This Handbook bears some analogy to the division “miscellaneous” usually
found in most library classifications. It is in some respects, perhaps,
more exposed to the action of heterogeneity than even that refuge of
doubt “polygraphy,” as “miscellaneous” is sometimes seen disguised;
but the fact of its limits being so ill-defined gives ample scope for
comprehensiveness, while affording not a little security to the compiler,
should it be necessary to deprecate blame on the score of omissions or
other faults. There is, unfortunately, no single comprehensive word or
phrase which can be used to distinguish the special sort of library
apparatus here described—“appliances” being at once too restricted or
too wide, according to the standpoint adopted. Indeed there are certain
bibliothecal sophists who maintain that anything is a library appliance,
especially the librarian himself; while others will have it that, when
the paste-pot and scissors are included, the appliances of a library
have been named. To neither extreme will this tend, but attention
will be strictly confined to the machinery and implements wherewith
libraries, public and other, are successfully conducted. It would be
utterly impossible, were it desirable, to describe, or even mention,
every variety of fitting or appliance which ingenuity and the craving
for change have introduced, and the endeavour shall be accordingly to
notice the more generally established apparatus, and their more important
modifications. It is almost needless to point out that very many of the
different methods of accomplishing the same thing, hereinafter described,
result from similar causes to those which led in former times to such
serious political complications in the kingdom of Liliput. There are
several ways of getting into an egg, and many ways of achieving one end
in library affairs, and the very diversity of these methods shows that
thought is active and improvement possible. As Butler has it—
“Opiniators naturally differ
From other men: as wooden legs are stiffer
Than those of pliant joints, to yield and bow,
Which way soe’er they are design’d to go”.
Hence it happens that all library appliances are subject to the happy
influences of disagreement, which, in course of time, leads to entire
changes of method and a general broadening of view. Many of these
differences arise from local conditions, or have their existence
in experiment and the modification of older ideas, so that actual
homogeneity in any series of the appliances described in this Handbook
must not be expected. It will be sufficient if the young librarian finds
enough of suggestion and information to enable him to devise a system of
library management in its minor details which shall be consistent and
useful.