396 



8CIENGJE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 195 



The stock questions with which every librarian 

 is familiar, such as who wrote ' I am dying, Egypt, 

 dying,' whether Shakspeare was of noble birth, or 

 Eleazar Williams was Louis XVII., are easily dis- 

 posed of. If you can make your readers under- 

 stand that they must formulate their requests in 

 intelligible shape, you have gone a long way to- 

 wards making your library useful. They expect a 

 librarian to find ' a book about cheerfulness ; ' or 

 ' a book about whether education is better than 

 wealth ; ' or ' a book in marbled covers that wasn't 

 exactly a history, but had something about history 

 in it, that mother read about nine years ago.' 



This is no place for discussing the merits of rival 

 encyclopaedias. I find the Britannica, Chambers's, 

 Appletons', and Johnson's all useful. If I could 

 have only one, and no atlas, I should take Apple- 

 tons', on account of its maps, its full lives of liv- 

 ing persons, and its yearly supplement. A person 

 often goes to a library with a question which he 

 fancies can be answered only by reference to many 

 learned books, but really is a very simple one. A 

 stranger from out of town once said to me with a 

 pompous air, " I am pursuing an extensive course 

 of historical reading, and wish to know what 

 works the library contains on the history of Con- 

 stantinople." I meekly replied that we had only a 

 very few of the original authorities, and that they 

 were in English translations. "What have you, 

 then ? " I named the more familiar histories, and 

 a few recent books of travel, like De Amicis' and 

 Gautier's. " I wish to see a minute map of the 

 city. " — " We have nothing minute. The best that 

 I can give you is in the ' Encyclopaedia Britan- 

 nica.' "— " Ah, iudeed I That is a work I have 

 never heard of. May I see it?" This confession 

 betrayed at once the depth of the stranger's learn- 

 ing. He read the encyclopaedia for about ten 

 minutes, then returned it with thanks, and went 

 away saying that he had now finished his course 

 of reading on Constantinople. An encyclopaedia 

 often satisfies the vague desire for knowledge, of a 

 person who has not learned how to use books, and 

 asks in an indefinite way for something on a cer- 

 tain subject. 



The Brooklyn catalogue is especially useful in 

 its biographical references to lives in books which, 

 without it, might stand unopened on the shelves. 

 For example : a librarian, when asked for a life 

 of Queen Christina of Sweden, might not remem- 

 ber, without consulting it, that, although there 

 was no life of her in the library, chapters upon her 

 might be found in Wilkie Collins's 'Miscellanies,' 

 Hays's ' Female biography,' Mrs. Jameson's ' Lives 

 of female sovereigns,' and Russell's ' Extraordi- 

 nary women.' ' Poole's index ' unlocks LittelVs 

 living age, which is full of biographical and his- 



torical articles. Every volume of essays in a 

 library should be indexed, and every title placed 

 in the catalogue. 



The question of what kind of catalogue you 

 should have is one that depends largely on the 

 nimiber of your readers and the kind of books 

 which they take. A printed one soon grows ob- 

 solete. A card-catalogue, well arranged under 

 authors and subjects, with zinc indicators to show 

 the places of subjects, and brass rods so that the 

 cards cannot be displaced, is as good as any thing 

 that has yet been used. " I made my catalogue," 

 said a librarian to me a year or two ago, " so that 

 the greatest fool in town could not possibly make 

 a mistake in finding an author or title." This 

 catalogue is certainly a model of clearness and 

 simplicity. Long experience with fixed shelf- 

 numbers has convinced me that they should not 

 be used, but should give place to the Dewey plan 

 or one of its modifications. 



The books which you buy should depend, like 

 your catalogue, on your class of readers. A library 

 in a village where there are farms and gardens 

 should have the latest and best books upon farm- 

 ing, gardening, the care of cattle and poultry, and 

 several agi-icultural and horticultural papers and 

 magazines, that may be allowed to circulate after 

 they are bound. I saw not long ago, in a newly 

 endowed library in such a town, several books 

 with finely colored illustrations of beautiful-leaved 

 plants and flowering shrubs, that must certainly 

 have an influence in time in making the gardens 

 of the neighborho&d very different from the tra- 

 ditional farmhouse door-yard. A town with tele- 

 phones, electric lights, machine-shops, and manu- 

 factories, where many young men of intelligence 

 are electrical engineers, machinists, and draughts- 

 men, needs all the newest books that it can afford 

 to buy, on electricity, applied mechanics, and 

 mechanical drawing. We find in Hartford a 

 steadily increasing demand for books of these 

 classes. Scientific works, unless of recent date, 

 are worse than useless, except to a student of the 

 history of science. A person who asks for a book 

 on physics or chemistry from a printed catalogue 

 does not always notice the imprint, and chooses a 

 work quite out of date. A librarian can and 

 should tell him where to find a newer and better 

 one. 



The use of books on special subjects grows every 

 year. The Society for study at home, the Chau- 

 tauqua society, many smaller clubs, Queries and 

 other periodicals, with their lists of prize ques- 

 tions, have all done then* part in encouraging 

 readers to use libraries. The prize questions are 

 often such as anybody might write by opening any 

 volume of history or biography at random and 



