Astor Library

“ Under the direction of an enlightened and judicious Board of Trustees, with Washington Irving for president, and Dr. Cogswell for superintendent of the institution, there is every reason to believe that the desire so warmly expressed at the conclusion of their report will be fulfilled: "That the Astor Library may soon become, as a depository of the treasures of literature and science, what the city possessing it is rapidly becoming in commerce and wealth." ”

“ Ah, the librarian of the Astor is more fortunate than we; these spirits are all invisible, and we catch not even at midnight the rustle of the leaf they turn or the passing murmur of their voices. Yet within the library, ever ready to meet us, their souls still linger; and when we open the visible book which enshrines it, we find the hidden spirit.
A number of gentlemen once went together to a friend's house. While they awaited his entrance, one of the party, being a lover of books, naturally turned to the shelves of the library. ”

“ We present above an accurate view of the exterior of the Astor Library, in Lafayette Place, from a drawing made for the International under the direction of the architect, Mr. Alexander Saeltzer. It is destined to be one of the chief attractions of the city, and information respecting it will be read with interest by the literary and learned throughout the country. ”

“ Hunt, I went to the Astor Library and worked there, until the twenty-eighth, making notes and reading for the New York story I had been so long contemplating.
The first morning I went to the library I found my alcove, table and chair, had been taken possession of by a man who looked intelligent, but who was common and ill-mannered. ”

“ ASTOR, John Jacob, an enterprising American merchant, founder of the Astor Library at New York, was born at the village of Walldorf near Heidelberg, on the 17th July 1763. His father was a peasant, and his early years were spent in the common labours of the farm. ”

“ It is a fine and pleasant thing to prosper in business, and to have a store to fall back upon in time of trouble.
The reader may learn from Astor's career how money is accumulated. Whether he can learn from it how money ought to be employed when it is obtained, he must judge for himself. In founding the Astor Library, John Jacob Astor did at least one magnificent deed, for which thousands unborn will honor his memory. ”

“ William B. Astor, son of the founder, conveyed to the trustees the lot, eighty feet front by one hundred and twenty deep, adjoining the library on the north, and proceeded to erect upon it an addition similar in all respects to the existing structure, the library thus enlarged being opened September 1, 1859, with one hundred and ten thousand volumes on its shelves. The addition led to a rearrangement of the material, the old hall being devoted to science and the industrial arts, and the new to history and general literature. ”

“ In the hall of the Astor Library, on the sides of two of the pillars supporting its lofty roof of glass, are two little shelves, each holding a single work, never taken down and seldom perused, but nevertheless well worthy the attention of those who are curious in the subject of which they treat, namely, the human face divine. ”

“ A remarkable number of the free public libraries of the United States are the creations of private wealth, munificently employed for the common good. The greater institutions which have this origin are the Astor Library in New York, founded by John Jacob Astor and enriched by his descendants; the Lenox Library in New York, founded by James Lenox; the Peabody Institute, in Baltimore, founded by George Peabody; the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, founded by the gentleman whose name it bears ”

“ His great library,—the only private library I have ever seen which reminded one of the Astor,—although latterly collected more for public than personal uses, was one which no other man in the nation, probably, had sufficient bibliographical knowledge single-handed to select, and we have very few men capable of fully appreciating its scholarly value, as it stands. ”

“ New York had long labored under the disadvantage of having no public library from which books could be freely borrowed by her citizens. Dr. Cogswell once remarked that a free circulating library in New York was impossible and that in five years any collection of books made for that purpose would be scattered forever beyond hope of recovery. He here showed the distrust of the book-collector and the attitude of the old style librarian towards the books entrusted to his care.
The Astor and the Lenox Libraries were for reference use only, and were never open in the evenings or on holidays. ”

“ Few old residents are aware of the literary wealth stored in these depositories, or of the extent to which they are consulted by scholars and by writers generally.
There are four large libraries in the city whose interest is almost purely literary,—the Society, the Astor, the Lenox, and the Historical Society's,—one both literary and popular,—the Mercantile,—one interesting as being the outcome of a great trades' guild,—the Apprentices',—and one purely popular,—the Free Circulating Library. ”

“ Cogswell received the appointment, and would probably have accepted it, but, Astor finding that he was likely to lose his invaluable services, made him superintendent of the embryo library. After the rich merchant's death, he went abroad to purchase books; and it may safely be said that no library in the land was founded with more discrimination and economy. ”

“ The Pears' soap plan of printers' ink is one of the finest and best.
If a library has or is a good thing for the community let it so be said, early, late, and often, in large, plain type. So doing shall the library's books enter—before too old to be of service—into that state of utter worn-out-ness which is the only known book-heaven. Another way, and by some found good, is to work the sinfully indifferent first up into a library missionary, and then transform him into a patron. A library is something to which he can give an old book, an old paper, an old magazine, with no loss to himself. ”

“ In a deeper sense, GIFFORD said, the origin of the Workshop lay in the desire of the current Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, to make the collections of the Library, especially those offering unique or unusual testimony on aspects of the American experience, available to a much wider circle of users than those few people who can come to Washington to use them. This meant that the emphasis of AM, from the outset, has been on archival collections of the basic material, and on making these collections themselves available, rather than selected or heavily edited products. ”

“ It is pointed out that the reading of fiction in British municipal libraries is much less than commonly believed, being only 24 percent, even after due allowance is made for the reading of fiction in current magazines. Attention is called to the gradual disappearance of the unclassified municipal library, although in 1910 there were over 340 not closely classified, but only arranged in broad numerical or alphabetical divisions. The replacement of printed catalogs in book form by card catalogs and other forms, like the sheaf catalog, easily kept up to date, is noted as growing in favor. ”

“ We bow our heads. Both Cutter and Poole are Americans. The parish of St. Pancras has just, by an overwhelming majority, declined to have a free library, and consequently a librarian. Brutish St. Pancras!
Libraries are obviously of two kinds: those intended for popular use and those meant for the scholar. The ordinary free library, in the sense of Mr. Ewart's Act of Parliament of 1850, is a popular library where a wearied population turns for distraction. Fiction plays a large part. In some libraries 80 per cent. of the books in circulation are novels. ”

“ In the Lending Department it is desirable to make the choice of books as easy and satisfactory as possible, and for this reason, elaborate mechanical devices for registering the issues of books and indicating them 'in' and 'out' are absolutely unnecessary. It is absurd to find municipal libraries in small towns fitted up with a huge rampart of indicator for the purpose of recording a daily issue of about 50 to 100 volumes. It is like employing a steam engine to sharpen one pencil! ”

“ Those who put such questions, or offer such congratulations, are naturally astonished when told that the library affords enough work to employ all my own time, as well as that of twenty assistants; and astonishment is apt to rise to bewilderment when it is added that seventeen of these assistants are occupied chiefly with "cataloguing;" for, generally, I find, a library catalogue is assumed to be a thing that is somehow "made" at a single stroke, as Aladdin's palace was built, at intervals of ten or a dozen years, or whenever a "new catalogue" is thought to be needed. ”

“ Local literary manuscripts, autographs, manuscripts of local authors, letters, and similar written documents are so obviously desirable that more than a mention of them is superfluous; but we want, in this connexion, to urge that to-day will very quickly belong to the past, and that the collection of these things from the hands of living men is to be desired. When a librarian receives a letter from the mayor, a prominent alderman, or similar local celebrity, he does not as a rule think of it as something to be preserved in the local collection. ”

“ Old Lists of Books are always of interest to us as telling what our forefathers cared to have about them, but it is seldom that a list is so tantalising as one described by Mr. Edward Edwards in his Libraries and Founders of Libraries. Anne of Denmark presented her son Charles with a [Pg 30] splendid series of volumes, bound in crimson and purple velvet. Abraham van der Dort, who was keeper of Charles's cabinet, made an inventory of this cabinet; and having no notion of how to make a catalogue of books, he has managed to leave out all the information we wish for. ”

“ It is easy now to collect, for books of interest are to be found on all sides; but in old times this was not so, and we must therefore admire the more those men who formed their libraries under the greatest difficulties. In a book devoted to the formation of libraries it seems but fair to devote some space to doing honour to those who have formed libraries, and perhaps some practical lessons may be learned from a few historical facts. ”

“ With the spread and rise in the standard of education, more exact and better work is now demanded in libraries than was the case during the early years after the passing of the first Public Libraries Act. The slipshod, unsystematic cataloguing at one time in vogue is not acceptable now, and the public demands something more than bald lists compiled upon no principle in particular, which [Pg 6] are often more bewildering than helpful to an inquiring reader. ”

“ These precious volumes—now in the State Archives at Rome—are unique documents for the history of libraries. We can gather from them the whole process of fitting up a library in the fifteenth century; and further, the sort of establishment required for its proper maintenance and organisation.
The Librarian prudently began by ordering the bookcases, being evidently well aware that many months would elapse before any of them could be delivered. A carpenter (faber lignarius) signed a contract for the first part of the work 15 July, 1475; but in this place I shall say no more about the furniture. ”

“ Yet printed books must almost always make the greater part of a collection, and it may be well to give some rules as to the features that distinguish the productions of the early press. But no amount of “rules” is worth six months’ practical experience in bibliography. That experience the amateur, if he is wise, will obtain in a public library, like the British Museum or the Bodleian. Nowhere else is he likely to see much of the earliest of printed books, which very seldom come into the market. ”

“ A visit to the City Library, on State street, cannot fail to interest every person who feels a pride in the public institutions of New England. A fine, large, brick and stone building, with plain exterior and artistically finished interior, is the Springfield Public Library. Over forty thousand volumes cover its shelves, and are so systematically arranged that the librarian or his assistants can produce at once any work named in the catalogue. ”

“ Thus in such places as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, the Free Libraries should be smaller British Museums, and in this spirit their founders have worked; but in smaller and less important towns a more modest object has to be kept in view, and the wants of readers, more than those of consulters of books, have to be considered. ”

“ With electric illumination we are both light and cool. We can store the greatest number of books in the closest proximity to the reading-room, and extend our storage-room indefinitely. There is no way in which books can be packed in closer nearness to the place where they are used. We have now room for over 500,000 volumes in connection with each of the four reading-rooms, or 4,000,000 for the whole building when completed. In the present reading-room there are 9,000 square feet on the front of the building, without counting the special rooms under the art-galleries on the side. ”

“ The magazines furnish us with the best fiction, the best poetry, the best essays, the best discussions of all subjects, old and new, and the latest science. It is a question if many a village library would not do more, vastly more, to stimulate the mental life of its community, and to broaden its views and sympathies, and to encourage study, if it diverted a far larger part of its income than it now does from inferior books, and especially inferior novels, to weekly journals and popular and standard magazines. ”