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This I supplemented by a less intensive study of library conditions in towns, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, seeking to make my knowledge comprehensive. The first impression I received was that of the many interpretations put upon library work. These were almost as numerous as were the librarians and custodians.
It is partially used by librarians who have had to introduce radical changes in portions of the classification, and in fact it is understood that the classification has been very largely made over both in Amherst College library and in that of Columbia University, N. Y., where it was fully established.
We shall therefore avoid as much as possible the description of particular books, and shall endeavour to deal with the book-collector or book-hunter, as distinguished from the owner of good books, from librarians and specialists, from the merchant or broker of books and the book-glutton who wants all that he sees.
His money secured the services of the librarians and bookstall-men on the Continent, who were afraid of no journey by land, and were deterred by no fury of the sea.
Some librarians go so far as to post the names of such offenders in the library hall, stating that they are denied the privileges of the library by the authorities, for mutilating books. In any case, great care must be taken to have the clearest proof, before proceeding to fasten the offense upon a particular individual.
The record comes out of the custody of adversaries. The Jews, as an ancient father well observed, are our librarians. The passage is in their copies as well as in ours. With many attempts to explain it away, none has ever been made by them to discredit its authenticity.
"We librarians are a sort of weather-vanes, if people only knew enough to consult us. We can hardly get a sufficient number of these new religious books the good ones, I mean to supply the demand. And the Lord knows what trash is devoured, from what the booksellers tell me.
Treatise after treatise has been written upon it, system has been piled upon system, learned men have theorised and wrangled about it all their lives, and successive generations have dropped into their graves, leaving the vexed question as unsettled as ever. Every now and then a body of savans or a convention of librarians wrestles with it, and perhaps votes upon it,
We mean to deal with all these things, and it will need very much more than the disapproval of provincial librarians, the hostility of a few influential people in London, the scurrility of one paper, and the deep and obstinate silences of another, to stop the incoming tide of aggressive novel-writing. We are going to write about it all.
I have suggested the importance of an even temper in the relations between librarians and readers; and it is equally important as between all those associated in the administration of a library. Every one has faults and weaknesses; and those encountered in others will be viewed with the most charity by those who are duly conscious of their own.
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