Library table

“ A home library is a small collection of books, usually only 15 or 20, with one or two young folks' periodicals, put up in a box with locked cover. The box is so made that it will serve as a bookcase and can be hung on a wall or stood on the floor or a table. ”

“ It has brought to notice many notable contributions to library literature, such as the Author table, by C. A. Cutter, of the Boston athenæum; Decimal classification and relative index and Library notes, by Melvil Dewey; Library journal; Library school rules; Perkins' manual; Linderfelt's rules; Sargent's Reading for the young; Lists of books for different clubs; Subject headings of A. L. A., etc. The Library Bureau catalog itself is one of the best library aids ever published. These catalogs have always been sent free to library workers. ”

“ As a table book-holder, this is probably the best and strongest form ever invented. As shown in the illustration (Fig. 89) , the uprights slide and firmly grip a large or small number of books, according to the capacity of the holder. This contrivance has been adapted as a library book-carrier, by having strong hooks attached, which fit into staples affixed to the fronts or ends of bookcases. They are very useful for classifying and arranging books awaiting replacement or shelving. ”

“ If a dictionary catalog is made it will prove to be most helpful to the serious students. For the average reader, the person who wishes to get a recent book, the latest novel, etc., prepare lists of additions from month to month, post them up in some convenient place in the library, and put them in a binder to be left on desk or table in the delivery room. ”

“ TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY.
The disposition of the shelves both along the walls and breaking out from the walls must needes prove very convenient and gracefull, and the best way for the students will be to have a litle square table in each celle with 2 chaires. The necessity of bringing windowes and dores to answer to the old building leaves two squarer places at the endes, and 4 lesser celles not to study in, but to be shut up with some neat lattice dores for archives. ”

“ The very old libraries occasionally use a slip catalogue; the Bodleian and British Museum, for example, paste slips into volumes or guard books resembling large scrap-books in approximate alphabetical order, and other libraries use similar methods. The system is a good one in many respects; the public understands and likes it; but the catalogue runs to so many large volumes that its accommodation would be a serious matter for the ordinary library; and the congestion of entries, with loss of all but approximate alphabetical order at most letters of the alphabet, will be obvious. ”

“ The moral to be pointed out is that the catalog must be good as a first requisite to a library. In the words of the old comparison, the catalog is the key to the otherwise hidden material buried in books. In a library of any size, the best desk attendant in the world is almost helpless, or at best constantly handicapped, without a convenient and rational classification of the volumes of the collection and the bibliographical aid of a catalogue. The born bibliographer is as rare as the born teacher or poet. ”

“ I. BOOKS
*American catalog of books in print from 1876–1896, 5v. with annual supplement. The Publishers' weekly, N.Y. Several of the volumes are out of print. All are expensive. They are not needed by the very small library. The recent years of the annual volumes are essential.
Card catalog rules; accessions-book rules; shelf-list rules; Library Bureau, 1899, $1.25. These are called the Library school rules.
Catalog of A.L.A. library; 5000v. for a popular library, selected by the American Library Association, and shown at the World's Columbian exhibition, Washington, 1893. ”

“ When the books are purchased and on the shelves, and the catalog is in perfect shape for use, the library is still a riddle to the public. There must be one or more capable 41 persons to meet the public and put the contents of the library at its disposal. ”

“ As movement is not extensive in ordinary libraries, this alteration is only an occasional duty. The class numbers maintain the topic order on the shelves, and so the most common method of open access shelf marking is complete. It has been argued that the class letters and numbers are all-sufficient to maintain order in a library which allows readers to go to the shelves, but on this point experience varies. ”

“ Typically, of course, the modern library does include many books, a whole separate building and a librarian, but even if the books are few, the place only a room, a chest, a bookcase, or a single shelf, and even if it is only the owner who is at the same time the keeper, it is still recognized to be a library if the books are kept for use and not for sale. ”

“ If the number of periodicals taken is quite large the display space needed for them is quite out of proportion to the use made of them. Recent back numbers of most journals, as well as the last numbers, should be made accessible to readers, and for this there is no provision in the vertical file arrangement. There seems no better reason for exposing to the casual reader of the reading room the full fronts of all the journals the library takes than there is for making a similar display of all the books the library buys. ”

“ Reference work in libraries large and small has for its first rule: Meet the inquirer more than half way. To the stranger a library is often an oppressive place, an awesome place—in his imagination. He comes in shyly; everyone appears busy, his question suddenly seems to him trivial; he won't trouble these wise and busy people with it—and goes out. ”

“ Few libraries can afford leather-covered shelves like those of the British Museum, but all can have smoothness and rounded edges.
Fig. 3.—Ledged Wall Book-Case.
Reference library cases are constructed similarly to those above described; but as folio and quarto books require storage in this department, it is necessary to make provision for them. This is usually done by making the cases with projecting bases, rising at least 3′ high, and in the enlarged space so obtained fair-sized [6] folios and quartos can be placed. ”

“ Author card. (Reduced; actual size, 71⁄2 x 121⁄2 cm.)
Preserve this catalog with great care. It is the key to the records in shelf-list and accession book. In a small library the public may very properly use it. As soon as possible, if your library is to be quite large and much used, prepare for public use a duplicate of it, omitting all those entries in the original which are of use only to the librarian.
The average reader more often remembers the titles of books than their authors. ”

“ It is, of course, entirely practicable to publish a complete and satisfactory catalogue of a library which is stationary. But most public libraries are constantly and rapidly increasing. This circumstance, so gratifying on every other account, is the source of the difficulties alluded to. ”

“ Among the varied duties of a librarian that of cataloguing his books is generally supposed by the uninitiated to be one of the easiest. The popular idea is that books are sent to libraries—public libraries at any rate—by grateful publishers, when all the librarian has to do is "to catalogue them," put them up in rows on shelves, and hand them out to the first person who asks for them. The cataloguing of a library is ranked with that of any other inventory, and a catalogue popularly regarded as a mere list, calling for no particular knowledge, effort, or care in its production. ”

“ A careful consideration of the relative value of current numbers of periodicals in a library and of space, time and energy that should be put on their presentation to the public, will lead one to the conclusion that the best way to handle them is to lay them in alphabetical order on plainly labeled ordinary book shelves wide enough to hold the larger ones, set about six inches apart, that the numbers for the past six months may be kept together. ”

“ It need not be done every year. It is an expensive thing to do, in time, and is not of great value when done; but now and then it must be gone through with. It is not necessary to close the library for this purpose. Take one department at a time and check it by the shelf-list. Make a careful list of all books missing. Check this list by the charging slips at the counter. For those still missing make a general but hasty search through the library. Go over each part of the library in this way. Then compile all lists of missing books into one list, arranged in the order of their call-numbers. ”

“ There is scarcely a library which does not possess a second classification stored apart, where such crowded-out books are kept. On the shelf-register these books can either be indicated by some such means as a red-ink cross, or they can be removed from the original and entered on supplementary sheets. Dummies, such as those described in Section 247, can also be used to show books located elsewhere, especially in open access libraries, or lists can be mounted on cards and kept beside each tier. ”

“ Every person before leaving the room shall return the book or books consulted into the hands of the librarian or his assistants, and must not replace books taken from the open shelves, but leave them with the assistant at the exit.
10. Any work in the lending department, if not in use, excepting Fiction, may be had on application at the reference library counter for perusal in the reading room, but on no account must such books be taken from the room. ”

“ Lists in which the titles of the books come first are better liked by the general public than are author-lists. People commonly know books by name, not by author.
Don't make the mistake of spending much money, at the library's beginning, for a printed catalog. A printed catalog, as stated in chapter 25, is not a necessity. It is useful, particularly for home use, to tell whether the library owns certain books; but with a good card catalog, newspaper lists, special lists, and the like, it is not a necessity. ”

“ Such societies are increasing in number, and have a social side in the shape of photographic excursions, reunions, etc., which make them rather more than gatherings where the cacophanous jargon of the dark-room pervades everything; hence they band together many people who are interested in a district and the preservation of its memories. As a rule the whole of the work of the survey, except the cataloguing and classifying—which are the business of the librarian—is done by members of the survey. The library usually supplies mounts, storage and cataloguing requisites. ”

“ Even a one book library is, in fact, a library just as much as a one cell plant is plant or a one cell animal is animal. A one book library is a very insignificant affair compared with the New York Public Library with its many books and many branches, but it is just as truly a library—or else you must find some other word. ”

“ Practically all repairs to a book short of rebinding should be made in the library, since the work requires little space and no machinery, and the books may speedily be replaced on the shelves for general use. ”

“ It can hardly be necessary to dwell, at length, upon the benefits to be expected from a general printed catalogue of all books in the public libraries of America. By means of it, every student in this country would be able to learn the full extent of his resources for investigation. The places where books could be found, might be indicated in the catalogue. A correspondence could be kept up between this Institution and every other library in the country. ”

“ Hence every one of the Memoirs or papers in the acts of academies; every one of the articles in scientific journals or collections, whatever they may be, should have its separate place in the catalogue. Thus, for instance, all the letters in Hanschius' Collection should be entered in their proper places under the writers' names. It is only by carrying this principle to the fullest extent that a catalogue can be called complete, and a library, more particularly of books relating to science, made as useful as it is capable of being. ”

“ If the public is not admitted to the shelves, it will be necessary to supply catalogs for public use as well as slips on which lists of books wanted can be made out; but the fullest possible catalogs and the finest appointments in the delivery room cannot take the place of direct contact between librarian or assistants and the public. Wherever possible, the person to whom the borrower applies for a book should go himself to the shelves for it.
The stranger in the library should be made welcome. ”

“ Those of class 1 constitute the “board of direction,” which is presided over by the librarian, and meets from time to time to consider important measures connected with the administration of the library. Each library is to possess, alike for books and MSS., a general inventory, an accessions register, an alphabetical author-catalogue and a subject-catalogue. When they are ready, catalogues of the special collections are to be compiled, and these the government intends to print. A general catalogue of the MSS. was in 1910 being issued together with catalogues of oriental codices and incunabula. ”

“ It is one thing to make a symmetrical plan on paper, showing a central library with a ring of branches situated at regular distances, and so placed as to bring every reader within one, half or quarter of a mile of the nearest library, but it is quite a different matter realizing this ideal. ”