The Library and Society: Reprints of Papers and Addresses. Various

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THE IDEA OF A POPULAR LIBRARY

       Table of Contents

      The following seven papers give some fundamental ideas on the functions of popular libraries. They are arranged in chronological order, and, so grouped, span the gap between 1851 and 1906, considerably more than half a century. The first is interesting as presenting a discussion at the inception of our first great public library, that of the city of Boston, quoted from “The Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor” (Boston, 1909). Ticknor's idea of a popular library, given in a letter to Edward Everett, is followed by Everett's answer. Some of the editor's comments precede and conclude. Those interested may read on, in Chapter XV, Vol. II of the “Life,” and get a further idea of Ticknor's zeal in promoting the Boston library and his interest in making it as popular as possible, in distinction to the idea of a library solely for scholars, upheld by John Jacob Astor, in his New York gift of three years previous, which Everett rather favored.

      George Ticknor was born in Boston, Aug. 1, 1791 and graduated at Dartmouth in 1807. He was admitted to the bar in 1813 but devoted his life chiefly to teaching and to literature, serving as professor in Harvard in 1819-35. He died in Boston, Jan. 26, 1871. A sketch of Everett appears on page 127 of this volume.

      The endowment of a great library in New York, given by Mr. John Jacob Astor, at his death, in 1848, was much talked about; and men of forecast began to say openly that, unless something of a like character were done in Boston, the scientific and literary culture of this part of the country would follow trade and capital to the metropolis, which was thus taking the lead. Still, nothing effectual was done. Among the persons with whom Mr. Ticknor had, of late years, most frequently talked of the matter, Dr. Channing was dead, Mr. Abbott Lawrence had become Minister to England, and Mr. Jonathan Phillips was growing too infirm to take part in public affairs. The subject, however, kept its hold on Mr. Ticknor's mind.

      His idea was that which he felt lay at the foundation of all our public institutions, namely, that in order to form and maintain our character as a great nation, the mass of the people must be intelligent enough to manage their own government with wisdom; and he came, though not at once, to the conclusion that a very free use of books, furnished by an institution supported at the expense of the community, would be one of the effective means for obtaining this result of general culture.

      He had reached this conclusion before he saw any probability of its being practically carried out, as is proved by the following letter, which he wrote to Mr. Everett, in the summer of 1851. A few months before this date Mr. Everett had presented to the city—after offering it in vain more than once—a collection of about a thousand volumes of Public Documents, and books of similar character, accompanied by a letter, urging the establishment of a public library.

      To Hon. Edward Everett.

      Bellows Falls, Vermont, July 14, 1851.

      My dear Everett,—I have seen with much gratification from time to time, within the last year, and particularly in your last letter on the subject, that you interest yourself in the establishment of a public library in Boston;—I mean a library open to all the citizens, and from which all, under proper restrictions, can take out books. Such, at least, I understand to be your plan; and I have thought, more than once, that I would talk with you about it, but accident has prevented it. However, perhaps a letter is as good on all accounts, and better as a distinct memorandum of what I mean.

      It has seemed to me, for many years, that such a free public library, if adapted to the wants of our people, would be the crowning glory of our public schools. But I think it important that it should be adapted to our peculiar character; that is, that it should come in at the end of our system of free instruction, and be fitted to continue and increase the effects of that system by the self-culture that results from reading.

The great obstacle to this with us is not—as it is in Prussia and elsewhere—a low condition of the mass of the people, condemning them, as soon as they escape from school, and often before it, to such severe labor, in order to procure the coarsest means of physical subsistence, that they have no leisure for intellectual culture, and soon lose all taste for it. Our difficulty is, to furnish means specially fitted to encourage a love for reading, to create an appetite for it, which the schools often fail to do, and then to adapt these means to its gratification. That an appetite for reading can be very widely excited is plain, from what the cheap publications of the last twenty years have accomplished, gradually raising the taste from such poor trash as the novels with which they began, up to the excellent and valuable works of all sorts which now flood the country, and are read by the middling classes everywhere, and in New England, I think, even by a majority of the people.[2]

      Now what seems to me to be wanted in Boston is, an apparatus that shall carry this taste for reading as deep as possible into society, assuming, what I believe to be true, that it can be carried deeper in our society than in any other in the world, because we are better fitted for it. To do this I would establish a library which, in its main department and purpose, should differ from all free libraries yet attempted; I mean one in which any popular books, tending to moral and intellectual improvement, should be furnished in such numbers of copies that many persons, if they desired it, could be reading the same work at the same time; in short, that not only the best books of all sorts, but the pleasant literature of the day, should be made accessible to the whole people at the only time when they care for it, i.e. when it is fresh and new. I would, therefore, continue to buy additional copies of any book of this class, almost as long as they should continue to be asked for, and thus, by following the popular taste,—unless it should demand something injurious,—create a real appetite for healthy general reading. This appetite, once formed, will take care of itself. It will, in the great majority of cases, demand better and better books; and can, I believe, by a little judicious help, rather than by any direct control or restraint, be carried much higher than is generally thought possible.

[2] Mr. Ticknor was much struck by the publication of a cheap edition of Johns' Translation of Froissart, by the Harpers, of which he found a copy in a small inn of a retired village of southern New York, in 1844; and he always watched the signs of popular taste, both in publishers' lists and in the bookshelves of the houses which he entered, in his summer journeys, or in his errands of business and charity in the winter.

      After some details, of no present consequence, developing this idea, the letter goes on:—

      Nor would I, on this plan, neglect the establishment of a department for consultation, and for all the common purposes of public libraries, some of whose books, like encyclopaedias and dictionaries, should never be lent out, while others could be permitted to circulate; all on the shelves being accessible for reference as many hours in the day as possible, and always in the evening. This part of the library, I should hope, would be much increased by donations from public-spirited individuals, and individuals interested in the progress of knowledge, while, I think, the public treasury should provide for the more popular department.

      Intimations of the want of such public facilities for reading are, I think, beginning to be given. In London I notice advertisements of some of the larger circulating libraries, that they purchase one and two hundred copies of all new and popular works; and in Boston, I am told, some of our own circulating libraries will purchase almost any new book, if the person asking for it will agree to pay double the usual fee for reading it; while in all, I think, several, and sometimes many copies of new and popular works are kept on hand for a time, and then sold, as the demand for them dies away.

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