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
1. The progress of the library during the year must be viewed as most
important. A statistical statement of accessions, giving volumes of
books, and number of pamphlets separately, added during the year, should
be followed by a statement of the aggregate of volumes and pamphlets in
the collection. This is ascertained by actual count of the books upon the
shelves, adding the number of volumes charged out, or in the bindery, or
in readers' hands at the time of the enumeration. This count is far from
a difficult or time-consuming affair, as there is a short-hand method of
counting by which one person can easily arrive at the aggregate of a
library of 100,000 volumes, in a single day of eight to ten hours. This
is done by counting by twos or threes the rows of books as they stand on
the shelves, passing the finger rapidly along the backs, from left to
right and from top to bottom of the shelves. As fast as one hundred
volumes are counted, simply write down a figure one; then, at the end of
the second hundred, a figure two, and so on, always jotting down one
figure the more for each hundred books counted. The last figure in the
counter's memorandum will represent the number of hundreds of volumes the
library contains. Thus, if the last figure is 92, the library has just
9,200 volumes. This rapid, and at the same time accurate method, by which
any one of average quickness can easily count two hundred volumes a
minute, saves all counting up by tallies of five or ten, and also all
slow additions of figures, since one figure at the end multiplied by one
hundred, expresses the whole.
2. Any specially noteworthy additions to the library should be briefly
specified.
3. A list of donors of books during the year, with number of volumes
given by each, should form part of the report. This may properly come at
the end as an appendix.
4. A brief of the money income of the year, with sources whence derived,
and of all expenditures, for books, salaries, contingent expenses, etc.,
should form a part of the report, unless reported separately by a
treasurer of the library funds.
5. The statistics of a librarian's report, if of a lending library,
should give the aggregate number of volumes circulated during the year,
also the number of borrowers recorded who have used and who have not used
the privilege of borrowing. The number of volumes used by readers in the
reference or reading-room department should be given, as well as the
aggregate of readers. It is usual in some library reports to classify the
books used by readers, as, so many in history, poetry, travels, natural
science, etc., but this involves labor and time quite out of proportion
to its utility. Still, a comparative statement of the aggregate volumes
of fiction read or drawn out, as against all other books, may be highly
useful as an object lesson, if embodied in the library report.
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