A Library Primer by John Cotton Dana
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John Cotton Dana >> A Library Primer
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10 A Library Primer
John Cotton Dana
Third Edition
Library Bureau, Chicago
1903
Copyright, 1899, by Library Bureau
To Samuel S. Green, William I. Fletcher, and Charles A. Cutter
PREFACE.
A library primer was published in the first six numbers of Public
Libraries in 1896. It was quite largely made up of extracts from an
article by Dr W.F. Poole on The organization and management of public
libraries, which formed part of the report on Public libraries in the
U.S., published by the U.S. Bureau of education in 1876; from W.I.
Fletcher's Public libraries in America; from Mary W. Plummer's Hints
to small libraries; and from papers in the Library journal and A.L.A.
proceedings.
At the request of a number of people interested I have revised,
rewritten, and extended the original draft for publication in book
form. Additional material has been taken from many sources. I have
tried to give credit in good measure. The prevailing tendency among
librarians is to share ideas, to give to one another the benefit of
all their suggestions and experiences. The result is a large fund of
library knowledge which is common property. From this fund most of
this book is taken.
The Library Primer is what its name implies. It does not try to be
exhaustive in any part of the field. It tries to open up the subject
of library management for the small library, and to show how large it
is and how much librarians have yet to learn and to do.
The City library, J.C.D.
Springfield, Mass.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I, The beginnings--Library law 9
II, Preliminary work 10
III, What does a public library do for a community? 12
IV, General policy of the library 15
V, Trustees 17
VI, The librarian 20
VII, The trained librarian 23
VIII, Rooms, building, fixtures, furniture 25
IX, Things needed in beginning work 30
X, The Library Bureau 35
XI, Selecting books 39
XII, Reference books for a small library 46
XIII, Reference work 53
XIV, Reading room 57
XV, List of periodicals 61
XVI, Buying books 63
XVII, Ink and handwriting 69
XVIII, Care of books 73
XIX, Accessioning 76
XX, Classifying 78
XXI, Decimal classification 81
XXII, Expansive classification 84
XXIII, Author numbers or book marks 91
XXIV, Shelf list 92
XXV, Cataloging 94
XXVI, Preparing books for the shelf 99
XXVII, Binding and mending 103
XXVIII, Pamphlets 108
XXIX, Public documents 110
XXX, Checking the library 113
XXXI, Lists, bulletins, and printed catalogs 114
XXXII, Charging systems 116
XXXIII, Meeting the public 122
XXXIV, The public library for the public 123
XXXV, Advice to a librarian 126
XXXVI, The librarian as a host 128
XXXVII, Making friends for the library 131
XXXVIII, Public libraries and recreation 133
XXXIX, Books as useful tools 134
XL, Village library successfully managed 135
XLI, Rules for the public 137
XLII, Rules for trustees and employes 140
XLIII, Reports 146
XLIV, Library legislation 147
XLV, A.L.A. and other library associations 152
XLVI, Library schools and classes 154
XLVII, Library department of N.E.A. 156
XLVIII, Young people and the schools 157
XLIX, How can the library assist the school? 160
L, Children's room 163
LI, Schoolroom libraries 164
LII, Children's home libraries 166
LIII, Literary clubs and libraries 168
LIV, Museums, lectures, etc. 170
LV, Rules for the care of photographs 171
Library Primer
CHAPTER I
The beginnings--Library law
If the establishment of a free public library in your town is under
consideration, the first question is probably this: Is there a statute
which authorizes a tax for the support of a public library? Your state
library commission, if you have one, will tell you if your state
gives aid to local public libraries. It will also tell you about your
library law. If you have no library commission, consult a lawyer and
get from him a careful statement of what can be done under present
statutory regulations. If your state has no library law, or none which
seems appropriate in your community, it may be necessary to suspend
all work, save the fostering of a sentiment favorable to a library,
until a good law is secured.
In chapters 44 and 45 will be found a list of state library
commissions, important provisions in library laws, and the names of
the states having the best library laws at present.
Before taking any definite steps, learn about the beginnings of other
libraries by writing to people who have had experience, and especially
to libraries in communities similar in size and character to your own.
Write to some of the new libraries in other towns and villages of
your state, and learn how they began. Visit several such libraries, if
possible, the smaller the better if you are starting on a small scale.
CHAPTER II
Preliminary work
Often it is not well to lay great plans and invoke state aid at the
very outset. Make a beginning, even though it be small, is a good
general rule. This beginning, however petty it seems, will give a
center for further effort, and will furnish practical illustrations
for the arguments one may wish to use in trying to interest people in
the movement.
Each community has different needs, and begins its library under
different conditions. Consider then, whether you need most a library
devoted chiefly to the work of helping the schools, or one to be used
mainly for reference, or one that shall run largely to periodicals and
be not much more than a reading room, or one particularly attractive
to girls and women, or one that shall not be much more than a cheerful
resting-place, attractive enough to draw man and boy from street
corner and saloon. Decide this question early, that all effort may be
concentrated to one end, and that your young institution may suit the
community in which it is to grow, and from which it is to gain its
strength.
Having decided to have a library, keep the movement well before
the public. The necessity of the library, its great value to the
community, should be urged by the local press, from the platform, and
in personal talk. Include in your canvass all citizens, irrespective
of creed, business, or politics; whether educated or illiterate.
Enlist the support of teachers, and through them interest children and
parents. Literary, art, social, and scientific societies, Chautauqua
circles, local clubs of all kinds should be champions of the movement.
In getting notices of the library's work in the newspapers, or in
securing mention of it from the lecture platform, or in clubs, and
literary, artistic, and musical societies, it is better to refrain
from figures and to deal chiefly in general statements about what the
library aims to do and what it has done.
CHAPTER III
What does a public library do for a community?
And what good does a public library do? What is it for?
1) It supplies the public with recreative reading. To the masses of
the people--hard-worked and living humdrum lives--the novel comes
as an open door to an ideal life, in the enjoyment of which one may
forget, for a time, the hardships or the tedium of the real. One of
the best functions of the public library is to raise this recreative
reading of the community to higher and higher levels; to replace trash
with literature of a better order.
2) A proper and worthy aim of the public library is the supplying of
books on every profession, art, or handicraft, that workers in every
department who care to study may perfect themselves in their work.
3) The public library helps in social and political education--in the
training of citizens. It is, of course, well supplied with books and
periodicals which give the thought of the best writers on the economic
and social questions now under earnest discussion.
4) The highest and best influence of the library may be summed up
in the single word, culture. No other word so well describes the
influence of the diffusion of good reading among the people in giving
tone and character to their intellectual life.
5) The free reading room connected with most of our public libraries,
and the library proper as well, if it be rightly conducted, is a
powerful agent for counteracting the attractions of saloons and low
resorts. Especially useful is it to those boys and young men who have
a dormant fondness for reading and culture, but lack home and school
opportunities.
6) The library is the ever-ready helper of the school-teacher. It aids
the work of reading circles and other home-culture organizations, by
furnishing books required and giving hints as to their value and use;
it adds to the usefulness of courses of lectures by furnishing
lists of books on the subjects to be treated; it allies itself with
university extension work; in fact, the extension lecture given in
connection with the free use of a good library seems to be the ideal
university of the people.
The public library, then, is a means for elevating and refining the
taste, for giving greater efficiency to every worker, for diffusing
sound principles of social and political action, and for furnishing
intellectual culture to all.
The library of the immediate future for the American people is
unquestionably the free public library, brought under municipal
ownership, and, to some extent, municipal control, and treated as part
of the educational system of the state. The sense of ownership in it
makes the average man accept and use the opportunities of the free
public library while he will turn aside from book privileges in any
other guise.
That the public library is a part of the educational system should
never be lost sight of in the work of establishing it, or in its
management. To the great mass of the people it comes as their first
and only educational opportunity. The largest part of every man's
education is that which he gives himself. It is for this individual,
self-administered education that the public library furnishes the
opportunity and the means. The schools start education in childhood;
libraries carry it on.
CHAPTER IV
Suggestions as to general policy of the library
In general, remember always 1) that the public owns its public
library, and 2) that no useless lumber is more useless than unused
books. People will use a library, not because, in others' opinions,
they ought to, but because they like to. See to it, then, that the new
library is such as its owner, the public, likes; and the only test of
this liking is use. Open wide the doors. Let regulations be few and
never obtrusive. Trust American genius for self-control. Remember the
deference for the rights of others with which you and your fellows
conduct yourselves in your own homes, at public tables, at general
gatherings. Give the people at least such liberty with their own
collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his. Let the
shelves be open, and the public admitted to them, and let the open
shelves strike the keynote of the whole administration. The whole
library should be permeated with a cheerful and accommodating
atmosphere. Lay this down as the first rule of library management; and
for the second, let it be said that librarian and assistants are to
treat boy and girl, man and woman, ignorant and learned, courteous and
rude, with uniform good-temper without condescension; never pertly.
Finally, bear in mind these two doctrines, tempering the one with the
other: 1) that the public library is a great educational and moral
power, to be wielded with a full sense of its great responsibilities,
and of the corresponding danger of their neglect or perversion; 2)
that the public library is not a business office, though it should be
most business-like in every detail of its management; but is a center
of public happiness first, of public education next.
CHAPTER V
Trustees
[Condensed from paper by C.C. Soule]
1) _Size of the board_.--The library board should be small, in
small towns not over three members. In cities a larger board has
two advantages: it can include men exceptionally learned in library
science, and it can represent more thoroughly different sections of
the town and different elements in the population.
2) _Term of office_.--The board should be divided into several groups,
one group going out of office each year. It would be wise if no
library trustee could hold office for more than three successive terms
of three years each. A library can, under this plan, keep in close
touch with popular needs and new ideas.
3) _Qualifications_.--The ideal qualifications for a trustee of a
public library--a fair education and love of books being taken for
granted--are: sound character, good judgment, common sense, public
spirit, capacity for work, literary taste, representative fitness.
Don't assume that because a man has been prominent in political
business or social circles he will make a good trustee. Capacity
and willingness to work are more useful than a taste for literature
without practical qualities. General culture and wide reading are
generally more serviceable to the public library than the knowledge of
the specialist or scholar. See that different sections of the town's
interests are represented. Let neither politics nor religion enter
into the choice of trustees.
4) _Duties_.--The trustee of the public library is elected to preserve
and extend the benefits of the library as the people's university. He
can learn library science only by intelligent observation and study.
He should not hold his position unless he takes a lively interest in
the library, attends trustees' meetings, reads the library journals,
visits other libraries than his own, and keeps close watch of the
tastes and requirements of his constituency. His duties include the
care of funds, supervision of expenditures, determination of the
library's policy, general direction of choice and purchase of books,
selection of librarian and assistants, close watch of work done, and
comparison of the same with results reached in other libraries.
A large board ordinarily transacts business through its chairman,
secretary, treasurer, and one or more committees. It is doubtful if
the librarian should act as secretary of the board. The treasurer, if
he holds the funds in his hands, should always be put under bonds.
It is well to have as many committees as can be actively employed in
order to enlist the cooeperation of all the trustees.
The executive committee should take charge of the daily work of the
library, of purchases, and of the care of the building; they should
carry their duties as far as possible without assuming too much of the
responsibility which properly belongs to the full board. It will be
best to entrust the choice of books to a book committee appointed
for that purpose purely. The finance committee should make and watch
investments and see that purchases are made on most favorable terms.
5) _Relations with the librarian_.--The trustees are the responsible
managers of the library; the librarian is their agent, appointed
to carry out their wishes. If they have, however, a first-class
librarian, the trustees ought to leave the management of the library
practically to him, simply supplementing his ability without impeding
it. They should leave to a librarian of good executive ability the
selection, management, and dismissal of all assistants, the methods
and details of library work, and the initiative in the choice of
books. A wise librarian the trustees may very properly take into their
confidence, and invite his presence at all meetings, where his advice
would be of service.
6) _Other employes_.--Efficiency of employes can best be obtained
through application of the cardinal principles of an enlightened
civil service, viz., absolute exclusion of all political and personal
influence, appointment for definitely ascertained fitness, promotion
for merit, and retention during good behavior.
CHAPTER VI
The librarian
If circumstances permit, the librarian should be engaged even before
the general character of the library and plan of administration have
been determined upon. If properly selected, he or she will be a person
of experience in these matters, and will be able to give valuable
advice. Politics, social considerations, church sympathies, religious
prejudices, family relationship--none of these should be allowed to
enter into his selection. Secure an efficient officer, even at what
may seem at first a disproportionate expense. Save money in other
ways, but never by employing a forceless man or woman in the position
of chief librarian.
Recent developments of schools of library economy, and recent rapid
growth of public libraries throughout the country, have made it
possible for any new library to secure good material for a librarian.
If lack of funds or other conditions make it necessary to employ some
local applicant, it will be wise to insist that that person, if not
already conversant with library economy, shall immediately become
informed on the subject. It will not be easy, it may not be possible,
for trustees to inform themselves as to library organization and
administration. They can, however, with very little difficulty, so
far inform themselves as to be able to judge whether the person they
select for their chief officer is taking pains to acquaint himself
with the literature of the subject, or trying to get in touch with
the knowledge and experience of others. They should not submit for
a moment to ignorance or indifference on the part of their chosen
administrator. Success or failure of a library, as of a business,
depends on the ability of the man or woman at its head, and only
trained men and women should be in charge. The business of the
librarian is a profession, and a practical knowledge of the subject is
never so much needed as in starting a new enterprise.
The librarian should have culture, scholarship, and executive ability.
He should keep always in advance of his community, and constantly
educate it to make greater demands upon him. He should be a leader and
a teacher, earnest, enthusiastic, and intelligent. He should be able
to win the confidence of children, and wise to lead them by easy steps
from good books to the best. He has the greatest opportunity of any
teacher in the community. He should be the teacher of teachers. He
should make the library a school for the young, a college for adults,
and the constant center of such educational activity as will make
wholesome and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought. He
should be enough of a bookworm to have a decided taste and fondness
for books, and at the same time not enough to be such a recluse as
loses sight of the point of view of those who know little of books.
As the responsible head of the institution, he should be consulted in
all matters relating to its management. The most satisfactory results
are obtained in those libraries where the chief librarian is permitted
to appoint assistants, select books, buy supplies, make regulations,
and decide methods of cataloging, classifying, and lending; all
subject to the approval of the trustees. Trustees should impose
responsibility, grant freedom, and exact results.
To the librarian himself one may say: Be punctual; be attentive; help
develop enthusiasm in your assistants; be neat and consistent in your
dress; be dignified but courteous in your manner. Be careful in your
contracts; be square with your board; be concise and technical;
be accurate; be courageous and self-reliant; be careful about
acknowledgments; be not worshipful of your work; be careful of your
health. Last of all, be yourself.
CHAPTER VII
The trained librarian in a small library
Julia A. Hopkins, of the Rochester (N.Y.) Public library, in Public
Libraries, December, 1897
The value of training for the man or woman who shall take charge of a
large city library is now so firmly established that no one thinks
of discussing the question. If it is true that technical training is
essential for the headship of a large library, why is it not equally
necessary for that of a small library? Trained service is always of
greater value than untrained service, be the sphere great or small. If
a woman argued from the standpoint that, because the house she was to
take charge of had only seven rooms instead of twenty she needed to
know nothing of cooking, sweeping, and the other details of household
work, I am afraid that her house and her family would suffer for her
ignorance. So in many departments of library work the accident of size
makes little or no difference; the work is precisely the same. The
difference lies in the fact that the head of a large library oversees
and directs the work done by others, where the village librarian
must, in many cases, do all of the work himself. In the distinctly
professional duties, such as the ordering, classifying, and cataloging
of books, there is a difference only in amount between the greater and
the less. And it is precisely these professional duties of which the
person untrained in library work is in most cases wofully ignorant.
It is inevitable that in starting a library there should be some
mistakes made; but with a trained librarian in charge, these mistakes
will be fewer in number. For example, what does the novice know of
classification? He realizes that the books, for convenience in use,
must be grouped in classes. If he has had the use of a good library
(as a college student would) he has some idea as to how the class
divisions are made, and knows also that there must be some sort of
notation for the classes. Necessity being the mother of invention, he
contrives some plan for bringing together books on the same subject.
But with the addition of books to the library and the demand which
growth makes, he finds that constant changes have to be made in order
to get books into their right places; and then some day he awakens to
the fact that there is some perfectly well-known and adopted system of
classification which will answer all his purposes, and be a great deal
more satisfactory in its adaptability to the needs of his library than
the one he has been struggling to evolve. Then he exclaims in despair:
If I had only known of that at the beginning! He feels that the hours
which he has spent in rearranging his books, taking them out of one
class and putting them into another, although hours of such hard work,
are in reality so many hours of wasted time. And he is right; for
every minute spent in unnecessary work is so much lost time. Not only
that, but it is unnecessary expense, and one of the most important
things which a small library has to consider is economy.
Is it not of value to the library that its librarian should know how
best to expend the money given him to use? that he should not have to
regret hours of time lost over useless experiments? Surely if training
teaches a librarian a wise expenditure of money and an economy of
time, then training must be valuable.
CHAPTER VIII
Rooms, building, fixtures, furniture
The trustees will be wise if they appoint their librarian before
they erect a building, or even select rooms, and leave these matters
largely to him. They should not be in haste to build. As a rule it
is better to start in temporary quarters, and let the building fund
accumulate while trustees and librarian gain experience, and the needs
of the library become more definite. Plans should be made with the
future enlargement of the building in view; libraries increase more
rapidly than is generally supposed.
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