A Librarian's Open Shelf Part 1

A Librarian's Open Shelf.

by Arthur E. Bostwick.

PREFACE

The papers here gathered together represent the activities of a librarian in directions outside the boundaries of his professional career, although the influences of it may be detected in them here and there. Except for those influences they have little connection and the transition of thought and treatment from one to another may occasionally seem violent. It may, however, serve to protect the reader from the a.s.saults of monotony.

A.E.B.

A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS

DO READERS READ?

Those who are interested in the proper use of our libraries are asking continually, "What do readers read?" and the tables of cla.s.s-percentages in the annual reports of those inst.i.tutions show that librarians are at least making an attempt to satisfy these queries. But a question that is still more fundamental and quite as vital is: Do readers read at all? This is not a paradox, but a common-sense question, as the following suggestive little incident will show. The librarian-in-charge of a crowded branch circulating-library in New York City had occasion to talk, not long ago, to one of her "star" borrowers, a youth who had taken out his two good books a week regularly for nearly a year and whom she had looked upon as a model--so much so that she had never thought it necessary to advise with him regarding his reading. In response to a question this lad made answer somewhat as follows: "Yes, ma'am, I'm doing pretty well with my reading. I think I should get on nicely if I could only once manage to read a book through; but somehow I can't seem to do it." This boy had actually taken to his home nearly a hundred books, returning each regularly and borrowing another, without reading to the end of a single one of them.

That this case is not isolated and abnormal, but is typical of the way in which a large cla.s.s of readers treat books, there is, as we shall see, only too much reason to believe.

The facts are peculiarly hard to get at. At first sight there would seem to be no way to find out whether the books that our libraries circulate have been read through from cover to cover, or only half through, or not at all. To be sure, each borrower might be questioned on the subject as he returned his book, but this method, would be resented as inquisitorial, and after all there would be no certainty that the data so gathered were true. By counting the stamps on the library book-card or dating-slip we can tell how many times a book has been borrowed, but this gives us no information about whether it has or has not been read. Fortunately for our present purpose, however, many works are published in a series of volumes, each of which is charged separately, and an examination of the different slips will tell us whether or not the whole work has been read through by all those who borrowed it. If, for instance in a two-volume work each volume has gone out twenty times, twenty borrowers either have read it through or have stopped somewhere in the second volume, while if the first volume is charged twenty times and the second only fourteen, it is certain that six of those who took out the first volume did not get as far as the second. In works of more than two volumes we can tell with still greater accuracy at what point the reader's interest was insufficient to carry him further.

Such an investigation has been made of all works in more than one volume contained in seven branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, and with very few exceptions it has been found that each successive volume in a series has been read by fewer persons than the one immediately preceding. What is true of books in more than one volume is presumably also true, although perhaps in a less degree, of one-volume works, although we have no means of showing it directly. Among the readers of every book, then, there are generally some who, for one reason or other, do not read it to the end.

Our question, "Do readers read?" is thus answered in the negative for a large number of cases. The supplementary question, "Why do not readers read?" occurs at once, but an attempt to answer it would take us rather too deeply into psychology. Whether this tendency to leave the latter part of books unread is increasing or not we can tell only by repeating the present investigation at intervals of a year or more. The probability is that it is due to pure lack of interest. For some reason or other, many persons begin to read books that fail to hold their attention. In a large number of cases this is doubtless due to a feeling that one "ought to read" certain books and certain cla.s.ses of books. A sense of duty carries the reader part way through his task, but he weakens before he has finished it.

This shows how necessary it is to stimulate one's general interest in a subject before advising him to read a book that is not itself calculated to arouse and sustain that interest. Possibly the modern newspaper habit, with its encouragement of slipshod reading, may play its part in producing the general result, and doubtless a careful detailed investigation would reveal still other partial causes, but the chief and determining cause must be lack of interest. And it is to be feared that instead of taking measures to arouse a permanent interest in good literature, which would in itself lead to the reading of standard works and would sustain the reader until he had finished his task, we have often tried to replace such an interest by a fict.i.tious and temporary stimulus, due to appeals to duty, or to that vague and confused idea that one should "improve one's mind,"

unaccompanied by any definite plan of ways and means. There is no more powerful moral motor than duty, but it loses its force when we try to apply it to cases that lie without the province of ethics. The man who has no permanent interest in historical literature, and who is impelled to begin a six-volume history because he conceives it to be his "duty" to read it, is apt to conclude, before he has finished the second volume, that his is a case where inclination (or in this instance disinclination) is the proper guide.

As a matter of fact, the formation of a cultivated and permanent taste for good reading is generally a matter of lifelong education. It must be begun when the child reads his first book. An encouraging sign for the future is the care that is now taken in all good libraries to supervise the reading of children and to provide for them special quarters and facilities. A somewhat disheartening circ.u.mstance, on the other hand, is the multiplication of annotated and abbreviated children's editions of all sorts of works that were read by the last generation of children without any such treatment. This kind of boned chicken may be very well for the mental invalid, but the ordinary child prefers to separate his meat from the "drumstick" by his own unaided effort, and there is no doubt that it is better for him to do so.

In the following table, the average circulation of first volumes, second volumes, etc., is given for each of seven cla.s.ses of works. The falling off from volume to volume is noticeable in each cla.s.s. It is most marked in science, and least so, as might be expected, in fiction. Yet it is remarkable that there should be any falling off at all in fiction. The record shows that the proportion of readers who cannot even read to the end of a novel is relatively large. These are doubtless the good people who speak of d.i.c.kens as "solid reading" and who regard Thackeray with as remote an eye as they do Gibbon. For such "The d.u.c.h.ess" furnishes good mental pabulum, and Miss Corelli provides flights into the loftier regions of philosophy.

Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.

CLa.s.s I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII IX. X. XI. XII.

History 10.1 6.9 4.9 4.4 4.6 4.3 2.5 2.8 1.0 0.5 1.0 3.0 Biography 7.2 5.1 3.0 2.3 1.6 1.0 1.6 1.2 1.0 2.

Travel 9.2 7.9 Literature 7.3 5.9 3.5 3.8 5.3 6.6 19.0 15.0 21.0 Arts 4.7 3.7 3.0 Sciences 5.2 2.7 1.5 Fiction 22.0 18.9 15.8 16. 26. 16.

The figures in the table, as has been stated, are averages, and the number of cases averaged decreases rapidly as we reach the later volumes, because, of course, the number of works that run beyond four or five volumes is relatively small. Hence the figures for the higher volumes are irregular. Any volume may have been withdrawn separately for reference without any intention of reading its companions. Among the earlier volumes such use counts for little, owing to the large number of volumes averaged, while it may and does make the figures for the later volumes irregular.

Thus, under History the high number in the twelfth column represents one-twelfth volume of Froude, which was taken out three times, evidently for separate reference, as the eleventh was withdrawn but once.

Furthermore, apart from this irregularity, the figures for the later volumes are relatively large, for a work in many volumes is apt to be a standard, and although its use falls rapidly from start to finish enough readers persevere to the end to make the final averages compare unduly well with the initial ones where the high use of the same work is averaged in with smaller use of dozens of other first and second volumes. That the falling off from beginning to end in such long works is much more striking than would appear from the averages alone may be seen from the following records of separate works in numerous volumes:

VOLUMES I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X HISTORY

Grote, "Greece" 11 6 5 2 1 0 1 1 1 0 Bancroft, "United States" 22 10 6 8 10 8 Hume, "England" 24 7 5 2 1 1 Gibbon, "Rome" 38 12 7 3 4 6 Motley, "United Netherlands" 7 1 1 1 Prescott, "Ferdinand and Isabella" 20 4 2 Carlyle, "French Revolution" 18 10 8 McCarthy, "Our Own Times" 27 8 11

BIOGRAPHY

Bourienne, "Memoirs of Napoleon" 19 18 9 7 Longfellow's "Life" 6 4 2 Nicolay and Hay, "Lincoln" 6 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 Carlyle, "Frederick the Great" 7 3 2 2 2

FICTION

Dumas, "Vicomte de Bragelonne" 31 30 24 22 21 16 Dumas, "Monte Cristo" 27 17 18 d.i.c.kens, "Our Mutual Friend" 5 4 1 0 Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 37 24

Of course, these could be multiplied indefinitely. They are sufficiently interesting apart from all comment. One would hardly believe without direct evidence that of thirty-one persons who began one of Dumas's romances scarcely half would read it to the end, or that not one of five persons who essayed d.i.c.kens's "Mutual Friend" would succeed in getting through it.

Those who think that there can be no pathos in statistics are invited to ponder this table deeply. Can anyone think unmoved of those two dozen readers who, feeling impelled by desire for an intellectual stimulant to take up Hume, found therein a soporific instead and fell by the wayside?

A curious fact is that the tendency to attempt to "begin at the beginning"

is so strong that it sometimes extends to collected works in which there is no sequence from volume to volume. Thus we have the following:

Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.

I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

Chaucer, "Poetical Works" 38 9 5 Milton, "Poetical Works" 19 8 Longfellow, "Poetical Works" 14 15 2 10 3 3 Emerson, "Essays" 48 13 Ward, "English Poets" 13 2 6

There are of course exceptions to the rule that circulation decreases steadily from volume to volume. Here are a few:

Vol. Vol. Vol. Vol.

I. II. III. IV.

Fiske, "Old Virginia" 26 24 Spears, "History of the Navy" 44 39 36 36 Andrews, "Last Quarter Century" 8 8 Kennan, "Siberia" 15 13

In the case of the two-volume works the interest-sustaining power may not always be as great as would appear, because when the reader desires it, two volumes are given out as one; but the stamps on the dating-slips show that this fact counted for little in the present instances.

I would not a.s.sume that the inferences in the present article are of any special value. The statistical facts are the thing. So far as I know, no one has called attention to them before, and they are certainly worthy of all interest and attention.

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ?

Does the reading public read because it has a literary taste or for some other reason? In the case of the public library, for instance, does a man start with an overwhelming desire to read or study books and is he impelled thereby to seek out the place where he may most easily and best obtain them? Or is he primarily attracted to the library by some other consideration, his love for books and reading acting only in a secondary manner? The New York Public Library, for instance, carries on the registry books of its circulating department nearly 400,000 names, and in the course of a year nearly 35,000 new applications are made for the use of its branch libraries, scattered over different parts of the city. What brings these people to the library? This is no idle question. The number of library users, large as it is, represents too small a fraction of our population. If it is a good thing to provide free reading matter for our people--and every large city in the country has committed itself to the truth of this proposition--we should certainly try to see that what we furnish is used by all who need it. Hence an examination into the motives that induce people to make their first use of a free public library may bring out information that is not only interesting but useful. To this end several hundred regular users of the branches of the New York Public Library were recently asked this question directly, and the answers are tabulated and discussed below. In each of sixteen branch libraries the persons interrogated numbered forty--ten each of men, women, boys and girls. Thirty answers have been thrown out for irrelevancy or defectiveness. The others are cla.s.sified in the following table:

A B C D E F G H I J K L Totals

Men 6 64 10 .. .. .. 37 20 3 1 9 4 154 Boys 38 63 28 .. 4 3 9 6 5 .. .. 3 159 Women 12 67 14 4 .. .. 20 21 2 1 2 5 148 Girls 33 69 34 .. .. .. 5 3 3 .. .. 2 149 Total 89 263 86 4 4 3 71 50 13 2 11 14 610

Col. A: Sent or Told by Teacher Col. B: Sent or Told by Friend Col. C: Sent or Told by Relative Col. D: Sent or Told by Clergyman Col. E: Sent or Told by Library a.s.sistant Col. F: Through Reading Room Col. G: Saw Building Col. H: Saw Sign Col. I: Saw Library Books Col. J: Saw Bulletin Col. K: Saw Article in Paper Col. L: Sought Library

It will be seen that the vast majority of those questioned were led to the library by some circ.u.mstance other than the simple desire to find a place where books could be obtained. Of more than six hundred persons whose answers are here recorded only fourteen found the library as the result of a direct search for it prompted by a desire to read. In a majority of the other cases, of course, perhaps in all of them, the desire to read had its part, but this desire was awakened by hearing a mention of the library or by seeing it or something connected with it. These determining circ.u.mstances fall into two cla.s.ses, those that worked through the ear and those that operated through the eye.

Those who _heard_ of the library in some way numbered 449, while those who _saw_ it or something connected with it were only 147--an interesting fact, especially as we are told by psychologists that apprehension and memory through sight are of a higher type than the same functions where exercised through hearing. Probably, however, this difference was dependent on the fact that the thing heard was in most cases a direct injunction or a piece of advice, while the thing seen did not act with similar urgency. There are some surprises in the table. For instance, only four persons were sent directly to libraries by persons employed therein.