Part 12

Another need of paramount importance to all engaged in the pursuit of knowledge is that the contents of the numerous periodicals produced throughout the world, registering advances in all branches of science and research, should be abstracted and indexed, so that the material should be rendered accessible or at any rate its existence fully known.[31] Mention has already been made of the Subject-Index to Periodicals, in which some hundred and fifty periodicals are systematically indexed. This important undertaking was initiated some years ago by Mr. E. Wyndham Hulme, late librarian to H.M. Patent Office; it has been carried on successively under the auspices of the “Athenæum” and of the Library Association. It is at present a heavy burden upon a few devoted shoulders, although a very large part of the labour is performed by volunteers; yet its scheme is susceptible of indefinite expansion, if all the requirements of scientific and technical workers are to be, even approximately, met. It is eminently a task pertaining to the library, the university and college library, the special library, and the research department of all types. Were there a central library department in existence, it would undertake this as part of its ordinary routine. It would also undertake the collateral task of preparing and publishing a union catalogue of the long sets of periodicals of all kinds to which the Subject-Index gives the references, and it would indicate where these sets are to be found. Besides the indexing, it would perhaps carry out the further but hardly less valuable work of drawing up and issuing systematic digests of important new knowledge contained in the learned periodicals. It has been recently proposed that the British Museum should carry out this necessary piece of national work, the cost of which, sales being allowed for, would not be excessive.[32]

Such results, however, invaluable as they would be to the whole nation, through the services rendered to several classes of workers, would be only a by-product of the centralizing and systematizing process, the immediate object of which would be the betterment of our libraries. Let us return then from this digression. In the middle of last century and towards its end, Edward Edwards and then his biographer, Thomas Greenwood, both stated their conviction that central control was necessary, and that one of its most useful instruments would be systematic inspection. Greenwood quotes the following from Edwards:--

“If every Library in this country on which the public has any fair claim, could be brought distinctly under public view, by a precise and periodical statement, comprising at least three particulars: (1) what it _is_; (2) what it _has_; and (3) what it _does_; a long train of improvements would inevitably follow. But the systematic inspection of Public Libraries to be effective must be national.”[33]

He goes on:

“The present writer is convinced that there will never be a full measure of health and vitality in libraries generally until some central control of this nature is established. The largest and best of the public libraries do not need it, but would welcome it to secure the welfare of the library body politic. But there is a class of libraries, and it is to be feared that it is not a small one, which seriously need to have light from the outside brought to bear upon their administration. Such libraries are managed in a narrow, illiberal manner, with rules which hamper rather than help the public. The staff is selected without regard to conditions of suitability, training, or merit, and every method adopted is of the tamest and least efficient kind. Only national and systematic inspection can alter this state of affairs. His Majesty’s inspectors of public schools perform an efficient and salutary work without curbing local aspirations, and similar inspectors of public libraries would be able to carry out an equally useful task in connection with the municipal libraries. But it is plain that no form of public Government inspection would be agreeable to existing library authorities, unless accompanied by some kind of substantial State aid.”[34]

Government inspection of libraries is not unknown in other countries, on both sides of the Atlantic, and appears to cause no friction but a spirit of good feeling and mutual help. It is carried on, for instance, in Canada, and it is one of the functions of the State library commissions in the United States. The libraries accept it in the spirit which Edwards saw would animate the efficient library authority, and, further, welcome it as a potent means for extending their benefits into regions hitherto unreached. In Ontario the Minister of Education is responsible for the administration of the Public Libraries Act, and assigns this part of his duties to the Public Libraries Branch, of which the Inspector of Public Libraries is superintendent. But in Ontario the local authorities are so whole-hearted in their zeal that the energies of the Branch are mainly confined to general work in the interest of libraries, to routine inspections, the collection of statistics, and the payment of grants. Yet, it is admitted, the majority of librarians and library trustees would welcome a demand for a minimum standard of efficiency.

The American State commissions usually include the State librarian, other professional librarians, prominent educators, literary men, library trustees, and business men interested in the work. “Instead of regarding with jealousy the assumption by the State of powers like these, librarians generally welcome the increase of systematic work fostered by State aid and control. They are active everywhere in efforts to establish State commissions, where such do not exist, and the opponents of their efforts are usually persons unfamiliar with the modern library movement, or politicians who see in such action no benefit to themselves. In some cases, where legislatures have refused to enact a proper State library law, State library associations, voluntary bodies of librarians, have agreed to initiate and carry on, at their own expense, some of the activities usually supervised and financed by the State.”[35]

“A former agent of the Massachusetts Free Library Commission won for himself the title of ‘the travelling bishop,’ descriptive both of the estimation and affection with which he was regarded.” “State library commissions exist at present in thirty-seven states. In a few states such as in California, New York, and Utah, the State library or the State board of education, in lieu of a library commission, exerts the functions that such a commission would have.”[36]

The question of State grants to local authorities is perhaps important, but certainly not so important as some critics would make out. Equalization of burdens would of course have to be arranged. Yet, on the other hand, there should be nothing to prevent a very enterprising authority from spending a great deal more if it chose on further developments of its library service. Progress would ultimately come to a standstill if there were not this liberty; uniformity, at any level, is ultimately stagnation. The Adult Education Committee speak of State grants to local exchequers; but, apparently, these were to have been calculated on the measure of a local authority’s zeal in co-operating with educational work in the narrow sense, and not made a handle for beneficent central control. It might or it might not be advisable to assist local effort or reward enterprise by a policy of grants in aid. Anyhow, it should be borne in mind that the material benefits of such a scheme of centralization as has been roughly outlined would be tantamount to a large financial contribution by the State, though it should cost the State nothing. Apart from equalization of burdens[37] and, perhaps, rewards for noteworthy efficiency--or the converse, fines or refusal of grants for failures in efficiency--there seems to be little use in discussing what proportion of the cost of our systems of libraries should be defrayed by local rates and contributions from local authorities and what by the State. Both rates and taxes come ultimately from the same source, and, so far as that source, the rated and taxed individual, is concerned, he might as well spend his time debating which pocket he should keep his purse in. Inspections and grants from the local exchequer would, obviously, go hand in hand; but the allotment of grants would certainly not be the sole or the principal end of the system of inspection.

If all the libraries in the kingdom were linked together in a national system, the division into urban libraries and rural systems would to a large extent disappear. A large number of the urban libraries would be absorbed into groups of town and country libraries, analogous to the American county groups; and large rural areas, with small village libraries and a service of boxes, would have their focus in new central institutes easily accessible to readers in the vicinity and available for occasional visits by students at a greater distance. Many populous areas would remain much as they are at present, with some increase of facilities. But, instead of one Central Library for Students, there would have to be, sooner or later, several large supplemental libraries in convenient spots, forming magazines supplying, not individual readers, but the scattered libraries; and, probably the British Isles would have to be divided for library purposes into several provinces, each centering in one of these. Supervision of library activities in such provinces would devolve upon regional committees, elected by the county and borough authorities in each province, the central board exercising co-ordinating functions and carrying out such work as is for the general welfare.

These central supplemental libraries would be built up largely by a careful redistribution of existing resources. There is hardly a library of any size that does not contain many books which are very seldom used, books, however, which no librarian would dare to jettison, because he knows that some fine day a reader is sure to come along to whom one volume or another will be of priceless importance. There are many other books so infrequently called for that it would be an immense convenience to store them elsewhere, and utilize the valuable shelf-space for books in continual request. Books of this sort should be kept at the supplemental library, duly catalogued, and ready to be sent to any library throughout the area served, when readers require them. The supplemental libraries would, of course, be always buying more books; they would have to keep abreast of the latest advances in all subjects; but the works just described would form an important part of their original contents, and would be transferred to them free of cost. Local libraries are constantly put to the expense of buying books for one or two users; such users are, no doubt, among the most deserving of all their clients, and it is but just that their urgent wants should be satisfied. But it is a tax upon the capacities of small libraries that should be met somehow else; they would be spared it by the new system, and the cost of the supplemental library would be saved over and over again, the local library then having more funds to maintain the stock of books in regular demand.

The present Central Library for Students is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step; the work will have to be done on a very large scale. This library was an outgrowth of the efforts to supply students attending university tutorial and W.E.A. classes with books to carry on systematic reading. At the end of 1915, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust undertook to provide £600 to assist in the establishment of the library, £2,000 for additions to the stock, and £400 yearly for five years, if £320 were raised by subscription. The subvention was afterwards raised to £1,000 a year, and in 1920 the issues of books numbered 15,500. The Adult Education Committee were deeply impressed by the exceptional value of the work performed by this library, and proposed that it should be made the nucleus of a central circulating library to supplement the local library service all over the country. With an assured income of £2,000 a year for ten years, they calculated that an annual circulation of at least 40,000 volumes would be attained; their estimate being based on an estimated cost of 1s. per volume issued. The actual cost of each issue, under our present benevolent postal regime, is considerably more. The figure is now probably not less than 1s. 6d. Add return postage to this, and you will see that, after borrowing a book two or three times, you might as well have bought it outright. The method of sending out books singly is too expensive. And a circulation of 40,000 a year would be a mere drop in the ocean; any small provincial library has an annual circulation of at least 40,000; a large borough library system in London expects an annual circulation of about a million. The thing must be done on a vast scale to be worth doing at all, and then it can be done cheaply, even if, as might reasonably be expected, the Post Office declines to grant a large rebate on the transmission of books issued from the national libraries. The proper method is to make our central library or libraries an integral part of the whole machine, supplying to all other libraries all, or nearly all, of the books that are not imperatively necessary on the spot for everyday purposes. Then the issues from the central library will not be in twos and threes, but in large batches, and the average cost will be reduced to an economic amount.

Mr. John McKillop produced a workmanlike scheme in 1907 for such a supplemental library in London as would have provided all the students and other hard working readers throughout the twenty-eight municipal boroughs with all the books required in the most exacting course of study. He proposed that it should be established by the Education Committee of the London County Council, since its greatest immediate effect would be to supply students with expensive works not now within their reach.

“With eighty-five municipal libraries already established in London, it would be useless duplication for the Education Committee to undertake all the work of registering borrowers and issuing volumes to them and safeguarding their return. It is suggested that the contents of the Council’s collection should be lent on application to the public libraries and the libraries of educational institutions which could then lend them to their clients. This method would avoid the necessity for a very large staff. The central collection would have as borrowers merely the eighty-five libraries and branches already established, and those which may be added from time to time by the boroughs in the future, together with the fifty or so polytechnics, and such other of the institutions for higher education as may care to avail themselves of the facilities offered. In any case its borrowers could not exceed a couple of hundred, and though each of these might daily draw and return large numbers of books, the clerical labour required would be but a fraction of that necessary in a smaller library, where a large number of borrowers withdraw and return one or at most two volumes each.”[38]

Mr. McKillop based his estimate of cost on the number of volumes contained in the Patent Office Library, viz., 105,000 volumes, which comprehend a very large proportion of modern scientific works. “If we take 35,000 as the number of volumes required for a modern working science library of reference (_i.e._, excluding the smaller text-books and class-books), and if we allow four times this number for the needs of departments other than science, we get a total of 165,000 volumes as the size of the collection. As a basis to calculate the capital cost of the collection probably 5s. is too little and 10s. too much per volume. Taking 7s. 6d. as a working figure the total cost would be about £62,000 (one penny rate in London produces £171,000). But it would be impossible to spend for this purpose wisely and economically such a sum as £62,000 within less than ten years, and the collection could be got together with reasonable rapidity by the expenditure of not more than £10,000 in any one year. The average expenditure would probably be nearer £5,000. In regard to administration the cost would be probably easily covered by £5,000 a year when in full working order, but would be four or five years in getting up to that figure.”[39]

If the cost of Mr. McKillop’s scheme was to be £5,000 a year in pre-war money, we can hardly expect much from £2,000 a year now, especially when the whole of the United Kingdom, and not London alone, is to be supplied. Further, it is hardly too optimistic to conjecture that the number of students and other serious readers in the population is a great deal higher now than it was in 1907, and, accordingly, that the demands upon our supplemental libraries would be proportionately more exacting. No, the Adult Education Committee have not looked far enough: a much bigger scheme is required, and the expenditure of much larger sums than they contemplate. But there is no need to be frightened by the cost; one may safely affirm that the general economic saving will be in direct proportion to the outlay on the establishment and upkeep of the experimental libraries. Whatever is spent at the centre, will be far more than made up by savings at the circumference.

Mr. McKillop put the case of the student of science and technology, for whose difficulties he felt most concern, although there are numerous others whose state of destitution is no less pitiful, with a cogency that cannot be bettered.

“These students may be either those whose means enable them to pursue courses of study in the splendid laboratories of University College, the Royal College of Science, the City and Guilds Institution, and other schools of equal rank, or they may be young men and women whose circumstances compel them to earn their living by daily work, and have only access to the culture and improvement offered by evening study. While the former presumably have access to the best literature of their subject in the libraries of the institutions in which they work, the latter, although, it is suggested, showing probably greater devotion and sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge, are debarred by the hours of opening and closing from the use of the magnificent collections in the British Museum, Patent Office, and other public libraries of reference. The polytechnics, it is admitted, do make great efforts to supply the books required by their students; but it cannot be contended that at present they can compete in this respect with the other institutions named, which provide for the student who has all his day for study. It is precisely for this latter class that the public rate-supported libraries of London ought to provide, and it is a well-established fact to those who know something of the inner working of the public libraries in London, that it is one of the great sources of discontent among London’s public librarians that insufficient funds, and sometimes also unsympathetic borough council committees, prevent their doing more than is done for this class. But there are inherent difficulties which have to be taken into consideration. London is not a unit; it is twenty-eight independent units without even a semblance of federation, and it would impose an insupportable financial burden on the ratepayers if every one of the twenty-eight boroughs were to attempt to supply, through the public libraries, the books required by advanced students in science, technology, history, literature, art, and other domains of study which can be pursued in London.”

... But why should London provide twenty-eight sets of all these works? There is no probability that one student in, say, Bermondsey, and one in, say, Finsbury, will require the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions at the same time, and, therefore, it is not necessary that both Bermondsey and Finsbury, and every other library in London, should possess a set. But there is a probability that more than one student in the same borough might require the same volume at the same time; for instance, a teacher at the Battersea Polytechnic might recommend the half-dozen or so students in his advanced class in chemistry to read some classical memoir; and Battersea Public Library, to meet this demand efficiently, would require two or three sets of the Philosophical Transactions, which would be an obviously absurd arrangement. The absence of any system of co-operation between the metropolitan libraries renders it impossible for them at present to co-operate in any way in meeting this difficulty.[40] Mr. McKillop went on to show that it might be possible for the local libraries, trusting to the central collection for an adequate supply of what may be called students’ works, relatively seldom used, to work with a standard collection of popular works which would be the same in all boroughs. “When this point is reached, it might be possible to have a common catalogue for all the libraries.... The way is, in consequence, easy for a local authority which decides to establish a collection. It can procure for a very small sum the catalogue of all its collection ready made on the best lines, and all it has to do is to purchase the books, etc.”[41] Without endorsing this idea of stereotyped libraries, an idea which is obviously contrary to the vital principle that a local library, if it is truly alive, will by the predominant character of its contents show itself to be the expression of local individuality, we must admit that it opens up suggestive possibilities.

Another proposal of the Adult Education Committee lies open to more severe criticism. This was a project for assisting industries and technical students and research workers by setting up a great chain of industrial libraries forming “a technical library system for each industry,” independently of the municipal library system. Side by side with the latter, not yet, and perhaps not even then, organized as a reciprocating system, there would be erected a complex and highly expensive series of special collections, open, apparently, to members of the particular industries alone. “In the case of general libraries the unit of organization and administration is the local authority, in the case of the technical library system it should be the industry.”[42] The amount of costly and unnecessary duplication, both of contents and of machinery, in such a cumbrous scheme dumbfounds the experienced librarian, especially when he reflects that all the libraries in the kingdom could be put on a scientific basis, and all the wants of both the general public and the special industries amply satisfied, at much less the price. Such a scheme must obviously have been framed by persons having but a rudimentary idea of the library arts, or they would have thought out a much more practical and economical plan. The extravagant cost and the impracticability of the proposal have been exposed in a special Memorandum by the Library Association, representing the trained librarians of the country, who, strange to say, were not consulted before the scheme was evolved. The gist of their criticism is contained in the following paragraphs:--