PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
The librarian who desires to make the management of his library in the
highest degree successful, must give special attention to the important
field of periodical literature. More and more, as the years roll on, the
periodical becomes the successful rival of the book in the claim for
public attention. Indeed, we hear now and then, denunciations of the
ever-swelling flood of magazines and newspapers, as tending to drive out
the book. Readers, we are told, are seduced from solid and improving
reading, by the mass of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals which lie
in wait for them on every hand. But no indiscriminate censure of
periodicals or of their reading, can blind us to the fact of their great
value. Because some persons devote an inordinate amount of time to them,
is no reason why we should fail to use them judiciously ourselves, or to
aid others in doing so. And because many periodicals (and even the vast
majority) are of little importance, and are filled with trifling and
ephemeral matter, that fact does not discredit the meritorious ones.
Counterfeit currency does not diminish the value of the true coin; it is
very sure to find its own just level at last; and so the wretched or the
sensational periodical, however pretentious, will fall into inevitable
neglect and failure in the long run.
It is true that the figures as to the relative issues of books and
periodicals in the publishing world are startling enough to give us
pause. It has been computed that of the annual product of the American
press, eighty-two per cent. consists of newspapers, ten per cent. of
magazines and reviews, and only eight per cent. of books. Yet this vast
redundancy of periodical literature is by no means such a menace to our
permanent literature as it appears at first sight;--and that for three
reasons: (1) a large share of the books actually published, appear in the
first instance in the periodicals in serial or casual form; (2) the
periodicals contain very much matter of permanent value; (3) the steady
increase of carefully prepared books in the publishing world, while it
may not keep pace with the rapid increase of periodicals, evinces a
growth in the right direction. It is no longer so easy to get a crude or
a poor book published, as it was a generation ago. The standard of
critical taste has risen, and far more readers are judges of what
constitutes a really good book than ever before. While it is true that
our periodical product has so grown, that whereas there were twenty years
ago, in 1878, only 7,958 different newspapers and magazines published in
the United States, there are now, in 1899, over 20,500 issued, it can
also be stated that the annual product of books has increased in the same
twenty years from less than two thousand to more than five thousand
volumes of new issues in a year. Whatever may be the future of our
American literature, it can hardly be doubted that the tendency is
steadily toward the production of more books, and better ones.
Whether a public library be large or small, its value to students will
depend greatly upon the care and completeness with which its selection of
periodical works is made, and kept up from year to year. Nothing is more
common in all libraries, public and private, than imperfect and partially
bound sets of serials, whether newspapers, reviews, magazines or the
proceedings and reports of scientific and other societies. Nothing can be
more annoying than to find the sets of such publications broken at the
very point where the reference or the wants of those consulting them
require satisfaction. In these matters, perpetual vigilance is the price
of completeness; and the librarian who is not willing or able to devote
the time and means requisite to complete the files of periodical
publications under his charge is to be censured or commiserated,
according to the causes of the failure. The first essential in keeping up
the completeness of files of ephemeral publications, next to vigilance on
the part of their custodian, is room for the arrangement of the various
parts, and means for binding with promptitude. Some libraries, and among
them a few of the largest, are so hampered for want of room, that their
serials are piled in heaps without order or arrangement, and are thus
comparatively useless until bound. In the more fortunate institutions,
which possess adequate space for the orderly arrangement of all their
stores, there can be no excuse for failing to supply any periodical,
whether bound or unbound, at the moment it is called for. It is simply
necessary to devote sufficient time each day to the systematic
arrangement of all receipts: to keep each file together in chronological
order; to supply them for the perusal of readers, with a proper check or
receipt, and to make sure of binding each new volume as fast as the
publication of titles and index enables it to be done properly. While
some libraries receive several thousands of serials, the periodical
publications taken by others amount to a very small number; but in either
case, the importance of prompt collation and immediate supply of missing
parts or numbers is equally imperative. While deficiencies in daily
newspapers can rarely be made up after the week, and sometimes not after
the day of their appearance, the missing parts of official and other
publications, as well as of reviews and magazines appearing at less
frequent intervals, can usually be supplied within the year, although a
more prompt securing of them is often necessary. In these publications,
as in the acquisition of books for any library, the collation of each
part or number is imperative, in order to avoid imperfections which may
be irreparable.
First in the ranks of these ephemeral publications, in order of number,
if not of importance, come the journals of all classes, daily and weekly,
political, illustrated, literary, scientific, mechanical, professional,
agricultural, financial, etc. From the obscure and fugitive beginnings of
journalism in the sixteenth century to the establishment of the first
continuous newspaper--the London Weekly News, in 1622, and Renaudot's
Gazette (afterwards the _Gazette de France_) in 1631, followed by the
issue of the first daily newspaper, the London Daily Courant, in 1702,
and the Boston Weekly News-letter in 1704, (the first American
journal)--to the wonderful fecundity of the modern periodical press,
which scatters the leaves of more than thirty thousand different journals
broadcast over the world, there is a long and interesting history of the
trials and triumphs of a free press. In whatever respect American
libraries may fall behind those of older lands (and their deficiencies
are vast, and, in many directions permanent) it may be said with
confidence, that in the United States the newspaper has received its
widest and most complete development. Numerically, the fullest
approximate return of the newspaper and periodical press gives a total
number of 21,500 periodical publications, regularly appearing within the
limits of the United States.
While no one library, however large and comprehensive, has either the
space or the means to accumulate a tithe of the periodicals that swarm
from a productive press, there are valid reasons why more attention
should be paid by the librarian to a careful preservation of a wise
selection of the best of all this current literature. The modern
newspaper and other periodical publications afford the fullest and
truest, and on the whole, the most impartial image of the age we live in,
that can be derived from a single source. Taken together, they afford the
richest material for the historian, or the student of politics, of
society, of literature, and of civilization in all its varied aspects.
What precious memorials of the day, even the advertisements and brief
paragraphs of the newspapers of a century ago afford us! While in a field
so vast, it is impossible for any one library to be more than a gleaner,
no such institution can afford to neglect the collection and preservation
of at least some of the more important newspapers from year to year. A
public library is not for one generation only, but it is for all time.
Opportunities once neglected of securing the current periodicals of any
age in continuous and complete form seldom or never recur. The principle
of selection will of course vary in different libraries and localities.
While the safest general rule is to secure the best and most
representative of all the journals, reviews, and magazines within the
limit of the funds which can be devoted to that purpose, there is another
principle which should largely guide the selection. In each locality, it
should be one leading object of the principal library to gather within
its walls the fullest representation possible, of the literature relating
to its own State and neighborhood. In every city and large town, the
local journals and other periodicals should form an indispensable part of
a public library collection. Where the means are wanting to purchase
these, the proprietors will frequently furnish them free of expense, for
public use; but no occasion should be lost of securing, immediately on
its issue from the press, every publication, large or small, which
relates to the local history or interests of the place where the library
is maintained.
While the files of the journals of any period furnish unquestionably the
best instruments for the history of that epoch, it is lamentable to
reflect that so little care has ever been taken to preserve a fair
representation of those of any age. The destiny of nearly all newspapers
is swift destruction; and even those which are preserved, commonly
survive in a lamentably fragmentary state. The obvious causes of the
rapid disappearance of periodical literature, are its great volume,
necessarily increasing with every year, the difficulty of lodging the
files of any long period in our narrow apartments, and the continual
demand for paper for the uses of trade. To these must be added the great
cost of binding files of journals, increasing in the direct ratio of the
size of the volume. As so formidable an expense can be incurred by very
few private subscribers to periodicals, so much the more important is it
that the public libraries should not neglect a duty which they owe to
their generation, as well as to those that are to follow. These poor
journals of to-day, which everybody is willing to stigmatize as trash,
not worth the room to store or the money to bind, are the very materials
which the man of the future will search for with eagerness, and for some
of which he will be ready to pay their weight in gold. These
representatives of the commercial, industrial, inventive, social,
literary, political, moral and religious life of the times, should be
preserved and handed down to posterity with sedulous care. No historian
or other writer on any subject who would write conscientiously or with
full information, can afford to neglect this fruitful mine of the
journals, where his richest materials are frequently to be found.
In the absence of any great library of journals, or of that universal
library which every nation should possess, it becomes the more important
to assemble in the various local libraries all those ephemeral
publications, which, if not thus preserved contemporaneously with their
issue, will disappear utterly, and elude the search of future historical
inquirers. And that library which shall most sedulously gather and
preserve such fugitive memorials of the life of the people among which it
is situated will be found to have best subserved its purpose to the
succeeding generations of men.
Not less important than the preservation of newspapers is that of reviews
and magazines. In fact, the latter are almost universally recognized as
far more important than the more fugitive literature of the daily and
weekly press. Though inferior to the journals as historical and
statistical materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund of
discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social, literary, and
religious interest as occupy the public mind during the time in which
they appear. More and more the best thought of the times gets reflected
in the pages of this portion of the periodical press. No investigator in
any department can afford to overlook the rich stores contributed to
thought in reviews and magazines. These articles are commonly more
condensed and full of matter than the average books of the period. While
every library, therefore, should possess for the current use and ultimate
reference of its readers a selection of the best, as large as its means
will permit, a great and comprehensive library, in order to be
representative of the national literature, should possess them all.
* * * * *
The salient fact that the periodical press absorbs, year by year, more of
the talent which might otherwise be expended upon literature of more
permanent form is abundantly obvious. This tendency has both its good and
its evil results. On the one hand, the best writing ability is often
drawn out by magazines and journals, which are keen competitors for
attractive matter, and for known reputations, and sometimes they secure
both in combination. On the other hand, it is a notable fact that writers
capable of excellent work often do great injustice to their reputations
by producing too hastily articles written to order, instead of the
well-considered, ripe fruits of their literary skill. Whether the brief
article answering the limits of a magazine or a review is apt to be more
or less superficial than a book treating the same topic, is a question
admitting of different views. If the writer is capable of skilful
condensation, without loss of grace of composition, or of graphic power,
then the article, measured by its influence upon the public mind, must be
preferred to the more diffuse treatise of the book. It has the immense
advantage of demanding far less of the reader's time; and whenever its
conclusions are stated in a masterly way, its impression should be quite
as lasting as that of any book treating a similar theme. Such is
doubtless the effect of the abler articles written for periodicals, which
are more condensed and full of matter in speedily available form, than
the average book of the period. In this sense it is a misuse of terms to
call the review article ephemeral, or to treat the periodicals containing
them as perishable literary commodities, which serve their term with the
month or year that produced them. On the contrary, the experience of
librarians shows that the most sought-for, and the most useful
contributions to any subject are frequently found, not in the books
written upon it, but in the files of current periodicals, or in those of
former years. It is especially to be noted that the book may frequently
lose its adaptation and usefulness by lapse of time, and the onward march
of science, while the article is apt to reflect the latest light which
can help to illustrate the subject.
While, therefore, there is always a liability of finding many crude and
sketchy contributions in the literature of the periodical press, its
conductors are ever on the alert to reduce to a minimum the weak or
unworthy offerings, and to secure a maximum of articles embodying mature
thought and fit expression. The pronounced tendency toward short methods
in every channel of human activity, is reflected in the constantly
multiplying series of periodical publications.
The publishing activities of the times are taking on a certain
coöperative element, which was not formerly known. Thus, the "literary
syndicate" has been developed by degrees into one of the most
far-reaching agencies for popular entertainment. The taste for short
stories, in place of the ancient three volume novel, has been cultivated
even in conservative England, and has become so wide-spread in the United
States, that very few periodicals which deal in fiction at all, are
without their stories begun and finished in a single issue. The talent
required to produce a fascinating and successful fiction in this narrow
compass is a peculiar one, and while there are numerous failures, there
are also a surprising number of successes. Well written descriptive
articles, too, are in demand, and special cravings for personal gossip
and lively sketches of notable living characters are manifest. That
perennial interest which mankind and womankind evince in every individual
whose name, for whatever reason, has become familiar, supplies a basis
for an inexhaustible series of light paragraphic articles. Another
fruitful field for the syndicate composition is brief essays upon any
topic of the times, the fashions, notable events, or new inventions,
public charities, education, governmental doings, current political
movements, etc. These appear almost simultaneously, in many different
periodicals, scattered throughout the country, under the copyright
_imprimatur_, which warns off all journals from republishing, which have
not subscribed to the special "syndicate" engaging them. Thus each
periodical secures, at extremely moderate rates, contributions which are
frequently written by the most noted and popular living writers, who, in
their turn, are much better remunerated for their work than they would be
for the same amount of writing if published in book form. Whether this
now popular method of attaining a wide and remunerative circulation for
their productions will prove permanent, is less certain than that many
authors now find it the surest road to profitable employment of their
pens. The fact that it rarely serves to introduce unknown writers of
talent to the reading world, may be laid to the account of the eagerness
of the syndicates to secure names that already enjoy notoriety.
The best method for filing newspapers for current reading is a vexed
question in libraries. In the large ones, where room enough exists, large
reading-stands with sloping sides furnish the most convenient access,
provided with movable metal rods to keep the papers in place. Where no
room exists for these stands, some of the numerous portable
newspaper-file inventions, or racks, may be substituted, allowing one to
each paper received at the library.
For filing current magazines, reviews, and the smaller newspapers, like
the literary and technical journals, various plans are in use. All of
these have advantages, while none is free from objection. Some libraries
use the ordinary pamphlet case, in which the successive numbers are kept
until a volume is accumulated for binding. This requires a separate case
for each periodical, and where many are taken, is expensive, though by
this method the magazines are kept neat and in order. Others use small
newspaper files or tapes for periodicals. Others still arrange them
alphabetically on shelves, in which case the latest issues are found on
top, if the chronology is preserved. In serving periodicals to readers,
tickets should be required (as for books) with title and date, as a
precaution against loss, or careless leaving upon tables.
Whether current periodicals are ever allowed to be drawn out, must depend
upon several weighty considerations. When only one copy is taken, no
circulation should be permitted, so that the magazines and journals may
be always in, at the service of readers frequenting the library. But in
some large public libraries, where several copies of each of the more
popular serials are subscribed to, it is the custom to keep one copy
(sometimes two) always in, and to allow the duplicate copies to be drawn
out. This circulation should be limited to a period much shorter than is
allowed for keeping books.
In no case, should the bound volumes of magazines, reviews, and journals
of whatever kind be allowed to leave the library. This is a rule which
should be enforced for the common benefit of all the readers, since to
lend to one reader any periodical or work of general reference is to
deprive all the rest of its use just so long as it is out of the library.
This has become all the more important since the publication of Poole's
Indexes to periodical literature has put the whole reading community on
the quest for information to be found only (in condensed form, or in the
latest treatment) in the volumes of the periodical press. And it is
really no hardship to any quick, intelligent reader, to require that
these valuable serials should be used within the library only. An article
is not like a book;--a long and perhaps serious study, requiring many
hours or days to master it. The magazine or review article, whatever
other virtues it may lack, has the supreme merit of brevity.
The only valid exception which will justify loaning the serial volumes of
periodicals outside the library, is when there are duplicate sets of any
of them. Some large libraries having a wide popular circulation are able
to buy two or more sets of the magazines most in demand, and so to lend
one out, while another is kept constantly in for use and reference. And
even a library of small means might secure for its shelves duplicate sets
of many periodicals, by simply making known that it would be glad to
receive from any families or other owners, all the numbers of their
magazines, etc., which they no longer need for use. This would bring in,
in any large town or city, a copious supply of periodicals which
house-keepers, tired of keeping, storing and dusting such unsightly
property, would be glad to bestow where they would do the most good.
Whatever periodicals are taken, it is essential to watch over their
completeness by keeping a faithfully revised check-list. This should be
ruled to furnish blank spaces for each issue of all serials taken,
whether quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily, and no week should elapse
without complete scrutiny of the list, and ordering all missing numbers
from the publishers. Mail failures are common, and unceasing vigilance is
the price that must be paid for completeness. The same check-list, by
other spaces, should show the time of expiration of subscriptions, and
the price paid per year. And where a large number of periodicals are
received, covering many parts of the country, they should be listed, not
only by an alphabet of titles, but by another alphabet of places where
published, as well.
If a new library is to be formed, having no sets of periodicals on which
to build, effort should be made to secure full sets from the beginning of
as many of the prominent magazines and reviews, American and foreign, as
the funds will permit. It is expedient to wait a little, rather than to
take up with incomplete sets, as full ones are pretty sure to turn up,
and competition between the many dealers should bring down prices to a
fair medium. In fact, many old sets of magazines are offered surprisingly
cheap, and usually well-bound. But vigilant care must be exercised to
secure perfect sets, as numbers are often mutilated, or deficient in some
pages or illustrations. This object can only be secured by collation of
every volume, page by page, with due attention to the list of
illustrations, if any are published.
In the absence of British bibliographical enterprise (a want much to be
deplored) it has fallen to the lot of American librarians to produce the
only general index of subjects to English periodical literature which
exists. Poole's Index to Periodical Literature is called by the name of
its senior editor, the late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, and was contributed to by
many librarians on a coöperative division of labor, in indexing, under
direction of Mr. Wm. I. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst College. This
index to leading periodicals is literally invaluable, and indispensable
as an aid to research. Its first volume indexes in one alphabet the
periodicals embraced, from their first issues up to 1882. The second
volume runs from 1882 to 1887, and the third covers the period from 1887
to 1891, while a fourth volume indexes the periodicals from 1892 to 1896,
inclusive. For 1897, and each year after, an annual index to the
publications of the year is issued.
Besides this, the _Review of Reviews_ publishes monthly an index to one
month's leading periodicals, and also an annual index, very full, in a
single alphabet. And the "Cumulative Index," issued both monthly and
quarterly, by W. H. Brett, the Cleveland, Ohio, librarian, is an
admirably full means of keeping our keys to periodical literature up to
date. There are other indexes to periodicals, published monthly or
quarterly, too numerous to be noticed here. The annual _New York Tribune_
Index (the only daily journal, except the _London Times_, which prints an
index) is highly useful, and may be used for other newspapers as well,
for the most important events or discussions, enabling one to search the
dailies for himself, the date once being fixed by aid of the index.
Mention should also be made here of the admirably comprehensive annual
"_Rowell's Newspaper Directory_," which should rather be called the
"American Periodical Directory," since it has a classified catalogue of
all periodicals published in the United States and Canada.