MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE Library Association have issued
a pamphlet in cele- bration of the centenary of the first Public Libraries Act, which received the Royal Assent on August 14th, 1850. It is a neat little booklet, enriched with a diagram and many photo- graphs and containing all the information which students or investigators could require. The diagram explains by a rapidly ascending series of black blocks how the library movement has increased in efficiency and cost since. 1878 ; the tiny block for the former year is no higher than an ordinary doorstep, whereas by 1949 it has soared upwards, towering over its predecessors even as the Empire State Building towers over the squat tenements in the Bowery. The photographs are equally illuminating. There is a picture of a jostling football crowd with a white arrow indicating a rather handsome girl in the middle distance and bearing the caption : " One in every four is a library user." When in future I observe great crowds squeezing together I shall be aware of the fact that one in every four of those' congested millions visits her or his local library and takes out, or consults, a book. Such thoughts should reanimate even the most fading faith in the splendour of democracy. Other photographs depict the various types of citizens whose lives are brightened by the pleasure of handling books paid for by the local authority. There is a picture of an earnest student turning the pages of a folio volume under the light of a bright lamp ; below him a schoolboy in a cricket cap is reading with a book upon his knees ; an elderly civil servant in a mackintosh is absorbed in what looks like a catalogue ; girls of various ages are depicted, some with smiles upon their faces and others with the frown of intellectual concentration ; and there is a delightful portrait of a military man in a trilby hat, whose passion for learning has induced him to read two books at the same time. There are many lavish illustrations of the interiors of several libraries, a close-up of a postman handing two parcels of books to an appreciative housewife, and a picture of a strained enquirer obtaining information from " the reader's adviser." In fact, the pamphlet is presented with all the gay irrelevance of an American magazine.
* * * * The letterpress is more " factual." The Library Association are inspired by the highest ethical motives and the strictest veracity. Although the aim of this pamphlet is to celebrate the centenary of the 1850 Act, it is admitted in the opening paragraph that this Act was not, in fact, the first in which statutory provision was made for public libraries. In 1708 an Act was passed for " the better preservation of parochial libraries in that part of Great Britain called England." And two county boroughs took advantage of the Museums Act of 1845 to establish libraries of their own. Moreover, although the Public Libraries Act of August 14th, 1850, empowered town councils with a population of over 10,000 to levy a rate of not more than one halfpenny in the pound for the creation and maintenance of libraries, it did not (for some strange reason which the pamphlet does not explain) permit them to spend the money thus collected upon buying books. Local authorities were not permitted, it would seem, to buy any books for their libraries until the Act of 1855 came along to remedy what, even on a cursory view, must have been a serious omission. None the less, the library movement, once it had been safely launched, advanced by leaps and bounds. Today over 12,000,000 readers borrow as many as 300,000,000 books a year. Only.60,000 people in this country live in areas where there exists no library service. These figures are impressive. It is a splendid thought that the citizens of this country read, or at least look at, 300,000,000 books a year. * * There are those critics who will contend that these statistics, in fact, amount to little, and that what matters is, not how many books people borrow, but what is the quality of the books they read. This seems to me a priggish carp. The Library Association, in this pamphlet, do not provide us with percentages by which we can estimate the proportions between the weighty, the serious, the literary and the trivial books taken out. But they do give us an interesting specimen list of the books asked for in the course of one day at a single public library. These books cover such diverse subjects as Haiti, child-feeding, Polish grammar, behaviour. ism, pike-fishing, the Byzantine Empire, forensic chemistry, factory costing and the Gobi Desert. The biographies asked for at that particular library on that particular day were those of Lewis Carroll, Moliere, Thomas Paine, Verdi, Whittier, Voltaire and Havelock Ellis. We are not told, in this pamphlet, the name or nature of the locality, the citizens of which are interested in so curious an assortment of subjects and personalities. But the list is sufficient to stimulate the curiosity of any sociologist. One longs to know by what curious combination of circumstances a housewife, let us say at Salford or Wimbledon, was impelled to take out a book on Haiti or the Gobi•. Desert or to read the life of Whittier or Havelock Ellis. And one would wish to know how many users of a public library are directed towards the shelves by a desire to escape into the dream-world of fiction, by a wish to extend their knowledge of their particular hobbies, or by the serious aim of enlarging the area of their own knowledge. From time to time statistics which indicate these public preferences and the shifting of readers' taste are published in convenient form. They are of great importance.
* •* * * The Library Association in• this pamphlet were not concerned with such case sheets. The purpose was to mark the centenary by reporting progress and indicating polity. The progress is astonish. ing and the policy enlightened. They urge, for instance, that the public should be allowed ready access to the shelves. This is an important proviso, since we all know the great educative effect of the habit of " browsing." Nor do they encourage among their members a contemptuous attitude to those of the public who prefer fiction to fact. About two-thirds of the books borrowed from a library are novels, most of which are probably of slight literary value. Yet the main purpose of any library must bd. to induce the reading habit, and this habit is often more easily acquired from the quick perusal of exciting but unimportant books than by the slow consultation of masterpieces. It takes much longer than is generally realised for 4 young person to achieve the capacity for reading a book with speed ; if you start him or her off on Urn Burial, it may well happen that the only effect produced is a weariness of the flesh. On the other hand, if a person, by reading detective novels, insensibly achieves the gift of being able to read easily and quickly, the day may well come when he gets bored by crime stories and passes upwards to the higher levels of human thought. " Librarians," the pamphlet recommends, " no longer think it necessary to excuse the popularity of novels." This is a fine precept. One is left with the barsh vision of some past librarian snubbing a youth or maiden for wishing to read Antic Hay. This attitude is now as remote as 1875.
* * * * Libraries should do more than provide books and information; they should stimulate curiosity. In the pamphlet I am discussing there is an interesting section devoted to the questions which librarians are asked. What is the meaning of Montmorillonite What are ell-men and ell-women ? What is the Cobweb Theorem ? What was the average length of a staple of cotton spun in Poland' before the war ? People who ask such questions must have inquisi- tive minds, and to be constantly inquisitive is a sign of mental alert- ness. The Library Association are to be congratulated on this centenary and forgiven if in their pamphlet they stress the note of self-esteem. These libraries, with their busy hum, are factories of adult education. We should accord them generous praise. And merely question sometimes, in a calm and friendly -way, why 50 much money should spent on the buildings and so little col replacing soiled or battered books.
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