world goes
carelessly on, deaf to the voice of reason, and the lessons of history,
amid the holocausts of literature and the wreck of blazing libraries,
uttering loud newspaper wails at each new instance of destruction,
forgotten in a week, then cheerfully renewing the business of building
libraries that invite the flames.
Nothing here said should be interpreted as advice not to insure any
library, in all cases where it is not provided with iron cases for the
books, or a fire-proof building. On the contrary, the menaced destruction
of books or manuscripts that cannot be replaced should lead to securing
means in advance for replacing all the rest in case of loss by fire. And
the experience of the past points the wisdom of locating every library in
an isolated building, where risks of fire from other buildings are
reduced to a minimum, instead of in a block whose buildings (as in most
commercial structures) are lined with wood.
You will perhaps attach but small importance at first thought, to the
next insidious foe to library books that I shall name--that is, wetting
by rain. Yet most buildings leak at the roof, sometime, and some old
buildings are subject to leaks all the time. Even under the roof of the
Capitol at Washington, at every melting of a heavy snow-fall, and on
occasion of violent and protracted rains, there have been leaks pouring
down water into the libraries located in the old part of the building.
Each of these saturated and injured its quota of books, some of which
could only be restored to available use by re-binding, and even then the
leaves were left water-stained in part. See to it that your library roof
is water-tight, or the contents of your library will be constantly
exposed to damage against which there is no insurance.
Another besetting danger to the books of our libraries arises from
insects and vermin. These animated foes appear chiefly in the form of
book-worms, cockroaches, and mice. The first-named is rare in American
libraries, though its ravages have extended far and wide among the old
European ones. This minute little insect, whose scientific name is the
_anobium paniceum_, bores through the leaves of old volumes, making
sometimes holes which deface and mutilate the text. All our public
libraries, doubtless, have on their shelves old folios in vellum or
leather bindings, which present upon opening the disagreeable vision of
leaves eaten through (usually before they crossed the sea) by these
pernicious little borers. It is comforting to add, that I have never
known of any book-worm in the Congressional Library--except the human
variety, which is frequently in evidence. Georgetown College library once
sent me a specimen of the insect, which was found alive in one of its
volumes, but the united testimony of librarians is that this pest is rare
in the United States. As to remedies, the preventive one of sprinkling
the shelves twice a year with a mixture of powdered camphor and snuff, or
the vapor of benzine or carbolic acid, or other repellant chemicals, is
resorted to abroad, but I have not heard of any similar practice in this
country. I may remark in passing, that the term "book-worm" is a
misnomer, since it is not a worm at all, but an insect. A more serious
insect menace is the cockroach, a hungry, unclean little beast, which
frequents a good many libraries, and devours bindings (especially fresh
ones) to get at the paste or savory parts of the binding. The remedy for
this evil, when once found to exist, is to scatter the most effective
roach poison that can be found, which may arrest further ravages.
Another insect pest is the Croton bug, (_Blatta Germanica_) which eats
into cloth bindings to get at the sizing or albumen. The late eminent
entomologist, Dr. C. V. Riley, pronounced them the worst pest known in
libraries, but observed that they do not attack books bound in leather,
and confine their ravages to the outside of cloth-bound books, never
troubling the leaves. The remedy prescribed is a powder in which
pyrethrum is the chief ingredient, sprinkled about the shelves.
Among the rodents, mice are apt to be busy and mischievous infesters of
libraries. They are extremely fond of paste, and being in a chronic
state of hunger, they watch opportunities of getting at any library
receptacle of it. They will gnaw any fresh binding, whether of cloth,
board, or leather, to get at the coveted food. They will also gnaw some
books, and even pamphlets, without any apparent temptation of a succulent
nature. A good library cat or a series of mouse traps, skilfully baited,
may rid you of this evil.
The injury that comes to library books from insufficient care in
protecting them on the shelves is great and incalculable. There are to be
seen in every library, volumes all twisted out of shape by the sagging or
leaning, to which the end-book is subjected, and which is often shared by
all its neighbors on the shelf. The inevitable result is that the book is
not only spoiled in its good looks, but (which is vastly more important)
it is injured in its binding, which is strained and weakened just in
proportion to the length of time in which it is subjected to such risks.
The plain remedy is to take care that every volume is supported upright
upon the shelf, in some way. When the shelf is full, the books will
support one another. But when volumes are withdrawn, or when a shelf is
only partly filled with books, the unsupported volumes tumble by force of
gravitation, and those next them sag and lean, or fall like a row of
bricks, pushing one another over. No shelf of books can safely be left in
this condition. Some one of the numerous book-supports that have been
contrived should be always ready, to hold up the volumes which are liable
to lean and fall.
We come now to the active human enemies of books, and these are unhappily
found among some of the readers who frequent our libraries. These abuses
are manifold and far-reaching. Most of them are committed through
ignorance, and can be corrected by the courteous but firm interposition
of the librarian, instructing the delinquent how to treat a book in hand.
Others are wilful and unpardonable offences against property rights and
public morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of these is
book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely detected until the
mischief is done, and the culprit gone. I have found whole pages torn out
of translations, in the volumes of Bohn's Classical Library, doubtless by
students wanting the translated text as a "crib" in their study of the
original tongue. Some readers will watch their opportunity, and mutilate
a book by cutting out plates or a map, to please their fancy, or perhaps
to make up a defective copy of the same work. Those consulting bound
files of newspapers will ruthlessly despoil them by cutting out articles
or correspondence, or advertisements, and carrying off the stolen
extracts, to save themselves the trouble of copying. Others, bolder
still, if not more unscrupulous, will deliberately carry off a library
book under a coat, or in a pocket, perhaps signing a false name to a
reader's ticket to hide the theft, or escape detection. Against these
scandalous practices, there is no absolute safeguard in any library. Even
where a police watch is kept, thefts are perpetrated, and in most
libraries where no watchman is employed, the librarian and his assistants
are commonly far too busy to exercise close scrutiny of all readers. As
one safeguard, no rare or specially costly book should be entrusted to a
reader except under the immediate eye of the librarian or assistant.
Ordinary books can be replaced if carried off, and by watching the
rarities, risk of theft can be reduced to a minimum.
When newspapers are given out to readers, it should always be in a part
of the library where those using them are conscious of a surveillance
exercised over their movements. The penalty of neglecting this may at any
time be the mutilation of an important file, and it must be remembered
that such damage, once done, cannot be repaired. You can replace a
mutilated book usually by buying a new one, but a newspaper can almost
never be replaced. Even in the city of Boston, the librarian of the
Athenaeum library records the disgraceful fact, that "the temptation to
avoid the trouble of copying, by cutting out articles from newspapers is
too strong for the honesty of a considerable part of the public." And it
was recorded by the custodian of a public library in Albany that all the
plates were missing from certain books, that the poetry and best
illustrations were cut from magazines before they had lain on the tables
a week, and strange to say, that many of these depredations were
committed by women.
It is a difficult problem how to prevent such outrages to decency, and
such irreparable depredations on the books in our libraries as destroy,
in great part, their value. A posted notice, reminding readers that
mutilation of books or periodicals is a penal offence, will warn off
many, if not all, from such acts of vandalism. If there is no law
punishing the offence, agitate until you get one. Expose through the
press such thefts and mutilations as are discovered. Interest readers
whom you know, to be watchful of those you do not know, and to quietly
report any observed violation of rules. When a culprit is detected, push
the case to prompt legal hearing, and let the penalty of the law be
enforced. Let it be known that the public property in books is too sacred
a right to be violated with impunity. Inculcate by every means and on
every opportunity the sentiment that readers who freely benefit by the
books supplied should themselves feel personal concern in their
cleanliness and preservation, and that the interest of the library is
really the interest of all.
A daily abuse practiced by many readers in libraries, though without
wrongful intent, is the piling of one book on top of another while open.
This is inexcusable ill-treatment, for it subjects the open book thus
burdened, to injury, besides probably soiling its pages with dust.
Especially harmful is such careless treatment of large volumes of
newspapers or illustrated works.
Careless use of ink is the cause of much injury to library books. As a
rule (to which the very fewest exceptions should be made) pencils only
should be allowed to readers, who must forego the use of ink, with the
inevitable risk of dropping it upon the book to its irreparable injury.
The use of ink in fountain pens is less objectionable. Tracing of maps or
plates should not be allowed, unless with a soft pencil. Under no
circumstances should tracing with a pen or other hard instrument be
permitted to any reader. Failure to enforce this rule may result in ruin
of valuable engravings or maps.
There is one class of books which demand special and watchful care at the
hands of the librarian. These are the fine illustrated works, mostly in
large folio, which include the engravings of the art galleries of Europe,
and many other specially rare or costly publications. These should be
carefully shelved in cases where they can lie on their sides, not placed
upright, as in some collections, to lean over, and, sooner or later to
break their backs, and necessitate rebinding. When supplied to readers,
there should not be more than one volume at a time given out, to avoid
the risk, always threatening, of careless handling or of opening one
volume on top of another that is open. There should also be a printed
notice or label affixed to the side cover of every illustrated work
reading, "Never touch an engraving," or an equivalent warning. This will
go far, by its plain reminder, to prevent soiling the pages by the
fingers, a practice which rapidly deteriorates fine books, and if long
continued, renders them unfit to be exhibited to clean-handed readers.
All plates should be stamped at some portion of their surface (it is
often done on the back) with the embossing stamp of the library, as a
means of identification if abstracted from the volume to which they
belong.
Such books should, moreover, be consulted on a large table, or better an
adjustable stand (to avoid frequent lifting or shifting of the position
of the volume when inspecting the plates) and always under the eye of the
librarian or an assistant not far removed. These precautions will insure
far more careful treatment, and will result in handing down to a new
generation of readers many a rare and precious volume, which would
otherwise be destroyed or irretrievably injured in a very few years. The
library treasures which cost so much to bring together should never be
permitted to suffer from want of care to preserve them.
All writing upon the margins of books should be prohibited--other than
simple pencil corrections of the text, as to an erroneous date, name,
etc., which corrections of errors should not only be permitted, but
welcomed, upon due verification. The marking of passages for copying or
citation should be tolerated only upon the rigid condition that every
user of the book rubs out his own pencil marks before returning it. I
have seen lawyers and others thoughtless enough of right and wrong to
mark long passages in pen and ink in books belonging to public libraries.
This is a practice to be sternly repressed, even at the cost of denying
further library privileges to the offender.
Turning down leaves in a book to keep the place is one of the easily
besetting sins of too many readers. Those who thus dogs-ear a volume
should be taught that the vile practice weakens and wears out the leaves
thus folded down, and makes the book a more easy prey to dust and
disintegration. However busy I may be, I instinctively turn back every
turned-down leaf I notice in any book, before using it, or handing it to
another. A good safe-guard would be to provide a supply of little narrow
strips of paper, in the ticket boxes at the library tables to serve as
the book-markers so frequently needed by readers. For this purpose, no
thick or smooth calendered paper should be used, which falls out of any
loosely bound book too readily--but a thin soft paper un-sized, which
will be apt to retain its place. I have lost valuable time (which I shall
never see again) in trying to find the pages marked for me by a searcher
who had thoughtlessly inserted bits of card-board as markers--which kept
falling out by their own weight. The book-marks should be at least two
inches long, and not more than half an inch wide; and rough edges are
better than smooth ones, for they will adhere better to the head of the
volume where placed. Better still it is, to provide paper book-marks
forked at the lower end by slitting, then doubled so that the mark will
go on both sides of the leaf at once. This is the only sure safe-guard
against these bits of paper falling out, and thus losing the place. Never
put cards, or letters, or documents, or any solid substance into a book.
It weakens the binding, and if continued, often breaks the back. The fact
that most of the injuries to which books are exposed are unintentional
injuries does not alter the fact that they are none the less injuries to
be guarded against. Wilful perpetration of the many abuses referred to
may be rare, but the unconscious perpetrators should be instructed how to
use books by a vigilant librarian. And they who have thus been taught to
be careful of the books in a public library will learn to be more careful
of their own, which is a great step in the education of any one.
It ought not to be needful to charge any one never to wet the finger to
turn over the leaves of a book--a childish habit, akin to running out the
tongue when writing, or moving the lips when reading to one's self. The
only proper way to turn the leaf is at the upper right-hand corner, and
the index-finger of the right hand will always be found competent to that
duty.
Still less should it be needful to insist upon the importance to every
reader of books, of coming to their perusal clean-handed. When you
reflect that nine-tenths of the soiling and spoiling which books undergo
comes from the dirty hands of many readers, this becomes a vital point.
Fouquet, a learned book collector of France, used to keep a pile of white
gloves in the ante-room of his library, and no visitor was allowed to
cross the threshold, or to handle a book without putting on a pair, lest
he should soil the precious volumes with naked hands. Such a refinement
of care to keep books immaculate is not to be expected in this age of the
world; and yet, a librarian who respects his calling is often tempted to
wish that there were some means of compelling people to be more careful
about books than they are.
It ought not ever to be true that an enemy to the welfare of library
books is found in the librarian himself, or in any of his assistants, yet
there have been those employed in the care of books who have abused their
positions and the volumes entrusted to their charge, not only by neglect
of care, (which is a negative injury) but by positive and continual ill
treatment. This may arise from ignorance of better methods, but ignorance
is a poor excuse for one credited with the intelligence of a librarian.
In some libraries, books are treated with positive indignity, and are
permanently injured by tightly wedging them together. Never crowd books
by main force into shelves too short or too small for them. It strains
the backs, and seriously injures the bindings. Every book should slip
easily past its fellows on the shelf. If a volume is too tall to go in
its place, it should be relegated to lower shelves for larger books,
never letting its head be crowded against the shelf above it.
One should never pull books out from the shelf by their head-bands, or by
pulling at the binding, but place the finger firmly on the top of the
book, next to the binding, and press down while drawing out the volume.
From failure to observe this simple precaution, you will find in all
libraries multitudes of torn or broken bindings at the top--a wholly
needless defacement and waste.
Never permit a book to be turned down on its face to keep the place. This
easily besetting habit weakens the book, and frequently soils its leaves
by contact with a dusty table. For the same reason, one volume should not
be placed within the leaves of another to keep the place where a
book-mark of paper, so easily supplied, should always be used. Books
should not be turned down on the fore-edges or fronts on the library
tables, as practiced in most book-stores, in order to better display the
stock. The same habit prevails in many libraries, from careless
inattention. When necessary, in order to better read the titles, they
should never be left long in such position. This treatment weakens the
back infallibly, and if long continued breaks it. Librarians, of all
persons in the world, should learn, and should lead others to learn,
never to treat a book with indignity, and how truly the life of a book
depends upon proper treatment, as well as that of an animated being.
These things, and others of my suggestions, may seem trifles to some; but
to those who consider how much success in life depends upon attention to
what are called trifles--nay, how much both human taste and human
happiness are promoted by care regarding trifles, they will not appear
unimportant. The existence of schools to teach library science, and of
manuals devoted to similar laudable aims, is an auspicious omen of the
new reign of refined taste in those nobler arts of life which connect
themselves with literature, and are to be hailed as authentic evidences
of the onward progress of civilization.