AIDS TO READERS.
There is one venerable Latin proverb which deserves a wider recognition
than it has yet received. It is to the effect that "the best part of
learning is to know where to find things." From lack of this knowledge,
an unskilled reader will often spend hours in vainly searching for what a
skilled reader can find in less than five minutes. Now, librarians are
presumed to be skilled readers, although it would not be quite safe to
apply this designation to all of that profession, since there are those
among librarians, or their assistants, who are mere novices in the art of
reading to advantage. Manifestly, one cannot teach what he does not know:
and so the librarian who has not previously travelled the same road, will
not be able to guide the inquiring reader who asks him to point out the
way. But if the way has once been found, the librarian, with only a
fairly good memory, kept in constant exercise by his vocation, can find
it again. Still more surely, if he has been through it many times, will
he know it intuitively, the moment any question is asked about it.
It is true of the great majority of readers resorting to a library, that
they have a most imperfect idea, both of what they want, and of the
proper way to find it. The world of knowledge, they know, is vast, and
they are quite bewildered by the many paths that lead to some part or
other of it, crossing each other in all directions. And among the
would-be readers may be found every shade of intelligence, and every
degree of ignorance. There is the timid variety, too modest or diffident
to ask for any help at all, and so feeling about among the catalogues or
other reference-books in a baffled search for information. There is the
sciolist variety, who knows it all, or imagines that he does, and who
asks for proof of impossible facts, with an assurance born of the
profoundest ignorance. Then, too, there is the half-informed reader, who
is in search of a book he once read, but has clean forgotten, which had a
remarkable description of a tornado in the West, or a storm and
ship-wreck at sea, or a wonderful tropical garden, or a thrilling escape
from prison, or a descent into the bowels of the earth, or a tremendous
snow-storm, or a swarming flight of migratory birds, or a mausoleum of
departed kings, or a haunted chamber hung with tapestry, or the fatal
caving-in of a coal-mine, or a widely destructive flood, or a
hair-breadth escape from cannibals, or a race for life, pursued by
wolves, or a wondrous sub-marine grotto, or a terrible forest fire, or
any one of a hundred scenes or descriptions, all of which the librarian
is presumed, not only to have read, but to have retained in his memory
the author, the title, and the very chapter of the book which contained
it.
To give some idea of the extent and variety of information which a
librarian is supposed to possess, I have been asked, almost at the same
time, to refer a reader to the origin of Candlemas day, to define the
Pragmatic Sanction, to give, out of hand, the aggregate wealth of Great
Britain, compared with that of half-a-dozen other nations, to define the
limits of neutrality or belligerent rights, to explain what is meant by
the Gresham law, to tell what ship has made the quickest voyage to
Europe, when she made it, and what the time was, to elucidate the meaning
of the Carolina doctrine, to explain the character and objects of the
Knights of the Golden Circle, to tell how large are the endowments of the
British Universities, to give the origin of the custom of egg-rolling,
to tell the meaning of the cipher dispatches, to explain who was "Extra
Billy Smith," to tell the aggregate number killed on all sides during the
Napoleonic wars, to certify who wrote the "Vestiges of Creation," or,
finally, to give the author of one of those innumerable ancient proverbs,
which float about the world without a father.
The great number and variety of such inquiries as are propounded by
readers should not appal one. Nor should one too readily take refuge from
a troublesome reader by the plea, however convenient, that the library
contains nothing on that subject. While this may unquestionably be true,
especially as regards a small public library, it should never be put
forward as a certainty, until one has looked. Most inquiring readers are
very patient, and being fully sensible how much they owe to the free
enjoyment of the library treasures, and to the aid of the superintendent
of them, they are willing to wait for information. However busy you may
be at the moment, the reader can be asked to wait, or to call at a less
busy time, when you will be prepared with a more satisfactory answer than
can be given on the spur of the moment. What cannot be done to-day, may
often be done to-morrow. Remember always, that readers are entitled to
the best and most careful service, for a librarian is not only the
keeper, but the interpreter of the intellectual stores of the library. It
is a good and a safe rule to let no opportunity of aiding a reader
escape. One should be particularly careful to volunteer help to those who
are too new or too timid to ask: and it is they who will be most grateful
for any assistance. The librarian has only to put himself in their
place--(the golden rule for a librarian, as for all the world besides),
and to consider how often, in his own searches in libraries, in the
continual, never-ending quest of knowledge, he would have been thankful
for a hint from some one who knew, or had been over the ground of his
search before; and then he will feel the full value to the novice, of
such knowledge as he can impart.
He is not to forget that his superior opportunities for learning all
about things, with a whole library at command, and within elbow-reach
every hour of the day, should impose upon him a higher standard of
attainment than most readers are supposed to have reached. In the
intervals of library work, I am accustomed to consider the looking up of
subjects or authorities as one of my very best recreations. It is as
interesting as a game of whist, and much more profitable. It is more
welcome than routine labor, for it rests or diverts the mind, by its very
variety, while, to note the different views or expressions of writers on
the same subject, affords almost endless entertainment. In tracing down a
quotation also, or the half-remembered line of some verse in poetry, you
encounter a host of parallel poetic images or expressions, which
contribute to aid the memory, or to feed the imagination. Or, in pursuing
a sought-for fact in history, through many volumes, you learn
collaterally much that may never have met your eye before. Full, as all
libraries are, of what we call trash, there is almost no book which will
not give us something,--even though it be only the negative virtue of a
model to be avoided. One may not, indeed, always find what he seeks,
because it may not exist at all, or it may not be found in the limited
range of his small library, but he is almost sure to find something which
gives food for thought, or for memory to note. And this is one of the
foremost attractions, let me add, of the librarian's calling; it is more
full of intellectual variety, of wide-open avenues to knowledge, than any
other vocation whatever. His daily quests in pursuit of information to
lay before others, bring him acquainted with passages that are full of
endless suggestion for himself. He may not be able to pursue any of these
avenues at the moment; but he should make a mental or a written note of
them, for future benefit. His daily business being learning, why should
he not in time, become learned? There are, of course, among the
infinitude of questions, that come before the librarian, some that are
really insoluble problems. One of these is to be found among the topics
of inquiry I just now suggested; namely: what is the aggregate wealth of
Great Britain, or that of other nations? This is a question frequently
asked by inquiring Congressmen, who imagine that an answer may readily be
had from one of those gifted librarians who is invested with that
apocryphal attribute, commonly called omniscience. But the inquirer is
suddenly confronted by the fact (and a very stubborn fact it is) that not
a single foreign nation has ever taken any census of wealth whatever. In
Great Britain (about which country inquiry as to the national resources
more largely centres) the government wisely lets alone the attempt to
tabulate the value of private wealth, knowing that such an object is
utterly impracticable.
But, while the British census makes no attempt at estimating the property
of the people, the independent estimates of statistical writers vary
hopelessly and irreconcilably. Mr. J. R. McCulloch, one of the foremost
accredited writers on economic science, lays it down as a dictum, that
"sixty years is the shortest time in which the capital of an old and
densely-peopled country can be expected to be doubled." Yet Joseph Lowe
assumes the wealth of the United Kingdom to have doubled in eighteen
years, from 1823 to 1841; while George R. Porter, in his
widely-accredited book on the "Progress of the Nation," and Leoni Levi, a
publicist of high reputation, make out, (by combining their estimates)
that the private wealth of England increased fifty per cent. in seventeen
years, at which rate it would double in about twenty-nine years, instead
of sixty, as laid down by Mr. McCulloch. Mr. Levi calculates the
aggregate private wealth of Great Britain in 1858, at $29,178,000,000,
being a fraction less than the guesses of the census enumerators at the
national wealth of the United States, twelve years later, in 1870. Can
one guess be said to be any nearer the fact than the other? May we not be
pardoned for treating all estimates as utterly fallacious that are not
based upon known facts and figures? Why do we hear so much of the
"approximate correctness" of so many statistical tables, when, in point
of fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, and the averages and
conclusions built upon them are all assumed? "Statisticians," says one of
the fraternity, "are generally held to be eminently practical people; on
the contrary, they are more given to theorizing than any other class of
writers; and are generally less expert in it."
In the presence of such gross discrepancies as these, by statisticians of
the highest repute, and among such a practical people as the English,
what value can be attached to the mere estimates of wealth which have
been attempted in the census of the United States? The careful
Superintendent of the Census of 1870 and 1880, the late Francis A.
Walker, writes concerning it:
"At the best, these figures represent but the opinion of one man, or of a
body of men, in the collection of material, and in the calculation of the
several elements of the public wealth." And in the last Census Report for
1890, the results of the so-called "census of wealth," are cautiously
submitted, "as showing in a general way a continuous increase in the
wealth of the nation, the exact proportions of which cannot be
measured."
Now, what are we to conclude regarding the attempt to elevate to a rank
in statistical science, mere estimates of private wealth, for a large
portion of which, by the statements of those who make them, no actual
statistical data exist? And when this is confessedly the case in our own
country, the only one attempting the impossible task of tabulating the
wealth of the people, what shall we say of the demand that is made upon
our credulity of accepting the guesses of Mr. Giffen, or Mr. Mulhall, as
to British wealth? Are we not justified in applying the old Latin
maxim--"_De non apparentibus, et de non existentibus, eadem est ratio_,"
and replying to those who demand of us to know how much any nation is
worth, that it is sometimes an important part of knowledge to know that
nothing can be known?
Among the literally innumerable inquiries liable to be made of a
librarian, here is one which may give him more than a moment's pause,
unless he is uncommonly well versed in American political
history--namely, "What was the Ostend Manifesto?" To a mind not
previously instructed these two words "Ostend Manifesto", convey
absolutely no meaning. You turn to the standard encyclopaedias,
Appleton's, Johnson's Universal, and the Britannica, and you find an
account of Ostend, a little Belgian city, its locality, commerce, and
population, but absolutely nothing about an Ostend manifesto. But in J.
N. Larned's "History for Ready Reference", a useful book in five volumes,
arranged in alphabetical order, you get a clue. It refers you from
Ostend, under letter O, to Cuba, where you learn that this formidable
Ostend manifesto was nothing more nor less than a paper drawn up and
signed by Messrs. Buchanan, Mason, and Slidell, Ministers of the United
States to Great Britain, France, and Spain, respectively, when at the
watering-place of Ostend, in 1854, importing that the island of Cuba
ought to, and under certain circumstances, must belong to the United
States. Looking a little farther, as the manifesto is not published in
Larned, you find the text of the document itself in Cluskey's "Political
Text-Book", of 1860, and in some of the American newspapers of 1854. This
is a case of pursuing a once notorious, but more recently obscure topic,
through many works of reference until found.
In many searches for names of persons, it becomes highly important to
know before-hand where to look, and equally important where not to look,
for certain biographies. Thus, if you seek for the name of any living
character, it is necessary to know that it would be useless to look in
the Encyclopædia Britannica, because the rule of compilation of that work
purposely confined its sketches of notable persons to those who were
already deceased when its volumes appeared. So you save the time of
hunting in at least one conspicuous work of reference, before you begin,
by simply knowing its plan.
In like manner, you should know that it is useless to search for two
classes of names in the "Dictionary of National Biography," the most
copious biographical dictionary of British personages ever published,
begun in 1885, under Leslie Stephen, and reaching its sixty-first volume,
and letter W in 1899, under the editorship of Sidney Lee. These two
classes of names are first, all persons not British, that is, not either
English, Scottish or Irish; and secondly, names of British persons now
living. This is because this great work, like the Britannica, purposely
confines itself to the names of notables deceased; and, unlike the
Britannica, it further limits its biographies to persons connected by
birth or long residence with the British kingdom. Knowing this fact
before-hand, will save any time wasted in searching the Dictionary of
National Biography for any persons now living, or for any American or
European names.
Another caveat may properly be interposed as regards searches for
information in that most widely advertised and circulated of all works of
reference,--the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The plan of that work was to
furnish the reading public with the very best treatises upon leading
topics in science, history, and literature, by eminent scholars and
specialists in various fields. Pursuant to this general scheme, each
great subject has a most elaborate, and sometimes almost exhaustive
article--as, for example, chemistry, geology, etc., while the minor
divisions of each topic do not appear in the alphabet at all, or appear
only by cross-reference to the generic name under which they are treated.
It results, that while you find, for example, a most extensive article
upon "Anatomy", filling a large part of a volume of the Britannica, you
look in vain in the alphabet for such subjects as "blood, brain,
cartilage, sinew, tissue," etc., which are described only in the article
"Anatomy." This method has to be well comprehended in order for any
reader to make use of this great Cyclopaedia understandingly. Even by the
aid of the English index to the work, issued by its foreign publishers,
the reader who is in hasty quest of information in the Britannica, will
most frequently be baffled by not finding any minor subject in the index.
The English nation, judged by most of the productions of its literary and
scientific men in that field, has small genius for indexing. It was
reserved to an American to prepare and print a thorough index, at once
alphabetical and analytical, to this great English thesaurus of
information--an index ten times more copious, and therefore more useful
to the student, than the meagre one issued in England. This index fills
3,900 closely printed columns, forming the whole of volume 25 of the
Philadelphia edition of the work. By its aid, every name and every topic,
treated anywhere in this vast repository of human knowledge can be traced
out and appropriated; while without it, the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
with all its great merits, must remain very much in the nature of a
sealed book to the reader who stands in need of immediate use and
reference. We have to take it for what it is--a collection of masterly
treatises, rather than a handy dictionary of knowledge.
The usefulness and success of any library will depend very largely upon
the sympathy, so to speak, between the readers and the librarian. When
this is well established, the rest is very easy. The librarian should not
seclude himself so as to be practically inaccessible to readers, nor
trust wholly to assistants to answer their inquiries. This may be
necessary in some large libraries, where great and diversified interests
connected with the building up of the collection, the catalogue system,
and the library management and administration are all concerned. In the
British Museum Library, no one ever sees the Principal Librarian; even
the next officer, who is called the keeper of the printed books, is not
usually visible in the reading-room at all.
A librarian who is really desirous of doing the greatest good to the
greatest number of people, will be not only willing, but anxious to
answer inquiries, even though they may appear to him trivial and
unimportant. Still, he should also economise time by cultivating the
habit of putting his answers into the fewest and plainest words.
How far the librarian should place himself in direct communication with
readers, must depend largely upon the extent of the library, the labor
required in managing its various departments, the amount and value of
assistance at his command, and upon various other circumstances,
depending upon the different conditions with different librarians. But it
may be laid down as a safe general rule, that the librarian should hold
himself perpetually as a public servant, ready and anxious to answer in
some way, all inquiries that may come to him. Thus, and thus only, can he
make himself, and the collection of books under his charge, useful in the
highest degree to the public. He will not indeed, in any extensive
library, find it convenient, or even possible, to answer all inquiries in
person; but he should always be ready to enable his assistants to answer
them, by his superior knowledge as to the best sources of information,
whenever they fail to trace out what is wanted. In any small library, he
should be always accessible, at or near the place where people are
accustomed to have their wants for books or information supplied: and the
public resorting to the library will thus come not only to rely upon him
for aid in their intellectual researches, but to appreciate and respect
him for the wide extent of his knowledge, and to consider him, in time,
an indispensable guide, if not leader, in the community. His reputation,
in fact, will depend upon the extent to which he has been able to help
others, as well as upon the number of people whom he has thus aided.
In a very high sense, the true librarian is an educator; his school is as
large as the town in which his library is situated. Very few people in
that town know what he is always presumed to know,--namely--to what books
to go to get answers to the questions they want answered. In supplying
continually the means of answering these countless questions, the library
becomes actually a popular university, in which the librarian is the
professor, the tuition is free, and the course is optional, both as to
study and as to time.
Most persons who come to make any investigation in a public library
require a good deal of assistance. For example, a reader is in need of
the latest information as to the amount of steel and iron made in this
country, and what State produces these important manufactures. He has not
the faintest idea where to look for the information, except that it may
be in the census, but the census is nine years old, and he wants recent
facts. It is vain to turn him over to the cyclopaedias, for there is not
one whose information upon such statistics comes anywhere near up to
date. You have to put before him a pamphlet annual, published by the
American Iron and Steel Association, which contains exactly what he
wants; and no other source of information does contain it.
Another inquirer seeks to know how to treat some disease. In such cases,
of course, the librarian should not go farther than to put before the
reader a work on domestic medicine, for it is not his function to deal in
recommendations of this, that, or the other method of treatment, any more
than it is to give legal opinions, if asked--although he may have studied
law. So, if the reader wants to know about the religious tenets of the
Presbyterians, or the Mormons, or the Buddhists, or the doctrines of the
Catholic Church, and asks the librarian's opinion about any controverted
question of belief, he is to be answered only by the statement that the
library is there to supply information, not opinions, and then pointed to
the religious cyclopaedias, which give full summaries of all the sects.
He may frequently be asked for information on a subject which he knows
nothing about; and I have heard a librarian declare, that he often found
himself able to give fuller and better information on a subject of which
he was previously ignorant, than upon one he had long been familiar with.
The reason was that in the one case he had freshly looked up all the
authorities, and put them before the reader, while in the other, giving
the references from a memory, more or less imperfect, he had overlooked
some of the most important means of information.
The constant exercise of the habit of supplying helps to readers is a
splendid intellectual school for the librarian himself. Through it, his
memory is quickened and consequently improved, (as every faculty is by
use) his habits of mental classification and analysis are formed or
strengthened, and his mind is kept on the alert to utilize the whole
arsenal of the knowledge he has already acquired, or to acquire new
knowledge.
Another very important benefit derived by the librarian from his
constantly recurring attention to the calls of readers for aid, is the
suggestion thereby furnished of the deficiencies in the collection in his
charge. This will be a continual reminder to him, of what he most needs,
namely, how to equip the library with the best and most recent sources of
information in every field of inquiry. Whether the library be a large or
a small one, its deficiencies in some directions are sure to be very
considerable: and these gaps are more conspicuously revealed in trying to
supply readers with the means of making what may be termed an exhaustive
research upon a given subject, than in any other way. You find, for
example, in looking up your authorities in what has come to be called
Egyptology, that while you have Wilkinson's Ancient Egypt, and Lane's
Modern Egyptians, both of which are very valuable works, you have not the
more modern books of Brugsch-Bey, or of A. H. Sayce, or of Maspero. You
may also find out, by mingling freely with a good part of the readers,
what subjects are most frequently looked into or inquired about, and you
can thus secure valuable information as to the directions in which the
library most needs strengthening. Thus, in a community largely made up of
people connected with manufacturing interests, the inquiries are liable
to be much concerned with the mechanic arts; and you would therefore
naturally seek to acquire a liberal selection of the best and latest
works in technical science, or the useful arts. If you have, on the other
hand, very few inquiries, indeed, for theological works, you take it as
some evidence that that department of the collection needs little
enlargement, and you may devote your funds in other directions. Then too,
the great value of popularising the library by the hearty interest shown
by the librarian in the wants of the people can hardly be over-rated.
This interest, being a perennial one, and continued through a series of
years, the number of citizens and their families assisted will be
constantly on the increase, and the public opinion of the town will come
in time, to regard the library as a great popular necessity. Hence, if it
is an institution supported in whole or in part by town or municipal
funds, its claims to liberal consideration will be immeasurably
strengthened. If an enlargement of room for the books, or even a new
library building comes to be needed, its chances for securing the funds
requisite will be excellent. If a more liberal supply of new books, or an
extended range of older ones of great value is reported by the librarian
as wanted to increase the usefulness of the library, the authorities will
more cheerfully consider the claim. And if it is proposed that additional
and competent assistance shall be given to the librarian, or that he
should be more liberally compensated for his highly useful and important
labors, that, too, may be accomplished--especially if it has come to be
recognized that by his wide knowledge, and skilful management, and
helpful devotion to the service of the reading public, he has rendered
himself indispensable.
In the supply of information desired by readers, it is better to leave
them to their own search, once you have put before them the proper
authorities, than to spend your time in turning for them to the volume
and page. This, for two reasons--first, it leaves your own time free to
help other readers, or to attend to the ever-waiting library work; and,
secondly, it induces habits of research and self-help on the part of the
reader. It is enough for the librarian to act as an intelligent
guide-post, to point the way; to travel the road is the business of the
reader himself. Therefore, let the visitor in quest of a quotation, look
it out in the index of the volumes you put before him. If he fails to
find it, it will then be time for you to intervene, and lend the aid of
your more practiced eye, and superior knowledge of how to search; or
else, let the reader look for it in some more copious anthology, which
you may put before him. There are multitudes of inquiries for the authors
of poems, which are in no sense "familiar quotations," nor even select
quotations, but which are merely common-place sentiments expressed in
language quite unpoetic,--and not the work of any notable writer at all.
They are either the production of some utterly obscure author of a volume
of verse, quite unknown to fame, or, still more probably, the
half-remembered verses of some anonymous contributor to the poet's corner
of the newspaper or magazine. In such cases, where you see no poetic
beauty or imaginative power in the lines, it is well to inform the
inquirer at once that you do not think them the production of any noted
writer, and thus end the fruitless search for memorizing what is not at
all memorable. What may strike uncultivated readers as beautiful, may be
set down as trash, by a mind that has been fed upon the masterpieces of
poetry. Not that the librarian is to assume the air of an oracle or a
censor, (something to be in all circumstances avoided) or to pronounce
positive judgment upon what is submitted: he should inform any admiring
reader of a passage not referred to in any of the anthologies, and not
possessing apparent poetic merit, that he believes the author is unknown
to fame. That should be sufficient for any reasonably disposed reader,
who, after search duly completed, will go away answered, if not
satisfied.
I gave some instances of the singular variety of questions asked of a
librarian. Let me add one, reported by Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London
Library, as asked of him by William M. Thackeray. The distinguished
author of Esmond and The Virginians wanted a book that would tell of
General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. "I don't want to know about his
battles", said the novelist. "I can get all that from the histories. I
want something that will tell me the color of the breeches he wore."
After due search, the librarian was obliged to confess that there was no
such book.
A librarian is likely to be constantly in a position to aid the
uninformed reader how to use the books of reference which every public
library contains. The young person who is new to the habit of
investigation, or the adult who has never learned the method of finding
things, needs to be shown how to use even so simple a thing as an index.
Do not be impatient with his ignorance, although you may find him
fumbling over the pages in the body of the book in vain, to find what
you, with your acquired knowledge of indexes and their use, can find in
half a minute or less. Practice alone can make one perfect in the art of
search and speedy finding. The tyro who tries your patience this year,
will very likely become an expert reader the next. Wide as is the domain
of ignorance, there are few among those intelligent enough to resort to a
library at all, who cannot learn. You will find some who come to the
library so unskilled, that they will turn over the leaves even of an
index, in a blind, hap-hazard way, evidently at a loss how to use it.
These must be instructed first, that the index is arranged just like a
dictionary, in the alphabetical order of the names or subjects treated,
and secondly, that after finding the word they seek in it, they must turn
to the page indicated by the figure attached to that word. This is the
very primer of learning in the use of a library, but the library in any
town, used as it is by many boys and girls of all ages, has to be a
primary school for beginners, as well as a university for advanced
students. Despise not the day of small things, however you may find it
more agreeable to be occupied with great ones.
On the other hand, you will find at the other extreme of intelligence,
among your clientage of readers, those who are completely familiar with
books and their uses. There are some readers frequenting public
libraries, who not only do not need assistance themselves, but who are
fully competent to instruct the librarian. In meeting the calls of such
skilled readers, who always know what they require, it is never good
policy to obtrude advice or suggestion, but simply to supply what they
call for. You will readily recognize and discriminate such experts from
the mass of readers, if you have good discernment. Sometimes they are
quite as sensitive as they are intelligent, and it may annoy them to have
offered them books they do not want, in the absence of what they require.
An officious, or super-serviceable librarian or assistant, may sometimes
prejudice such a reader by proffering help which he does not want,
instead of waiting for his own call or occasion.
Let us look at a few examples of the numerous calls at a popular library.
For example, a reader asks to see a book, giving an account of the
marriage of the Adriatic. You know that this concerns the history of
Venice and its Doges, and you turn to various books on Venice, and its
history, until you find a description of the strange festival. It may be,
and probably is the case, that the books, like most descriptive works and
narratives of travellers, are without index. This is a disability in the
use of books which you must continually encounter, since multitudes of
volumes, old and new, are sent out without a vestige of an index to their
contents. Some writers have urged that a law should be made refusing
copyright to the author of any book who failed to provide it with an
index; a requirement highly desirable, but also highly impracticable. Yet
you will find in most books, a division of the contents into chapters,
and in the beginning of the volume a table of the contents of each
chapter, giving its leading topics. This is a substitute for an index,
although (not being arranged in alphabetical order) it is far less useful
than that time-saving aid to research. But you have to learn to take
advantage of even poor and inferior helps, when you cannot have the best,
(as a poor guide is better than no guide at all, unless it misguides,)
and so you run your eye quickly through the table of contents to find
what you seek. In the case supposed, of the ceremony at Venice, you will
be aided in the search by having in mind that the catch-words involved
are "Adriatic," and "Doge," and as these begin with capital letters,
which stand out, as it were, from the monotonous "lower case" type (as
printers call all the letters that are not capitals) your search will be
much abridged by omitting to read through all the sentences of your table
of contents, and seizing only the passage or passages where "Doge," or
"Adriatic," may occur.
This remark will apply as well to numerous other searches which you will
have to make in books. The table of contents will commonly take note of
all the more salient topics that are treated in the book, whether of
persons, of places, of notable scenes, historic events, etc., and so
will aid you in finding what you seek. In the last resort only, in the
books whose table of contents fails you, will you have to turn the leaves
page by page, which, while not equivalent to reading the book through, is
a time-consuming business.
Of course no librarian can devote hours of his precious time to searches
in such detail for readers. They are to be supplied with the books likely
to contain what they are in search of, and left to seek it in their own
way, with such hints and cautions as to saving time by taking the
shortest road, as the experience of the librarian enables him to supply.
The suggestions here given are not needed by scholarly readers, but are
the fruits of long experience in searching books for what they contain.
Again, let us take the case of a call by a reader who happens to be a
decorative painter, for patterns which may furnish him hints in finishing
an interior of a house. Of course he wants color--that is, not theory
only, but illustration, or practical examples. So you put before him Owen
Jones's Grammar of Ornament, or Racinet's _L'Ornement polychrome_, both
illustrated with many beautiful designs in color, which he is delighted
to find.
Another reader is anxious to see a picture of "St. George and the
Dragon." If you have the "Museum of Painting and Sculpture," in 17
volumes, or Champlin's "Cyclopaedia of Painters and Painting," a
dictionary of art in four volumes, you find it in either work, in the
alphabet, under "St. George," and his want is satisfied.
A youngster wants to know how to build a boat, and you find him Folkard
on Boats, or Frazar's Sail-boats, which describe and figure various
styles of water-craft.
Perhaps an inquisitive reader wants to find out all about the families of
the various languages, and what is known of their origin, and you supply
him with W. D. Whitney's "Life and Growth of Language," or Max Müller's
"Science of Language," either of which furnishes full information.
Another inquirer seeks for information about the aggregate debts of
nations. You give him the great quarto volume of the last Census on
Wealth and Indebtedness, or for still later information the Statesman's
Year Book for 1899, or the Almanach de Gotha for the current year, both
of which contain the comparative debts of nations at the latest dates.
The inquirer who seeks to know the rates of wages paid for all kinds of
labor in a series of several years, can be supplied with the elaborate
Report on Labor and Wages for fifty-two years, published by the U. S.
Government in 1893, in four volumes.
Another reader wishes, we will suppose, to hunt up the drawings of all
patents that have been issued on type-writers, and type-writing
inventions. You put before him the many indexes to the Patent
Specifications and Patent Office Gazette; he makes out from these his
list of volumes wanted, which are at once supplied, and he falls to work
on his long, but to him interesting job.
A reader who has seen in the library or elsewhere a book he would much
like to own, but cannot find a copy in town, wants to know what it will
cost: you turn to your American or foreign catalogue, covering the year
of publication, and give him not only the price, but the publisher's name
from whom he can order it, and he goes on his way rejoicing.
An artist engaged upon a painting in which he wishes to introduce a deer,
or a group of rabbits, or an American eagle, or a peacock, asks for an
accurate picture of the bird or animal wanted. You put before him J. S.
Kingsley's Riverside Natural History, in six volumes, and his desire is
satisfied.
In dealing with books of reference, there will often be found very
important discrepancies of statement, different works giving different
dates, for example, for the same event in history or biography.
Next to a bible and a dictionary of language, there is no book, perhaps,
more common than a biographical dictionary. Our interest in our
fellow-men is perennial; and we seek to know not only their
characteristics, and the distinguishing events of their lives, but also
the time of their birth into the world and their exit from it. This is a
species of statistics upon which one naturally expects certainty, since
no person eminent enough to be recorded at all is likely to have the
epoch of his death, at least, unremarked. Yet the seeker after exact
information in the biographical dictionaries will find, if he extends his
quest among various authorities, that he is afloat on a sea of
uncertainties. Not only can he not find out the date of decease of some
famous navigators, like Sir John Franklin and La Perouse, who sailed into
unexplored regions of the globe, and were never heard of more, but the
men who died at home, in the midst of friends and families, are
frequently recorded as deceased at dates so discrepant that no ingenuity
can reconcile them.
In Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, Sir Henry Havelock was said to have died
November 25th, 1857, while Maunder's Treasury of Biography gives November
21st, the London Almanac, November 27th, and the Life of Havelock, by his
brother-in-law, November 24th. Here are four distinct dates of death
given, by authorities apparently equally accredited, to a celebrated
general, who died within forty years of our own time. Of the death of the
notorious Robespierre, guillotined in 1794, we find in Chalmers'
Biographical Dictionary that he died July 10th, in Rees's Cyclopaedia,
July 28th, and in Alison's History of Europe, July 29th. Doubtless it is
some comfort to reflect, in view of his many crimes, that the bloody
tyrant of the Jacobins is really dead, irrespective of the date, about
which biographers may dispute. Of the English mechanician Joseph Bramah,
inventor of the Bramah lock, we learn from the English Cyclopaedia, that
he died in 1814, and from Rose's Biographical Dictionary, that he died in
1815.
Now, although a large share of the errors and discrepancies that abound
in biographical dictionaries and other books of reference may be
accounted for by misprints, others by reckoning old style instead of new,
and many more by carelessness of writers and transcribers, it is plain
that all the variations cannot be thus accounted for. Nothing is more
common in printing offices than to find a figure 6 inverted serving as a
9, a 5 for a 3, or a 3 for an 8, while 8, 9, and O, are frequently
interchanged. In such cases, a keen-eyed proof-reader may not always be
present to prevent the falsification of history; and it is a fact, not
sufficiently recognized, that to the untiring vigilance, intelligence,
and hard, conscientious labors of proof-readers, the world owes a deeper
debt of gratitude than it does to many a famous maker of books. It is
easy enough to make books, Heaven knows, but to make them correct, "_Hic
labor, hoc opus est_."
A high authority in encyclopaedical lore tells us that the best
accredited authorities are at odds with regard to the birth or death of
individuals in the enormous ratio of from twenty to twenty-five per cent.
of the whole number in the biographical dictionaries. The Portuguese poet
Camoens is said by some authorities to have been born in 1517, and by
others in 1525; a discrepancy of eight years. Chateaubriand is declared
by the English Cyclopaedia to have been born September 4th, 1768;
September 14th, 1768, by the Nouvelle Biographie générale of Dr. Hoefer;
and September 4th, 1769, by the Conversations-Lexicon. Of course it is
clear that all these authorities cannot be right; but which of the three
is so, is matter of extreme doubt, leaving the student of facts perplexed
and uncertain at the very point where certainty is not only most
important, but most confidently expected.
Of another kind are the errors that sometimes creep into works of
reference of high credit, by accepting too confidently statements
publicly made. In one edition of the Dictionary of Congress a certain
honorable member from Pennsylvania, in uncommonly robust health, was
astonished to find himself recorded as having died of the National Hotel
disease, contracted at Washington in 1856. In this case, the editor of
the work was a victim of too much confidence in the newspapers. In the
Congressional Directory, where brief biographies of Congressmen are
given, one distinguished member was printed as having been elected to
Congress at a time which, taken in connection with his birth-date in the
same paragraph, made him precisely one year old when he took his seat in
Congress.
Even in reporting the contents of public and private libraries,
exaggeration holds sway. The library of George the Fourth, inherited by
that graceless ignoramus from a book-collecting father, and presented to
the British nation with ostentatious liberality only after he had failed
to sell it to Russia, was said in the publications of those times to
contain about 120,000 volumes. But an actual enumeration when the books
were lodged in the King's library at the British Museum, where they have
ever since remained, showed that there were only 65,250 volumes, being
but little more than half the reported number. Many libraries, public
and private, are equally over-estimated. It is so much easier to guess
than to count, and the stern test of arithmetic is too seldom applied,
notwithstanding the fact that 100,000 volumes can easily be counted in a
day by a single person, and so on in the same proportion. Here, as in the
statistics of population, the same proverb holds good, that the unknown
is always the magnificent, and on the surface of the globe we inhabit,
the unexplored country is always the most marvellous, since the world
began.
These discrepancies in authorities, and exaggerations of writers, are not
referred to for the purpose of casting doubt upon all published history,
but only to point out that we cannot trust implicitly to what we find in
books. Bearing in mind always, that accuracy is perhaps the rarest of
human qualities, we should hold our judgment in reserve upon controverted
statements, trusting no writer implicitly, unless sustained by original
authorities. When asked to recommend the best book upon any subject, do
not too confidently assert the merits of the one you may think the best,
but say simply that it is well accredited, or very popular. It is not
always safe to recommend books, and the librarian does well to speak with
proper reservations as to most of them, and to recommend only what are
well known to him to be good, by his own intimate acquaintance with them,
or, which is the surest test of all, by the verdicts of critical reviews,
or by the constant reprinting of them in many successive years.
It was the well-nigh unanimous report at a Conference of American
librarians, upon the subject of "aids to readers", that "nothing can take
the place of an intelligent and obliging assistant at the desk." This was
after a thorough canvass of the relative merits of the various reference
books and helps to readers in book form. Not only the casual reader, and
the reader with a purpose may be constantly aided by the librarian's
knowledge, and larger experience in the art of finding things, but
teachers in the schools, clergymen preparing discourses, and every one
seeking to know anything, should find the librarian a living catalogue.
There is nothing so effective in the world as individual effort.