Prepared by Samuel S. Green, then librarian of the
Worcester, Mass. Public Library and a member of the State
Library Commission, for the World's Library Congress held at
the Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893) and printed in the
government report thereon. The "adaptation" favored by Mr.
Green consists in weeding out unfitting books. Melvil Dewey,
as editor of this volume of papers, tells us in a foot-note
that in the discussion of Mr. Green's paper, this process
was not generally approved except as the first step in a
transfer to other libraries. President Eliot's suggestion of
reservoir libraries for storage is a later stage, in the
same line of thought. A sketch of Mr. Green appears in Vol.
I. of this series.
NOTE.--With this paper should be read those pages of the
Chicago discussions in which it was pointed out by leading
librarians that to weed out safely would require much costly
expert service; that the most hurtful criticism would be
attacks after inevitable cases where some one would greatly
wish a book that had been withdrawn as useless; that the
printed catalogs already circulated would be made
untrustworthy by parting with any volume included; that what
one wise and learned man would throw out as trash, another
equally wise and learned would consider specially valuable
because of differing personal equations. In short, that
however excellent in theory, it was perhaps the most
difficult thing in librarianship to put successfully in
practice.
While few favored "weeding out" simply to gain room by
getting rid of books little wanted, many believe in
transferring to other libraries which have a distinctly
greater need of them.--M.D.
A resident of a Massachusetts town to which the Commonwealth was about
to give $100 worth of books came to secure my influence as a member of
the State free public library commission to have a large part of the
$100 spent for rare and expensive books on Massachusetts history. As a
large and valuable library made up principally of books of that class
was soon to be given to another small town in the same county, it would
have been manifestly unwise to grant this request. It seems unwise also
to place a students' library in a small town where there are few who
will use it. It would be better to give the library to a flourishing
institution at a county seat, on condition that it shall be open for
free consultation by all residents of the county, and that, under proper
rules, books may be lent from it to inhabitants of smaller towns for use
at home.
In this way the library would be so placed that most persons wishing to
make investigations would have the books near home, and the
comparatively few investigators in the smaller towns, such as the man in
the town first mentioned, would also have their interests provided for.
The trustees of the Thomas Crane Public Library at Quincy, Mass., have
concluded, utilizing the experience of many years, that a working
library of 15,000 volumes is sufficient to supply the general wants of
the 20,000 residents of the city. It is proposed not to let the library
grow beyond 20,000 volumes while the wants of the city remain what they
are, and when it exceeds that number of volumes to cut it down by taking
out books that never have been needed in a popular library like that in
Quincy or that have become useless. It having become evident that an
addition would presently have to be made to the building if the recent
rate of increase should continue, it seemed best to the trustees to
begin at once to reduce the size of the library. They proceeded, under
the able leadership of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, to remove from the
library large numbers of Government documents, unnecessary duplicates,
books of an outgrown ephemeral interest, and those unsuited to the
locality. Twenty-one hundred and forty-five volumes were removed
immediately. The Quincy library, by adopting this course, relieves
itself from very considerable prospective expenses and secures money to
use in increasing its usefulness.
Part of the plan is to keep the printed catalogs of the small library up
to date and to scatter copies of them widely throughout the city by
selling them at a nominal price. It is always expensive to prepare and
print a good catalog; it is very expensive to issue new editions
frequently. Still, if a popular library is to do its work well it must
introduce its constituents to its books by means of frequent revised
editions of a good, printed catalog.
The Thomas Crane Library has been famous for the excellence of its
annotated catalog and for lists of books on special subjects for the use
of school children. It proposes in future to use more money than in the
past in making, printing, and keeping up to date good catalogs, and, in
order to make it practicable to do so, to keep down the number of
volumes in the library, thus reducing the expenses of cataloging, and
also to save money in housing its books. That is to say, it is acting on
the well-established principle that a small library well cataloged, if
at all adapted in the number of its volumes to the size of a town, is of
incalculably greater advantage to its constituency than one many times
larger but poorly equipped with catalogs.
It is a distinctive feature of the Quincy plan not to make the library a
special reference library. That city is very near Boston and Cambridge,
which it is well known are richly supplied with large general and
numerous special libraries.
When a man appears in Quincy who wishes to make a minute inquiry on some
special subject, it is proposed to refer him to the great libraries in
the neighboring cities, and to confine the efforts of the trustees of
the Quincy library to supplying the general wants of its constituency.
Here, then, is a bold attempt at adapting a library to its constituency.
Shall it be seconded?
Many will hold it unwise to discuss such a subject publicly. Remembering
many ill-judged efforts at economy by ignorant, uneducated, or
parsimonious men in town meetings and on library boards, they will
pronounce it hurtful to libraries to point out to such men that some
library experts consider it well to keep down expenses for cataloging
and housing books by weeding out libraries. Perhaps they are right.
Whether they are so or not, however, their objection is too late. The
matter now under consideration is undergoing public discussion, and it
is important that men having special knowledge of library matters should
contribute now the results of their experience. Unreasonable men in town
meetings and in boards of trustees must be answered, and reasonable men
and women need to understand thoroughly the subject in order that their
answers may be discriminating and wise.
Once, when the Librarian of Congress asked that an addition be made to
the library rooms, a member is said to have urged that instead of
enlarging the Capitol, the library should be weeded out. Such a plan
would be regarded generally as exceedingly foolish.
There must be in many parts of this broad land large and growing
libraries which will aim to gather very large general and special
collections not limited to books of intrinsic merit. Such libraries will
have to get many books of little value in themselves to enable students
to study subjects historically. It would indeed be very silly to weed
out the Congressional Library. Somewhere there should be accessible (and
where better than in that library?) every book, pamphlet, and map
published in the United States. The Congressional Library should be a
great national library like the Bibliothèque Nationale and the British
Museum.
The Quincy plan would not work well even in a place the size of
Worcester, Mass., with a population of only 90,000 or 95,000, and but 44
miles from Boston, for it is a center of important educational
institutions and of inquirers, and therefore needs large reference
libraries. Cambridge, though very much nearer Boston than Quincy,
becomes, because of Harvard University, a center where there must be a
large library. It is too great an inconvenience for Harvard professors
and students to rely, except for book rarities, on libraries even so
near as those in Boston.
On the other hand, consider the John Adams Library at Quincy. It was
collected by President John Adams in Europe and America, and undoubtedly
contains many valuable books. But is it in place in Quincy? It was
formerly kept in the Adams Academy, but not proving useful there, it was
transferred to the Thomas Crane Public Library, where it now is. Mr.
Charles Francis Adams recently said that he only knew of this John Adams
Library having been consulted once in forty years, and that then he was
himself the consulter. It is more convenient for Mr. Adams to make his
many researches in the great libraries in Boston and Cambridge than in
Quincy, and his opinion is that this library should be given to the
Boston Public Library, where it would be of great value in supplementing
the collections, and would be readily accessible to the class of
students who would use it. Perhaps, however, Quincy would be unwilling
to give up this library, which marks its connection with a very
distinguished man. While it is a distinctive feature of the Quincy plan
not to make the public library a special reference library, its success
depends on having large reference libraries near at hand. In one respect
it encourages making the library a special library, namely, on local
interests and history. As to the saving in expense possible under the
Quincy plan, while money is saved which would ordinarily be used in
housing books and in other ways, increased expenditure, it should be
remembered, is contemplated in frequent issues of improved catalogs. As
I shall soon show, the plan, if well carried out, requires other
expenditures.
There are many small libraries which do not need weeding. If a library
needs weeding, as many undoubtedly do, will it be weeded out wisely?
Broad-minded intelligence is needful for this kind of work, as well as
education and experience in library work. An expert is as much needed in
this work of weeding out as in selecting books for a library at its
start. Great harm might result from injudicious discarding.
Another objection likely to be made to the Quincy plan is that it would
often be difficult to decide how large a library is needed in a town or
city, and that this difficulty would be magnified in a growing town.
Still, if a thing is desirable it should be done in spite of
difficulties. Foresight must be exercised and generous provision made
for the probable growth of towns, and the number of volumes changed as
changes in the size of population or other considerations demand.
Supposing a mistake has been made, the weeding has been made with the
accessibility in view of large and special libraries in towns and cities
near by. Those towns and cities will still remain near to the town which
has grown unexpectedly large; their libraries will still be accessible
for reference. The difference between the old state of things and the
new is likely to be that the books will be used more under changed
circumstances than formerly.
But how provide under the Quincy plan for students who can not afford
time and money to frequent the large libraries even in towns or cities
near by; and supposing this number of special inquirers becomes
considerable, can you hope that they will receive a cordial welcome and
sympathetic assistance in large neighboring libraries? Dangers here
hinted at must be guarded against. Librarians and trustees should be on
the lookout for inquirers and help them to get at the books needed.
It is proposed to help them by preparing and issuing often improved
printed catalogs. Personal assistance would also evidently be needed
under the new plan. In some cases it would be necessary to buy books. In
others the investigator might be introduced to the officers of the
library, or by some influential person to the officers of a large
neighboring library with reference to his being allowed to borrow if he
could not use books on the premises. The same thing might perhaps be
better accomplished by a loan from the large to the small library. The
small library might have to pay for this privilege. It might be
desirable, if an investigator had leisure but not money, for the small
library to pay his car fare to the town where the library to be
consulted is situated.
Large libraries as now constituted are very obliging, and continually
extend courtesies to smaller institutions. The people of Worcester, for
example, every week, and sometimes oftener, have books borrowed for
their use from the Surgeon-General's library, Washington, from Harvard,
the Boston Athenæum, Columbia, Yale, and other libraries. Many
institutions are already extending gratuitously such privileges.
Supposing it were to become the custom of small libraries to send books
and pamphlets which they can get, but do not need, to large neighboring
libraries where they would be useful. Such action would lead to an
exchange of various civilities. Then, too, as the desirability of having
large libraries help smaller ones by loans of books becomes more and
more obvious, will not persons of means give money to the former to
enable them to do this kind of work for small towns generally or for
particular towns in which they may be specially interested?
Mr. Adams's advice to libraries is, not to accumulate books
promiscuously, but to practice a systematic differentiation in
collecting. Books which cumber the shelves of one library may be of the
greatest value in another. The public documents only of its own town and
State, and a few of the national documents relating to matters of
general interest, are in place in the library of a small town. But all
public documents have come to be of the greatest service in large
libraries and in libraries connected with important educational
institutions. Even those which seem driest, because exclusively of
statistics, are much in demand in colleges where students of history and
political economy are required to examine original sources.
Mr. Charles A. Cutter said several years ago, regarding the proper
disposition of pamphlets, that local pamphlets should be given to local
libraries, professional or scientific pamphlets to special libraries,
miscellaneous and all sorts of pamphlets to larger general libraries.
This is excellent advice.
Even large general libraries practice differentiation, many of them
excluding professional books and leaving special libraries in their
neighborhood to accumulate them. A State library may properly make a
specialty of public documents, and perhaps law books, and pay little
attention to accumulating other books. A general subscription library
with a constituency mainly of people of leisure may find it more useful
to collect books in belles-lettres, biography, history, travel, etc.,
than to buy many dealing with industrial subjects. But a public library
in a great manufacturing town, or a special library for architects and
engineers, must specialize on technical books.
It is not proposed to destroy books taken out of libraries where they
are not needed, but to place them within reach of those most needing
them, either through other libraries or auction rooms or secondhand
bookstores. No countenance would be given to such a proceeding as that
of the administrators of the estate of the well-known collector of old
books, Mr. T.O.P.H. Burnham, who are said to have sent a ton or more of
material from his stock to the paper mill.[5]
The people of Worcester act more wisely. They empty their attics into
the rooms of the American Antiquarian Society or those of the local
Society of Antiquity. Housekeepers there, too, dispose similarly of such
books as turn up in spring cleaning and are found to be in the way. An
extensive system of exchange is in operation under the auspices of the
former society, and books and pamphlets sent to the rooms of either
society, find their way to persons and libraries where they are needed,
and the two antiquarian societies enrich their collections by the
exchanges made.
[5] It is conceivable that after a lifetime of buying whole attics of
rejected books and preserving those which no one would buy at any
price, out of an immense stock there might be a ton of duplicate
schoolbooks, incomplete volumes, and other books and pamphlets which
could not even be given away to any library; since the large libraries
would have copies and the smaller ones would not esteem them worth
shelf room.--M.D.
Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson recently stated that a trustee of the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, told him that he spent a considerable part
of his time in refusing gifts offered to the museum. This trustee is
probably wise in declining gifts. There are many books and pamphlets
offered to libraries which they would not find useful. These should be
accepted only on condition that they may be placed wherever they will be
most valuable.
Differentiation is specially desirable in the smallest libraries. When
but little money is available for buying books the small amount should
be spent with closest regard to actual needs of the constituency. Not
infrequently intelligent entertainment and elementary instruction will
be the principles that should guide in selecting books for small
libraries. With intelligent cooperation several small neighboring towns
might adopt to advantage the suggestion that each of them spend a few
dollars a year on a specialty, such as botany, geology, zoology; every
town taking a different specialty and all lending to one another.
This paper favors in the main the selection of books with special
reference to the actual existing needs of the users of the library. Such
an institution as the flourishing public library of Providence, R.I.,
might properly, if allowable for any library in cities of moderate size,
add to its general work some specialty of limited interest. Mr. Foster,
its librarian, has recently stated, however, that he thinks that
notwithstanding the reputation which the famous Harris collection of
poetry gives to the library throughout the country, it is the best for
that library to devote itself almost exclusively to supplying the
general needs of Providence.
In conclusion, it may be stated that Mr. Adams does not claim that the
plan of weeding out libraries adopted at Quincy has never been thought
of before. He was not indebted to any book for the idea, but it had
occurred to other persons before. Action upon it had always been
recommended. Mr. Adams has taken the bull by the horns. He has put the
plan in execution and to a considerable extent has systematized it. He
has also called attention to it and made it a living subject for
discussion.