Reading room--Periodicals
A free reading room is generally opened in connection with the
library, and often proves its most attractive feature. It should be
comfortably furnished and scrupulously clean. As the room is for the
use of all clean and orderly people, quiet should be maintained to
give all a chance to read and study without interruption. There should
be no signs commanding things, and the fewest possible--and they
unobtrusive--requesting things. Signs giving information helpful to
readers are always permissible; but see that they harmonize with the
furnishings of the room and are clean. Gray, or some modest tint, is
preferable to white cardboard for all signs. The general atmosphere
of the place should be such as one would wish to have in his own
home--orderly, inviting, cheerful.
The village library ought to preserve for reference a file of local
papers; and it seems proper for it to provide for public use a few
dailies or weeklies from the nearest cities. Further than this in this
direction it would not seem expedient to go, because better work can
be done, with the money newspapers would cost, in other directions.
In fact, where the room is limited, as well as funds, it will often be
better to provide no newspapers at all. Few are unable to get
papers to read elsewhere. The library can well devote itself to
the encouraging the reading of other things. Most people read the
newspapers enough, library or no library. Many, save for the library,
would not read the standard American and English periodicals.
[Illustration: Magazine binder. (Reduced; various sizes.)]
The young people are the library's most hopeful material. To them
the librarian hopes to give, through books and journals, an added
pleasure; and in them he hopes to awaken a taste for reading
something--in time something good. To attract the children it will be
wise to have on file a few juvenile journals and picture papers and
illustrated magazines. As to the standard and popular monthlies
and quarterlies there seems to be no question; they should be taken
freely. The magazines furnish us with the best fiction, the best
poetry, the best essays, the best discussions of all subjects, old
and new, and the latest science. It is a question if many a village
library would not do more, vastly more, to stimulate the mental life
of its community, and to broaden its views and sympathies, and to
encourage study, if it diverted a far larger part of its income than
it now does from inferior books, and especially inferior novels, to
weekly journals and popular and standard magazines. It is not yet
fully impressed upon us that the thing the community needs is not a
"library"--it may have a street lined with "libraries" and still dwell
in the outer darkness--but contact with the printed page. Get
this contact first, then, by means of attractive rooms, and clean,
wholesome, interesting periodicals and books, and let the well rounded
students' collection of books come on as it will.
From 5 to 20 per cent can very often be saved on the cost of
periodicals by ordering them through a reliable subscription agency.
The custom is extending of taking extra numbers of the popular
magazines and lending them as if they were books though generally for
a shorter period and without the privilege of renewal. When this is
done, put each magazine in a binder made for the purpose, and marked
with the library's name, to keep it clean and smooth, and to identify
it as library property. Similar binders are often put on the magazines
which are placed in the reading rooms. (See Library Bureau catalog.)
Complete volumes of the magazines are in great demand with the
borrowing public. The magazine indexes now available will make useful
to the student the smallest library's supply of periodical literature.
In small reading rooms the periodicals that are supplied should be
placed on tables where readers can consult them without application
to the attendants. Files and racks for newspapers, special devices for
holding illustrated journals, and other things of like nature, are to
be found in great variety.
Post up in the reading room a list of the periodicals regularly
received; also a list of those in the bound files.
A careful record should be kept of each magazine ordered, of the date
when ordered, the date when the subscription begins and expires, the
price paid, the agency from which it is ordered, and the date of that
agency's receipted bill. If the list of journals taken is small this
record can be kept very conveniently in a blank book. If it is large
and constantly growing or changing, it is best kept on cards, a
card to each journal, and all alphabetically arranged. It saves much
trouble when dealing with an agency to have subscriptions coincide
with the calendar year, disregarding the volume arrangements of the
publishers.