introduced, such as the contrivance for mounting and storing maps on
vertical cylinders, and for displaying them flat on large tables--a
method that has certain advantages, especially when a number of
different maps have to be consulted in turn. But the most striking and
in many respects the most useful piece of library mechanism is the
vertical file. This is a vast accumulation of cuttings from newspapers
and other sources, systematically arranged, in which any item of
information that may be of service to the business man is preserved and
made available for instant reference by a subject index. About 100,000
clippings had been laid in, arranged, and indexed by March, 1921;
and this home-made encyclopædia, this vast inquire-within, enabled
the staff to answer off-hand a large percentage of the miscellaneous
queries coming in from hour to hour.[10] The periodicals taken number
over two hundred, and include a good many foreign publications. The
latest maps are added to the collection as they appear, and the
atlases include several that can hardly be found elsewhere, at least
in places accessible to the public. Thus the contents of the library
are multiform, books, pamphlets, leaflets, charts, tables, as well
as press cuttings; all are minutely classified, and graphic methods
of subject-cataloguing make it easy to trace the most out-of-the-way
information. Here is the summary of the contents given by the official
handbook:--
THE CONTENTS OF THE LIBRARY.
These may be roughly summarized as follows:
_Directories._--These embrace the whole of the United Kingdom, some
of the British Colonies, along with other countries of the world, and
the principal cities of the United States and Canada. Many important
trades are represented by trade directories and year books. There is
a Post Office Telephone Directory for the United Kingdom.
_Periodicals._--A careful selection has been made of over 150 trade
periodicals from all parts of the world.
_Parliamentary Publications._--The varied and most valuable
publications of the British Government, bearing, either in whole or
part, on commercial interests, are received regularly as issued.
_Chambers of Commerce Reports._--These include Chambers at home, and
in many foreign countries--Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Australia,
India, Norway, Sweden, &c. The collection of Chamber of Commerce year
books is of value as illustrating the industries of the different
towns in the United Kingdom.
_Codes._--A.B.C., Bentley, Lieber, Lieber’s Five Letter, Scott’s
Western Union, &c.
_Dictionaries._--English, French, German, Spanish, Italian,
Portuguese, Russian.
_Tables._--Calculating tables and tables of foreign exchanges.
_Text-books._--Commercial law, banking, advertising, accountancy,
office methods, insurance, business organization, tariffs,
salesmanship, transportation, raw materials, and the commercial side
of textiles and engineering, are represented on the shelves by the
most recent books.
_Trade Catalogues._--These are collected purely from the point of
view of the value of the information contained in them, or as types
of catalogue production. At present a beginning only has been made,
many firms not having published catalogues during the war. The
catalogues are classified and catalogued in the same way as other
books.
_Maps and Atlases._--Commercial routes and different countries are
well represented, and the best of the new maps and atlases will be
added when published.
Parliamentary command papers dealing with commercial matters are
received on publication, and liberal assistance is given by the
Department of Overseas Trade, Chambers of Commerce both home and
foreign, trade societies, business firms, and British consuls and trade
commissioners. Bulletins are issued by the library month by month,
giving lists of books on accountancy, banking, foreign directories,
scientific management, advertising, foreign trade, and similar topics.
Even a manufacturer’s catalogue becomes a work of high utility and
importance when it takes its proper place in such a collection,
often affording valuable assistance to inquirers in search of the
manufacturer of any given article.
The Library of Commerce at Bristol is similarly organized, and has met
with like appreciation. The following is a return of the consultations
from February 1920 to January 22nd, 1921:--
1920 Books. Directories. Maps. Periodicals. Total.
Feb.-June 4378 6102 725 8137 19342
July 837 1502 172 2181 4692
August 735 1276 261 1780 4052
September 823 1402 172 1806 4203
October 986 1510 158 2115 4769
November 1221 1256 161 2079 4717
December 710 1155 133 1739 3737
1921
Jan. 1 (1 day) 21 43 3 81 148
Week ending
Jan. 8 184 333 34 513 1064
Jan. 15 220 326 35 504 1085
Jan. 22 220 301 36 518 1075
-------------------------------------------------------------
Grand Total 10,335 15,206 1,890 21,453 48,884
-------------------------------------------------------------
Here are some examples of the questions that have been asked and
answered--in several instances with the direct consequence that the
inquirer has been saved losses running into very large figures:--
What are the means of communication in Bechuanaland?
Was the 1893 vintage good?
What has been the _monthly_ percentage of the increase of the cost of
living since July 1914 (retail and wholesale)?
What is the procedure for the winding up of a company?
What is the bank deposit rate?
What is the amount payable for brokerage?
What is the state of the wool market in Australia?
Who are the principal makers of knitting machines?
Can the movements of a vessel be traced through 1920?
What is the stamp duty on a form of contract?
What is the position of trade in the Argentine?
What time would a steamer take to go from Hull to the Canary Isles?
What is the difference in the rate of exchange in U.S.A. in September
1919 and July 1920?
What is the duty on wine and spirits?
What is the position of the Belgian industries?
What is the time-limit for stamping a form of agreement?
Several inquiries for help in coding and decoding cables.
The width of the River Tees from Stockton to Middlesbrough.
Names of Portuguese shipowners trading with English ports.
Owners of steamers sailing between Dover and Calais, and particulars
of service.
The latest information re Indigo in India.
The flat rate of pay for seamen.
Price of bunker coal in New York in July, 1920.
At Leeds, the commercial library is combined with the technical
library--an unusual arrangement, but one for which there is a good deal
to be said as well as against. Technical libraries exist for the supply
of information, and also to subserve technical education: a commercial
library is for information simply. There are inconveniences attached to
the combination; it is not a mere question of logical differentiation.
Commercial libraries are open during business hours, and closed in the
evenings and on Saturday afternoons, the very time when the technical
student would use the library most. The one, again, is arranged
and furnished to facilitate rapid consultation, not as a place for
prolonged study. Logically, of course, it seems absurd to separate the
literature on making a thing from the literature on selling it, the
production department from the sales department. Big libraries may some
day divide naturally into a modern side and a humanist side, and this
might prove as convenient a dichotomy as it is suited to the logic of
modern life. At any rate, the experiment at Leeds is worth watching,
and public expedience must settle the point.
These commercial departments have enlarged the ordinary province
of the public library, and have developed into something like the
intelligence bureau of a large industrial firm. The staff is prepared
to supply, not only the means of information, but also information
itself. Many years ago, in the Cardiff and some other public libraries,
a new institution called the information desk came into vogue,
where a trained assistant sat at the receipt of questions, oral,
postal, or telephonic, which he answered forthwith, or after search
in directories, dictionaries, and other compendiums of information,
including the file of inquiries already handled. In a commercial town,
this departure from old-fashioned practice was welcomed as extremely
useful. Public libraries suddenly became popular with a class who had
hitherto scarcely noticed their existence. The new commercial libraries
perform the same function much more effectively, because they have far
larger masses of information tabulated and mobilized, and are ready to
lead up their reserves at any moment.
The Adult Education Committee criticize this transformation of part
of the library into an intelligence bureau. There seems to be a fear
that it may compete with the commercial intelligence department of
the Government or with the chambers of commerce. Admitting that the
boundary between the province of these organizations and that of the
commercial library is not easy to define, they protest “that the
function of the commercial department of a local library is primarily
to provide books concerned with the theory and practice of commerce
and cognate subjects, rather than detailed information on matters of
trade.” Here the mind of the theorist, the stern logician, is again
at work, making havoc of expediency, and also of common sense. If the
commercial library is doing the work so well, and doing it cheaply
into the bargain, then if you are going to shut up anything, shut up
the Government department: the trade association will be only too glad
to be saved doing the job over again. Give the library its proper
equipment in money and privilege, give it room and opportunity to
develop into an institute of commerce, and the taxpayer and many other
people’s pockets will be spared.[11] These outside organizations,
whether run by the Government or by the traders, are in fact working
under disadvantages so long as they are not lodged in a first-class
commercial library and carried on by a staff trained in library
methods, the results are less satisfactory and more costly to produce.
Every library, in one of its aspects, is an information bureau.
Pedantic classification may draw a sharp line between one sort of
information and another; experience and expediency point to the library
as the right place for the retail of intelligence, whether practical or
theoretic.
[Illustration:
_Photo Pictorial Agency._
LIBRARY OF THE INSTITUTE OF ACTUARIES, STAPLE INN HALL.]
The commercial library or the technical library provided by the
municipality will not lead to the extinction of the library belonging
to the private firm; rather may it be expected to tend to the
multiplication and development of these, just as access to books in
public libraries has led to more book-buying by readers, who have
learned the value of books, and feel the need to have certain works
always by them on their own shelves. The great immediate benefit is
to the smaller firms and the individual worker; but even they will no
doubt acquire eventually far more books for themselves, and a much
better selection of books, as a direct result of access to a public
business library, familiarity with its contents, and realization of the
enormous advantage of being in constant touch with the latest sources
of information. In the United States, which are incomparably better
off than this country in all sorts of commercial, technical, and other
special libraries provided by public funds, there are now about 2,500
business libraries established by progressive firms.[12]
BOOKS FOR THE BLIND.
As long ago as 1857, the Liverpool Public Libraries set the example of
providing books in raised type for the blind. At Nottingham, one of
the first to follow this lead, I remember many years later visiting
the room set apart for the blind, and watching several blind people
at work producing new pages in embossed print from another sightless
person’s dictation. Along the walls were deep cases enclosing long
sets of portly quartos or folios--novels by Scott or Dickens in eight
or ten volumes apiece, Macaulay’s _History of England_ in seventy-two,
the Bible in thirty-eight, and so on. At that time, the supply of
books for the blind had been so far centralized that most libraries
relied upon collections at Manchester, Nottingham, London, or other
places, run chiefly by voluntary organizations. And now, few if any
public libraries provide books for the blind themselves, the National
Library for the Blind, in Tufton Street, Westminster, or its branch
at Manchester, being a depot for all. This admirable institution, at
once a great bookstore and a place for both recreation and educational
work, with its reading rooms, music room, and hall for meetings and
discussions, was provided by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Public
libraries and other institutions all over the country are entitled to
borrow from it for the benefit of their blind readers, on payment of
a moderate subscription. “It is closely affiliated with the Students’
Library at Oxford, which is gradually being built up to supply the
special needs of University men.”[13]
Stamping machinery is now used for the production of metal plates, from
which any number of copies of books in embossed type may be obtained,
though the process is costly. The Carnegie Trust has provided funds
for the manufacture of metal plates by the National Institute for the
Blind and by the Royal Blind Asylum and School at Edinburgh. All copies
of standard works thus printed--if the word may be used--are presented
to the National Library, and the stereotype plates remain on hand for
further issues.
The work of transcribing books by hand is, however, growing enormously,
and is of vast importance, as is shown by the fact that during 1920,
431 complete new works of literature running into 1,371 volumes of
Braille were produced in this way from ink print by the Library’s
voluntary workers (of whom there are some 500) whilst during the same
period 89 complete new works were published by the stereotyping houses.
It will thus be seen that if the blind of the country depended only on
the stereotyped books produced, their choice of reading matter would be
exceedingly limited.
Blind copyists are employed to duplicate the books at an average cost
of 25s. per volume, whence it is obvious that literary provision for
the blind is very expensive, and is possible on any adequate scale only
if liberal public support is forthcoming. Recently, alas, there has
been a vast increase in the numbers of blind persons. The idea of the
old charitable institutions that such readers would be satisfied with
books of moral edification was abandoned long ago; nowadays it would
be absurd. Books on every subject, serious reading and light reading,
educational literature and literature recording recent scientific
advances and expressing the latest phases of thought, are in demand
among blind readers representing every grade of culture. In short,
there is no more limit, except the cost of producing copies in this
special form, to the contents of a modern library for the blind than to
those of any other general library. At present, the National Library
has nearly 65,000 books on its shelves, besides some 12,000 volumes of
music.
The public library in any subscribing locality is thus relieved of the
serious burden, not merely of purchasing, but also of housing these
bulky volumes. A reader sends in his list of books required, which
is transmitted to the National Library, and the books are then sent
direct to the reader’s home. It is a work of public benefit, yea, of
national obligation, that surely cries loudly for State aid. In the
United States consignments of books for the blind are carried free to
the nearest post office or station. “Of 12,819 books for the blind
circulated by the New York Public Library in 1908, 8,558 were sent
free by mail.”[14] Our Post Office has made concessions not quite so
generous, allowing a book weighing 6¹⁄₂ lbs. to travel for 2d., and
one weighing 5 lbs. to be sent anywhere abroad for 2¹⁄₂d. The cheaper
transmission of books by post will become an urgent question whenever a
national system of interchange between all manner of libraries becomes
an accomplished fact; but, even then, the case of the blind will be one
calling for exceptional liberality.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] A. E. Bostwick. “The American Public Library,” p. 56-7.
[5] R. A. Rye. “The Libraries of London: a guide for students”
(University of London, 1910).
[6] Adult Education Committee: Final Report, par. 5.
[7] _A Question of the Day: Public Libraries_ (Library Association,
1918).
[8] _Third Interim Report_:--C.--Technical and Commercial Libraries.
[9] The following shows the number of readers monthly:--
Oct. 1919 1,316
Nov. 4,361
Dec. 4,405
Jan. 1920 5,608
Feb. 5,259
March 6,166
April 5,585
May 4,416
June 1920 6,029
July 5,772
Aug. 5,936
Sept. 6,365
Oct. 6,871
Nov. 7,428
Dec. 6,617
Jan. 1921 7,043
[10] On the other hand, the complexity and the efficiency organization
required in the technical library and information department of a
modern business undertaking, may be realized from an article on
“The Library at the Ardeer Factory of Nobel’s Explosives Co., Ltd.”
(_Library Association Record_, June, 1921).
[11] American opinion is all in favour of the use of the library as an
information department. “The aim of the business library is rather to
function as a central information, statistical, or research bureau,
or, like other departments, to aid directly or indirectly in profits,
in increasing quantity, quality, or efficiency of production, in
building up an intelligent work force, or in the general improvement
and extension of the business. Only in so far as it does this is
the business library justifiable.” J. H. Friedel, _Training for
Librarianship_, p. 115.
[12] “Within the last three years the number of business libraries has
more than doubled.” J. H. Friedel: _Training for Librarianship_ (1921),
p. 113. See also the chapters on Special Libraries, Agricultural
Libraries, Financial Libraries, Law Libraries, Technical Libraries, etc.
[13] Library Association Record, Aug., 1920, p. 258.
[14] A. E. Bostwick: _The American Public Library_, p. 31.
III
LIBRARY EXTENSION.
Library Extension is closely analogous to the more familiar phrase
University Extension. It stands for various activities that go outside,
often far outside, the province marked out by the Public Libraries
Acts, yet are natural if not inevitable corollaries of the educational
and social doctrines that formulated those Acts. They carry the
services and influence of the library into other spheres--the school,
the home, the voluntary association--and expand its functions from
the mechanical disposal of books as stock-in-trade to their treatment
as atoms packed with vital force, electrons charged with incalculable
energies capable of working great consequences in that susceptible
region, human life. A library may confine itself to a passive attitude,
and so long as it responds more or less freely to external pressure it
may be acceptable and useful to a small proportion of the persons who
pay for its upkeep. But it was long ago borne in upon the far-sighted
librarian and committee-man that a more active, nay, a positively
militant policy was required if the public library was to exercise
all its powers for good in the social economy. More books have
mouldered away or come to a like inglorious and ineffectual end than
were ever worn out by hard use. You can offer your public the finest
collection of books--it has been done again and again by profligate
philanthropists--and never get them read, or the people’s life and
taste improved. It is easy to buy books; it is much more difficult, and
far more important, to create readers.[15]
The librarian’s duty, he has found by harsh experience, is twofold: to
contrive a library service, and to see that the best use is made of it.
Instruction in the art of reading and in the choice of books, it may
be objected, is for the teacher, not the librarian. Theoretically, it
may be so; but the rejoinder is, our teachers have never succeeded in
the task, they have not even addressed themselves to it, and they are
not likely to succeed unless they work hand in hand with the librarian:
they must, indeed, rely on the librarian, the book-expert, more and
more under modern conditions, for guidance in their own reading and
in carrying out their own functions according to the newest lights.
It is largely owing to the lack of any regular correlation between
schools and libraries that the results of the Education Acts have been
so unsatisfactory. The mistakes of 1850 might have been rectified in
1870 by bringing the new system of schooling into the closest contact
with the public libraries. But, though it was enacted that every child
should be taught to read, that children should be taught how to read,
and where and what to read, seems to have scarcely entered the minds
of those responsible for elementary education. In introducing the
Education Estimates for 1917-8, Mr. Fisher said in the House of Commons
(April 19th, 1917):--
“I have been impressed by the fact that boys who have been stirred up
at the age of sixteen or seventeen to attend the technological classes
attached to our new universities in the north of England have so lost
the habit of intellectual activity as to cloy and impede the efficient
working of the college.... The country does not get full value out of
its elementary schools, because so much of the training and instruction
is subsequently lost.”
Why had these boys lost the habit of intellectual activity? Because,
first, though they had received the usual primary schooling, they
had never had instilled into them intellectual habits, interests,
or likings; and, second, because, even where libraries and other
intellectual institutions existed, they had never been brought inside
their doors, or learned that these things were their own and would
satisfy their multifarious needs the more they used them. Library
Extension aims at the repair of these oversights. The activities
which it connotes should be an important part of the library service
when this is reorganized on a national basis. In reality, Library
Extension is a return to the broader idea of the people’s institutes.
The lectures, reading circles, meetings for study and discussion, the
co-operative alliances with energetic bodies such as the Workers’
Educational Association, the local field club, scientific society,
or the like, the closer relations with schools and all intellectual
agencies, are revivals and developments of the social efforts at adult
education which gave life to those institutions in the early nineteenth
century.
As would be expected, the towns which have taken the lead in such
extension efforts as courses of public lectures have been places where
the traditional bond between the library and kindred foundations like
the museum and art gallery have never been severed. Such a combination
is a much more appropriate engine of extension activity than is the
library that is merely a library. It usually contains a lecture hall,
if not smaller rooms for study and discussion. In addition to the
books, which must be available and must be read if lectures are to
have any lasting results, the collections in the museum are there
for use in connexion with scientific and historical lectures, and
the gallery provides the most appropriate illustrations for those on
artistic subjects. In some towns, library, museum, and art gallery
are housed under one roof, governed by the same committee, and even
superintended by the same curator. Sometimes the technical school is
one of the group. Too close a coalition may have detrimental results.
Administration by one chief officer is hardly justifiable unless the
whole establishment is only on a moderate scale. There is always the
risk that one department will flourish at the expense of the others.
One of the most disastrous instances within my experience was when
the committee of a many-sided institute chose a librarian for his
qualifications as a college lecturer. In this case, it was the library
that went to the wall. In others, it has been the museum, the picture
gallery, or the school, when there has been one attached; or the
whole has suffered from the lack of close attention or of the special
knowledge and experience required equally by each department. But
this is no argument against the policy of putting them all under one
committee as branches of one corporate undertaking.
LECTURES IN THE LIBRARY.