A Book for All Readers: An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private LibrariesSpofford, Ainsworth Rand
Science
A Book for All Readers: An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries
Spofford, Ainsworth Rand
Books; Library science
I gave some instances of the singular variety of questions asked of a
librarian. Let me add one, reported by Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London
Library, as asked of him by William M. Thackeray. The distinguished
author of Esmond and The Virginians wanted a book that would tell of
General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. "I don't want to know about his
battles", said the novelist. "I can get all that from the histories. I
want something that will tell me the color of the breeches he wore."
After due search, the librarian was obliged to confess that there was no
such book.
A librarian is likely to be constantly in a position to aid the
uninformed reader how to use the books of reference which every public
library contains. The young person who is new to the habit of
investigation, or the adult who has never learned the method of finding
things, needs to be shown how to use even so simple a thing as an index.
Do not be impatient with his ignorance, although you may find him
fumbling over the pages in the body of the book in vain, to find what
you, with your acquired knowledge of indexes and their use, can find in
half a minute or less. Practice alone can make one perfect in the art of
search and speedy finding. The tyro who tries your patience this year,
will very likely become an expert reader the next. Wide as is the domain
of ignorance, there are few among those intelligent enough to resort to a
library at all, who cannot learn. You will find some who come to the
library so unskilled, that they will turn over the leaves even of an
index, in a blind, hap-hazard way, evidently at a loss how to use it.
These must be instructed first, that the index is arranged just like a
dictionary, in the alphabetical order of the names or subjects treated,
and secondly, that after finding the word they seek in it, they must turn
to the page indicated by the figure attached to that word. This is the
very primer of learning in the use of a library, but the library in any
town, used as it is by many boys and girls of all ages, has to be a
primary school for beginners, as well as a university for advanced
students. Despise not the day of small things, however you may find it
more agreeable to be occupied with great ones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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