ADAPTATION OF LIBRARIES TO CONSTITUENCIES

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most hurtful criticism would be attacks after inevitable cases where some one would greatly wish a book that had been withdrawn as useless; that the printed catalogs already circulated would be made untrustworthy by parting with any volume included; that what one wise and learned man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.

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.