Part 6

A more particular account of the Manchester Commercial Library, the latest to be opened, will indicate the distinctive features and functions of these new departments. Its quarters are a large room in the Royal Exchange, in the heart of the business region of the city: here it was inaugurated by the Lord Mayor on October 23rd, 1919. A handbook stating its aims and explaining its uses was issued, in which it is pointed out that the commercial library is there to provide “any and every kind of commercial information that may be obtained from printed matter, and such additional information as it may be possible to procure from public or private sources; and for the collection, arrangement, and cataloguing of such printed matter, so as to render it quickly and conveniently available for inquirers and readers. It is not a technical library; those who want books on processes of manufacture must consult the collection in the reference library in Piccadilly. Its object is to cater for the man who markets commodities, and buys and sells them; not for the man who makes them.”

In the fittings, furniture, and apparatus many new devices have been introduced, such as the contrivance for mounting and storing maps on vertical cylinders, and for displaying them flat on large tables--a method that has certain advantages, especially when a number of different maps have to be consulted in turn. But the most striking and in many respects the most useful piece of library mechanism is the vertical file. This is a vast accumulation of cuttings from newspapers and other sources, systematically arranged, in which any item of information that may be of service to the business man is preserved and made available for instant reference by a subject index. About 100,000 clippings had been laid in, arranged, and indexed by March, 1921; and this home-made encyclopædia, this vast inquire-within, enabled the staff to answer off-hand a large percentage of the miscellaneous queries coming in from hour to hour.[10] The periodicals taken number over two hundred, and include a good many foreign publications. The latest maps are added to the collection as they appear, and the atlases include several that can hardly be found elsewhere, at least in places accessible to the public. Thus the contents of the library are multiform, books, pamphlets, leaflets, charts, tables, as well as press cuttings; all are minutely classified, and graphic methods of subject-cataloguing make it easy to trace the most out-of-the-way information. Here is the summary of the contents given by the official handbook:--

THE CONTENTS OF THE LIBRARY.

These may be roughly summarized as follows:

_Directories._--These embrace the whole of the United Kingdom, some of the British Colonies, along with other countries of the world, and the principal cities of the United States and Canada. Many important trades are represented by trade directories and year books. There is a Post Office Telephone Directory for the United Kingdom.

_Periodicals._--A careful selection has been made of over 150 trade periodicals from all parts of the world.

_Parliamentary Publications._--The varied and most valuable publications of the British Government, bearing, either in whole or part, on commercial interests, are received regularly as issued.

_Chambers of Commerce Reports._--These include Chambers at home, and in many foreign countries--Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, India, Norway, Sweden, &c. The collection of Chamber of Commerce year books is of value as illustrating the industries of the different towns in the United Kingdom.

_Codes._--A.B.C., Bentley, Lieber, Lieber’s Five Letter, Scott’s Western Union, &c.

_Dictionaries._--English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian.

_Tables._--Calculating tables and tables of foreign exchanges.

_Text-books._--Commercial law, banking, advertising, accountancy, office methods, insurance, business organization, tariffs, salesmanship, transportation, raw materials, and the commercial side of textiles and engineering, are represented on the shelves by the most recent books.

_Trade Catalogues._--These are collected purely from the point of view of the value of the information contained in them, or as types of catalogue production. At present a beginning only has been made, many firms not having published catalogues during the war. The catalogues are classified and catalogued in the same way as other books.

_Maps and Atlases._--Commercial routes and different countries are well represented, and the best of the new maps and atlases will be added when published.

Parliamentary command papers dealing with commercial matters are received on publication, and liberal assistance is given by the Department of Overseas Trade, Chambers of Commerce both home and foreign, trade societies, business firms, and British consuls and trade commissioners. Bulletins are issued by the library month by month, giving lists of books on accountancy, banking, foreign directories, scientific management, advertising, foreign trade, and similar topics. Even a manufacturer’s catalogue becomes a work of high utility and importance when it takes its proper place in such a collection, often affording valuable assistance to inquirers in search of the manufacturer of any given article.

The Library of Commerce at Bristol is similarly organized, and has met with like appreciation. The following is a return of the consultations from February 1920 to January 22nd, 1921:--

1920 Books. Directories. Maps. Periodicals. Total. Feb.-June 4378 6102 725 8137 19342 July 837 1502 172 2181 4692 August 735 1276 261 1780 4052 September 823 1402 172 1806 4203 October 986 1510 158 2115 4769 November 1221 1256 161 2079 4717 December 710 1155 133 1739 3737

1921 Jan. 1 (1 day) 21 43 3 81 148

Week ending Jan. 8 184 333 34 513 1064 Jan. 15 220 326 35 504 1085 Jan. 22 220 301 36 518 1075 ------------------------------------------------------------- Grand Total 10,335 15,206 1,890 21,453 48,884 -------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some examples of the questions that have been asked and answered--in several instances with the direct consequence that the inquirer has been saved losses running into very large figures:--

What are the means of communication in Bechuanaland?

Was the 1893 vintage good?

What has been the _monthly_ percentage of the increase of the cost of living since July 1914 (retail and wholesale)?

What is the procedure for the winding up of a company?

What is the bank deposit rate?

What is the amount payable for brokerage?

What is the state of the wool market in Australia?

Who are the principal makers of knitting machines?

Can the movements of a vessel be traced through 1920?

What is the stamp duty on a form of contract?

What is the position of trade in the Argentine?

What time would a steamer take to go from Hull to the Canary Isles?

What is the difference in the rate of exchange in U.S.A. in September 1919 and July 1920?

What is the duty on wine and spirits?

What is the position of the Belgian industries?

What is the time-limit for stamping a form of agreement?

Several inquiries for help in coding and decoding cables.

The width of the River Tees from Stockton to Middlesbrough.

Names of Portuguese shipowners trading with English ports.

Owners of steamers sailing between Dover and Calais, and particulars of service.

The latest information re Indigo in India.

The flat rate of pay for seamen.

Price of bunker coal in New York in July, 1920.

At Leeds, the commercial library is combined with the technical library--an unusual arrangement, but one for which there is a good deal to be said as well as against. Technical libraries exist for the supply of information, and also to subserve technical education: a commercial library is for information simply. There are inconveniences attached to the combination; it is not a mere question of logical differentiation. Commercial libraries are open during business hours, and closed in the evenings and on Saturday afternoons, the very time when the technical student would use the library most. The one, again, is arranged and furnished to facilitate rapid consultation, not as a place for prolonged study. Logically, of course, it seems absurd to separate the literature on making a thing from the literature on selling it, the production department from the sales department. Big libraries may some day divide naturally into a modern side and a humanist side, and this might prove as convenient a dichotomy as it is suited to the logic of modern life. At any rate, the experiment at Leeds is worth watching, and public expedience must settle the point.

These commercial departments have enlarged the ordinary province of the public library, and have developed into something like the intelligence bureau of a large industrial firm. The staff is prepared to supply, not only the means of information, but also information itself. Many years ago, in the Cardiff and some other public libraries, a new institution called the information desk came into vogue, where a trained assistant sat at the receipt of questions, oral, postal, or telephonic, which he answered forthwith, or after search in directories, dictionaries, and other compendiums of information, including the file of inquiries already handled. In a commercial town, this departure from old-fashioned practice was welcomed as extremely useful. Public libraries suddenly became popular with a class who had hitherto scarcely noticed their existence. The new commercial libraries perform the same function much more effectively, because they have far larger masses of information tabulated and mobilized, and are ready to lead up their reserves at any moment.

The Adult Education Committee criticize this transformation of part of the library into an intelligence bureau. There seems to be a fear that it may compete with the commercial intelligence department of the Government or with the chambers of commerce. Admitting that the boundary between the province of these organizations and that of the commercial library is not easy to define, they protest “that the function of the commercial department of a local library is primarily to provide books concerned with the theory and practice of commerce and cognate subjects, rather than detailed information on matters of trade.” Here the mind of the theorist, the stern logician, is again at work, making havoc of expediency, and also of common sense. If the commercial library is doing the work so well, and doing it cheaply into the bargain, then if you are going to shut up anything, shut up the Government department: the trade association will be only too glad to be saved doing the job over again. Give the library its proper equipment in money and privilege, give it room and opportunity to develop into an institute of commerce, and the taxpayer and many other people’s pockets will be spared.[11] These outside organizations, whether run by the Government or by the traders, are in fact working under disadvantages so long as they are not lodged in a first-class commercial library and carried on by a staff trained in library methods, the results are less satisfactory and more costly to produce. Every library, in one of its aspects, is an information bureau. Pedantic classification may draw a sharp line between one sort of information and another; experience and expediency point to the library as the right place for the retail of intelligence, whether practical or theoretic.

[Illustration:

_Photo Pictorial Agency._

LIBRARY OF THE INSTITUTE OF ACTUARIES, STAPLE INN HALL.]

The commercial library or the technical library provided by the municipality will not lead to the extinction of the library belonging to the private firm; rather may it be expected to tend to the multiplication and development of these, just as access to books in public libraries has led to more book-buying by readers, who have learned the value of books, and feel the need to have certain works always by them on their own shelves. The great immediate benefit is to the smaller firms and the individual worker; but even they will no doubt acquire eventually far more books for themselves, and a much better selection of books, as a direct result of access to a public business library, familiarity with its contents, and realization of the enormous advantage of being in constant touch with the latest sources of information. In the United States, which are incomparably better off than this country in all sorts of commercial, technical, and other special libraries provided by public funds, there are now about 2,500 business libraries established by progressive firms.[12]

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND.

As long ago as 1857, the Liverpool Public Libraries set the example of providing books in raised type for the blind. At Nottingham, one of the first to follow this lead, I remember many years later visiting the room set apart for the blind, and watching several blind people at work producing new pages in embossed print from another sightless person’s dictation. Along the walls were deep cases enclosing long sets of portly quartos or folios--novels by Scott or Dickens in eight or ten volumes apiece, Macaulay’s _History of England_ in seventy-two, the Bible in thirty-eight, and so on. At that time, the supply of books for the blind had been so far centralized that most libraries relied upon collections at Manchester, Nottingham, London, or other places, run chiefly by voluntary organizations. And now, few if any public libraries provide books for the blind themselves, the National Library for the Blind, in Tufton Street, Westminster, or its branch at Manchester, being a depot for all. This admirable institution, at once a great bookstore and a place for both recreation and educational work, with its reading rooms, music room, and hall for meetings and discussions, was provided by the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Public libraries and other institutions all over the country are entitled to borrow from it for the benefit of their blind readers, on payment of a moderate subscription. “It is closely affiliated with the Students’ Library at Oxford, which is gradually being built up to supply the special needs of University men.”[13]

Stamping machinery is now used for the production of metal plates, from which any number of copies of books in embossed type may be obtained, though the process is costly. The Carnegie Trust has provided funds for the manufacture of metal plates by the National Institute for the Blind and by the Royal Blind Asylum and School at Edinburgh. All copies of standard works thus printed--if the word may be used--are presented to the National Library, and the stereotype plates remain on hand for further issues.

The work of transcribing books by hand is, however, growing enormously, and is of vast importance, as is shown by the fact that during 1920, 431 complete new works of literature running into 1,371 volumes of Braille were produced in this way from ink print by the Library’s voluntary workers (of whom there are some 500) whilst during the same period 89 complete new works were published by the stereotyping houses. It will thus be seen that if the blind of the country depended only on the stereotyped books produced, their choice of reading matter would be exceedingly limited.

Blind copyists are employed to duplicate the books at an average cost of 25s. per volume, whence it is obvious that literary provision for the blind is very expensive, and is possible on any adequate scale only if liberal public support is forthcoming. Recently, alas, there has been a vast increase in the numbers of blind persons. The idea of the old charitable institutions that such readers would be satisfied with books of moral edification was abandoned long ago; nowadays it would be absurd. Books on every subject, serious reading and light reading, educational literature and literature recording recent scientific advances and expressing the latest phases of thought, are in demand among blind readers representing every grade of culture. In short, there is no more limit, except the cost of producing copies in this special form, to the contents of a modern library for the blind than to those of any other general library. At present, the National Library has nearly 65,000 books on its shelves, besides some 12,000 volumes of music.

The public library in any subscribing locality is thus relieved of the serious burden, not merely of purchasing, but also of housing these bulky volumes. A reader sends in his list of books required, which is transmitted to the National Library, and the books are then sent direct to the reader’s home. It is a work of public benefit, yea, of national obligation, that surely cries loudly for State aid. In the United States consignments of books for the blind are carried free to the nearest post office or station. “Of 12,819 books for the blind circulated by the New York Public Library in 1908, 8,558 were sent free by mail.”[14] Our Post Office has made concessions not quite so generous, allowing a book weighing 6¹⁄₂ lbs. to travel for 2d., and one weighing 5 lbs. to be sent anywhere abroad for 2¹⁄₂d. The cheaper transmission of books by post will become an urgent question whenever a national system of interchange between all manner of libraries becomes an accomplished fact; but, even then, the case of the blind will be one calling for exceptional liberality.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] A. E. Bostwick. “The American Public Library,” p. 56-7.

[5] R. A. Rye. “The Libraries of London: a guide for students” (University of London, 1910).

[6] Adult Education Committee: Final Report, par. 5.

[7] _A Question of the Day: Public Libraries_ (Library Association, 1918).

[8] _Third Interim Report_:--C.--Technical and Commercial Libraries.

[9] The following shows the number of readers monthly:--

Oct. 1919 1,316 Nov. 4,361 Dec. 4,405 Jan. 1920 5,608 Feb. 5,259 March 6,166 April 5,585 May 4,416 June 1920 6,029 July 5,772 Aug. 5,936 Sept. 6,365 Oct. 6,871 Nov. 7,428 Dec. 6,617 Jan. 1921 7,043

[10] On the other hand, the complexity and the efficiency organization required in the technical library and information department of a modern business undertaking, may be realized from an article on “The Library at the Ardeer Factory of Nobel’s Explosives Co., Ltd.” (_Library Association Record_, June, 1921).

[11] American opinion is all in favour of the use of the library as an information department. “The aim of the business library is rather to function as a central information, statistical, or research bureau, or, like other departments, to aid directly or indirectly in profits, in increasing quantity, quality, or efficiency of production, in building up an intelligent work force, or in the general improvement and extension of the business. Only in so far as it does this is the business library justifiable.” J. H. Friedel, _Training for Librarianship_, p. 115.

[12] “Within the last three years the number of business libraries has more than doubled.” J. H. Friedel: _Training for Librarianship_ (1921), p. 113. See also the chapters on Special Libraries, Agricultural Libraries, Financial Libraries, Law Libraries, Technical Libraries, etc.

[13] Library Association Record, Aug., 1920, p. 258.

[14] A. E. Bostwick: _The American Public Library_, p. 31.

III

LIBRARY EXTENSION.

Library Extension is closely analogous to the more familiar phrase University Extension. It stands for various activities that go outside, often far outside, the province marked out by the Public Libraries Acts, yet are natural if not inevitable corollaries of the educational and social doctrines that formulated those Acts. They carry the services and influence of the library into other spheres--the school, the home, the voluntary association--and expand its functions from the mechanical disposal of books as stock-in-trade to their treatment as atoms packed with vital force, electrons charged with incalculable energies capable of working great consequences in that susceptible region, human life. A library may confine itself to a passive attitude, and so long as it responds more or less freely to external pressure it may be acceptable and useful to a small proportion of the persons who pay for its upkeep. But it was long ago borne in upon the far-sighted librarian and committee-man that a more active, nay, a positively militant policy was required if the public library was to exercise all its powers for good in the social economy. More books have mouldered away or come to a like inglorious and ineffectual end than were ever worn out by hard use. You can offer your public the finest collection of books--it has been done again and again by profligate philanthropists--and never get them read, or the people’s life and taste improved. It is easy to buy books; it is much more difficult, and far more important, to create readers.[15]

The librarian’s duty, he has found by harsh experience, is twofold: to contrive a library service, and to see that the best use is made of it. Instruction in the art of reading and in the choice of books, it may be objected, is for the teacher, not the librarian. Theoretically, it may be so; but the rejoinder is, our teachers have never succeeded in the task, they have not even addressed themselves to it, and they are not likely to succeed unless they work hand in hand with the librarian: they must, indeed, rely on the librarian, the book-expert, more and more under modern conditions, for guidance in their own reading and in carrying out their own functions according to the newest lights. It is largely owing to the lack of any regular correlation between schools and libraries that the results of the Education Acts have been so unsatisfactory. The mistakes of 1850 might have been rectified in 1870 by bringing the new system of schooling into the closest contact with the public libraries. But, though it was enacted that every child should be taught to read, that children should be taught how to read, and where and what to read, seems to have scarcely entered the minds of those responsible for elementary education. In introducing the Education Estimates for 1917-8, Mr. Fisher said in the House of Commons (April 19th, 1917):--

“I have been impressed by the fact that boys who have been stirred up at the age of sixteen or seventeen to attend the technological classes attached to our new universities in the north of England have so lost the habit of intellectual activity as to cloy and impede the efficient working of the college.... The country does not get full value out of its elementary schools, because so much of the training and instruction is subsequently lost.”

Why had these boys lost the habit of intellectual activity? Because, first, though they had received the usual primary schooling, they had never had instilled into them intellectual habits, interests, or likings; and, second, because, even where libraries and other intellectual institutions existed, they had never been brought inside their doors, or learned that these things were their own and would satisfy their multifarious needs the more they used them. Library Extension aims at the repair of these oversights. The activities which it connotes should be an important part of the library service when this is reorganized on a national basis. In reality, Library Extension is a return to the broader idea of the people’s institutes. The lectures, reading circles, meetings for study and discussion, the co-operative alliances with energetic bodies such as the Workers’ Educational Association, the local field club, scientific society, or the like, the closer relations with schools and all intellectual agencies, are revivals and developments of the social efforts at adult education which gave life to those institutions in the early nineteenth century.