Part 12

(2) The test of simplicity and clearness. No book can be good whose author expresses himself in words that are too large for his subject or in sentences that are so involved that they cannot be easily understood.

(3) The best of good taste. No book can be good whose author uses words or expressions that would not be used by cultivated people.

(4) The test of truth. No book can be good whose subject matter is false; or, in case of fiction, whose manner of telling is such as to make it seem absurdly improbable. The plot of the book may, it is true, lack probability. It may be frankly improbable like a fairy tale, but the author must not seem to lose faith in it himself, and no matter how impossible his foundation the structure that he builds on it must hold together.

I venture to say that if a book survives these tests--if it is simply and clearly expressed in good English and in the best taste and is consistently put together--it cannot be a bad book so far as style goes.

So far as the subject matter of the book is concerned, my test would be simply that of its effect on the reader. If a book makes the reader want to be mischievous, foolish or criminal--to be a silly or bad man or woman, or if it tends to make him do his daily work badly, it is a bad book and all the worse in this case if it is interesting and fascinating in style. But even here the trouble is largely in the manner of treatment. A book may tell of crime and criminals in such a way as to make the reader detest both or feel an attraction toward both. In this case, as the scripture says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” If a book sends a boy out to be a burglar, it is bad; if it impels him to take a crying child by the hand and lead it home, it is good. And here let me say that this compelling power, this effective result of a book should speak in its favor though all other tests be against it. Musicians tell us that a great composer may write a work that breaks every rule of harmony and yet be a work of genius. Genius knows no rules.

So much for the general line of cleavage. But the special may for the moment exclude all the claims of the general. A community may be in crying need of books on a given subject--pottery or rowboats or hygiene. This need may or may not be realized by the community, but its existence makes a special class of books the best, for the moment, for that community. To buy a good collection of minor poets for a town that clamors, or ought to clamor, for books on the electric industries, is to get bad books.

Now do we, under our present system, or lack of system, in selection, get these best books--best both in the general and in the special sense?

What is the matter with the books in the average small library? The trouble is not generally that the books are bad, but that they might easily be better, and by “better” it must be borne in mind that I mean more closely adapted to the legitimate needs of the community. If we go over the shelves of the average small library we shall generally be able to note the following facts:

(1) A considerable portion of the books have not been taken out in long periods. This can easily be ascertained by examining the book-cards or dating-slips. Of course, the non-use of a book does not mean that it should not be in the library. The fault may be with the readers, not with the book. Non-use, however, does mean that something is the matter. Either the library public has had taste or is not properly guided, or else a mistake was made in providing it with this particular book.

(2) A considerable number of standard books whose reading should be encouraged will not be found on the shelves. These books are almost always part of the collection, but there are not enough duplicates to supply the demand. At the same time it will be found that the library is adding current books of doubtful value.

(3) Books on large local industries--shoemaking, pottery, agriculture--are often lacking. In such cases there is generally a lack of demand; but this is because the persons who would read such books have learned by experience not to look for them in a public library.

(4) Books in the languages spoken by industrial colonies of foreigners in the neighborhood are usually conspicuous by their absence.

(5) The collections in classes where some technical knowledge is necessary for selection, such, for instance, as the sciences, the arts, or history, often show a lack of intelligence, or, at any rate, a lack of system. There are badly written books and books full of errors; there is lack of uniformity in grade--an advanced mathematical work on electricity, for instance, and very elementary ones on light and sound.

(6) In particular, controverted subjects are represented in a one-sided way; there may be no way for a reader to get at the Catholic story of the Protestant reformation, or the southern view of the civil war, or both sides of the spelling reform or the woman-suffrage movements. Socialism, vivisection, anti-vaccination, the negro question, prohibition, the tariff--all these and a hundred others are represented only in a partisan sense.

(7) There is too much care about the outward garb of decency and too little about the pervading atmosphere of morality. Books that describe in decorous language ingenious methods of shop-lifting are given place, but you look in vain for works of lofty moral tone couched in diction that is occasionally coarse.

How far are these faults due to methods of book selection? One of the troubles seems to be that the book-selecting body does not avail itself of expert advice as much as it ought. The librarian is learning, to be sure, to use lists and printed aids more and more, though they are rarely used with discrimination; but supplementary to such lists as these, especially since they so largely lack the personal element, we need the personal advice of experts. If the lists and reviews will leave us in the dark about the man who advises us to buy books on engineering or art, we must go to someone who we know understands these subjects, at least knows a little more of them than we do ourselves. There are, in general, two grades of expert advice. The first is that received from the man who is personally familiar with the current literature of his specialty, who watches the books as they appear and who sends to the library the titles that he thinks it ought to have. This grade of expert service is very difficult to obtain. I have found few men in my experience who are able and willing to give it. Those who have the good-will and the time have usually not the knowledge; those who have the knowledge are busy men who cannot give the time.

The second grade of expert aid is that which pronounces on concrete cases, which decides whether a given book (either from inspection of the mere title or of the volume itself) is suitable for the library. This kind of aid is not difficult to obtain, and there are persons in almost every place qualified in some degree to give it. It requires, however, a preliminary selection and generally the obtaining of books on approval, which is easier in a large place than a small one.

The library is only one of various institutions that must use expert aid of this kind. The same limitations apply to all. Take, for instance, the work of reference, the cyclopedia, we will say. Its editor cannot write of his own knowledge the articles on Venezuela, and open-hearth steel, and Plato. He must rely on the information, direct or secondhand, of experts. But he cannot allow his experts to write his cyclopedia. Some cyclopedias are written very nearly in that way, and they are not the best. The expert must be coached before he does his work and the work must be edited when finished. It is on the proper combination of expert and editorial work that the value of the finished volumes will depend. So it is with library selection. The librarian is the editor of a big cyclopedia of thousands of volumes. He must have expert aid in selection, but he must not allow his experts to select the library uncontrolled. They must be instructed beforehand, and their advice must be carefully considered after it has been given. It must, in short, be edited. This brings us to the consideration that we have ultimately to face in discussing any phase of human activity--the question of personality. If the librarian and the book committee are incompetent and believe themselves to be competent--then the collection, in spite of all efforts, will reflect their faults--it will be intolerant, or trivial or ill-balanced.

Much, therefore, depends upon the actual book selector for the library. Should this be the librarian, or a committee of the trustees, or the board itself, or an advisory committee of outsiders? Probably the best results are obtained through a preliminary selection made by the librarian with the aid of lists and the advice of individual experts--not committees--as suggested above, and then submitted to some person or committee representing the Board of trustees. This places the final responsibility where it belongs--on the trustees; but with a satisfactory librarian, the duties of the reviewing committee would consist chiefly of deciding on matters of policy--rarely of considering individual titles. It would decide, for instance, on how closely fiction is to be censored, on how far the library is to go in the purchase of recent fiction, on the extent to which foreign languages are to be recognized, on the purchase and duplication of text-books, on the policy of the library with regard to denominational religious works or of controversial books generally--and so on.

Going back for a moment to the question of experts, probably the most difficult advice to procure, with any degree of satisfaction, is regarding fiction, whether in English or in foreign languages. It has been said that one may approve a book simply on the author’s name, or even on that of the publisher, and this is still true in isolated cases, but in these days, when both author and publisher are continually trying experiments, continually varying standards and style, each book must be dealt with individually. I do not see how one can decide whether a given novel should or should not be bought for a library without reading it through from cover to cover or hearing a report from someone who has so read it and who understands the wants and limitations of the American public library. This is a line, it seems to me, along which great improvement in our selection is possible; but I confess I do not see my way to an immediate solution of the problem. Possibly this is a good opportunity to say a word for a method of testing the adequacy of one’s collection which has scarcely been used as it deserves. One of the most difficult things for a librarian to ascertain is whether his collection is properly distributed among the different classes, and by this I mean, as before, distributed in accordance with the legitimate requirements of the community. It is not possible to find by a statistical method exactly what people need, but it is possible to find out what they want, as indicated by the kind of books that they read. The statistical record of this will be found in the class percentages of circulation. Whether or not the library is equipped to supply this need is indicated by the class percentages of books on the shelves. A comparison of these two percentage tables is always most interesting to the book selector. It does not enable him automatically to select books, but it does indicate points for fruitful investigation. To take some actual cases, I find a library with four per cent of history and six per cent of literature on the shelves, whereas the corresponding circulation percentages are five and seven. This is prima facie evidence that the collections in those two subjects are used rather more than the others and could well be increased. In cases where it is not desirable to encourage circulation in a given class, such an indication should evidently meet with no response. The circulation of fiction always runs far beyond its proportion, and it is neither proper nor desirable for the library to try to keep up. Thus in three libraries where the percentage of adult fiction on the shelves is 20, 19 and 17, respectively, I find the corresponding circulation percentages to be 34, 35 and 27. What, let us ask ourselves, are library statistics for? Is all the labor concerned in their collection and assemblage to result simply in a table that is to be glanced at for a moment with more or less interested curiosity, or do we intend to do something with them? It sometimes seems that the foreign reproach that we Americans care only for money, which we are properly disposed to resent, is partly justified by the fact that the only statistics that appear to mean anything to us are financial. When a man learns that he is living beyond his income or that he is getting a smaller per cent for his investments than his neighbor, or that the man at the desk next to him is receiving a larger salary for doing the same work, he does not sit still and say, “Ah! how interesting!” He gets up and does something about it. But statistics that convict him of all sorts of incompetency and foolishness along lines other than monetary ones, he regards simply as objects for intellectual absorption.

These percentages, of course, are not the only indications by which a librarian may adjust the proportions of the classes in his collection. If his library has the reserve system, for instance, the call for books in circulation is an unfailing index of the popular demand. If that demand is one that should be heeded, the number of copies in the library may well be proportionate to the number of names on the reserve list.

But a librarian who keeps in continual touch with the public by contact with users at the desk needs none of these somewhat mechanical indications. It is the inestimable privilege of the librarian of a small library in a small community to know her public, its wants, its needs, its abilities and its limitations in a way that is denied to custodians of huge collections.

In closing, let me suggest the following “Don’ts” for selectors of library books:

(1) Don’t buy books that are intellectually far above your readers, in the hope of improving their minds; a man may walk up stairs, but he can’t jump from the sidewalk to the roof.

(2) Don’t buy fine editions of books that need rather to be extensively duplicated; better two good souls than one fine body.

(3) Don’t buy McGrath and McCutcheon when you have reserves on file for Dickens and George Eliot.

(4) Don’t buy biography in excess because you are fond of it yourself, when a comparison of percentages shows that your supply of travel or applied science is not up to the demand.

(5) Don’t buy books in flimsy bindings that will give out after the first issue; work should not be done in gauzy garments.