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
One of the requisites of a successful librarian is a faculty of order and
system, applied throughout all the details of library administration.
Without these, the work will be performed in a hap-hazard, slovenly
manner, and the library itself will tend to become a chaos. Bear in mind
the great extent and variety of the objects which come under the care of
the librarian, all of which are to be classified and reduced to order.
These include not only books upon every earthly subject (and very many
upon unearthly ones) but a possibly wide range of newspapers and
periodicals, a great mass of miscellaneous pamphlets, sometimes of maps
and charts, of manuscripts and broadsides, and frequently collections of
engravings, photographs, and other pictures, all of which come in to form
a part of most libraries. This great complexity of material, too,
exhibits only the physical aspect of the librarian's labors. There are,
besides, the preparation, arrangement and continuation of the catalogue,
in its three or more forms, the charging and crediting of the books in
circulation, the searching of many book lists for purchases, the library
bills and accounts, the supervision and revision of the work of
assistants, the library correspondence, often requiring wide researches
to answer inquiries, the continual aid to readers, and a multitude of
minor objects of attention quite too numerous to name. Is it any
over-statement of the case to say that the librarian who has to organize
and provide for all this physical and intellectual labor, should be
systematic and orderly in a high degree?
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