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A LIBRARIAN'S OPEN SHELF

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS

ARTHUR E. BOSTWICK, Ph.D.

1920

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 assaults of monotony.

A.E.B.

CONTENTS

DO READERS READ? (_The Critic_, July, 1901, p. 67-70)

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE READ? (_The Book Lover_, January, 1904, p. 12-16)

THE PASSING OF THE POSSESSIVE; A STUDY OF BOOK TITLES (_The Book Buyer_, June, 1897, p. 500-1)

SELECTIVE EDUCATION (_Educational Review_, November, 1907, p. 365-73)

THE USES OF FICTION Read before the American Library Association, Asheville Conference, May 28, 1907. (_A.L.A. Bulletin_, July, 1907, p. 183-7)

THE VALUE OF ASSOCIATION Delivered before the Library Associations of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, October 9-18, 1907. (_Library Journal_, January, 1908, p. 3-9)

MODERN EDUCATIONAL METHODS (_Notes and News_, Montclair, N.J., July, 1908)

SOME ECONOMIC FEATURES OF LIBRARIES Read at the opening of the Chestnut Hill Branch, Philadelphia Free Library, January 22, 1909. (_Library Journal_, February, 1909, p. 48-52)

SIMON NEWCOMB: AMERICA'S FOREMOST ASTRONOMER (_Review of Reviews_, August, 1909, p. 171-4)

THE COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS Read before the Pacific Northwest Library Association, June, 1910. (_P.N.W.L.A. Proceedings_, 1910, p. 8-23)

ATOMIC THEORIES OF ENERGY Read before the St. Louis Academy of Science. (_The Monist_, October, 1912, p. 580-5)

THE ADVERTISEMENT OF IDEAS (_Minnesota Library Notes and News_, December, 1912, p. 190-7)

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL, AND THE SOCIAL CENTER MOVEMENT Read before the National Education Association. (_N.E.A. Proceedings_, 1912, p. 240-5)

THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF VIOLENCE (_St. Louis Mirror_, July 18, 1913)

THE ART OF RE-READING

HISTORY AND HEREDITY Read before the New England Society of St. Louis. (_New England Society of St. Louis_. _Proceedings_, 29th year, p. 13-20)

WHAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR A Flag Day address in St. Peter's church, St. Louis. (_St. Louis Republic_, June 15, 1914)

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Librarian's Open Shelf by Arthur E. Bostwick
• 2: Returning each regularly and borrowing another
• 3: Before he has finished the second volume
• 4: Owing to the large number of volumes averaged
• 5: In the case of the public library
• 6: Those who heard of the library in some way numbered 449
• 7: In library or general publications
• 8: They are full of valuable hints
• 9: Where the more idiomatic forms
• 10: This is purely an automatic selective effect
• 11: Who are unfitted for the university
• 12: Played by the printed book in selective education
• 13: Rather than to the expansion of the classroom library
• 14: We speak of a student being put thru the mill
• 15: Literary as well as meteorological
• 16: Of narrative Juvenile 26 Adult 32
• 17: One may read to excess either in fiction or non fiction
• 18: So that discrepancies frequently present themselves
• 19: But an artificial or selected group
• 20: Is carrying on some small definite
• 21: This is true also of smaller combinations
• 22: The Authors has a small membership
• 23: But the dissidents asserted that the Council
• 24: There are two motives for association
• 25: And are experimenting toward obviating them
• 26: Large membership may be efficient in two ways
• 27: Or for reasons unrelated to fitness
• 28: The functions of these two distributors
• 29: No disseminators of ideas free from interference
• 30: If we wish to preserve democracy
• 31: In the form best suited to awaken our predispositions
• 32: Was beyond his creative efforts
• 33: Newcomb saw the light not under the Stars and Stripes
• 34: Of this work Professor Newcomb himself says
• 35: If the accepted laws of planetary motion are true
• 36: Newcomb was an agreeable companion and a faithful friend
• 37: Mathematical genius is like an automobile
• 38: It is about Book taught Bilkins
• 39: Is apt to be much more familiar and colloquial
• 40: The experiences of our forebears
• 41: Otherwise they decay and are forgotten
• 42: Although we have such a title as Mathematical recreations
• 43: He must drop alcohol altogether
• 44: Than they would be in Nicaragua
• 45: When the cow absorbs physical nutriment by browsing
• 46: The motion of the browser is too rapid
• 47: One may never study higher mathematics
• 48: Now they can not disappoint us
• 49: Together with some correspondence relating thereto
• 50: Regards matter as molecular and energy as a continuum
• 51: If it were continuous and not molecular
• 52: This is found by Planck to be experimentally unverifiable
• 53: It now represents not 3 but 5 quanta
• 54: Is discontinuity to reign through out the physical universe
• 55: Nor are the distributors subject to temptation
• 56: As the patent medicine man does with Curoline
• 57: Advertising may be good or bad
• 58: And is not duplicating other's work wastefully
• 59: Or good teachers with mistaken methods
• 60: Now this is all to the credit of the fiction writers
• 61: Luring in the wayfarer to the joys of reading
• 62: And that in turn aids us in adapting book to user
• 63: And juvenile debating societies
• 64: The Central Council of Civic Agencies
• 65: Business or religious or social
• 66: In one of our branch libraries
• 67: Christian Scientists or suffragists
• 68: Violence ensues under both regimes
• 69: The posse has been used internationally more than once
• 70: Whereas Sorolla put into his picture something of himself
• 71: Was Cromwell truly born thereon
• 72: Thrilling the whole organism with its pathos
• 73: It will be if the librarian wills it
• 74: And we may agree that a man will never like Eschylus
• 75: It is a replica of mind contact
• 76: It thrills him now as it thrilled him then
• 77: May well consist of personal favorites
• 78: American genealogical research is biological
• 79: He may not be able to trace his ancestry
• 80: If he knows that his family came from Cheshire
• 81: A locomotive is made of steel and brass
• 82: The perfect union of which our flag is a symbol
• 83: The freedom of which our fathers thought
• 84: This includes political freedom
• 85: A modern library with no readers is unthinkable
• 86: Is working on the Homeric method
• 87: What does the library board think
• 88: And such misapprehension assumes various and opposing forms
• 89: And a little discriminating praise
• 90: To get sunbeams from cucumbers
• 91: Every despotism is thus tempered by revolution
• 92: The real problem of collectivism
• 93: In the former case we seem to them frightfully pious
• 94: Eclecticism in our choice of subjects is very manifest
• 95: I am merely asserting that it leads to eclecticism
• 96: A class of young women studying to be librarians
• 97: The American response was to open the shelves
• 98: That it is a sign of decadence
• 99: That malemployment is a worse thing
• 100: And there is still need for the druggist
• 101: Or at least all newly discovered drugs
• 102: We display as little moderation in our therapeutics
• 103: I have so little to do with pharmacy
• 104: I should have the pharmacy respond to it
• 105: One would think from the pharmaceutical papers
• 106: But he may fail to acquire them broadly
• 107: Of the same sort as a sound wave in air
• 108: Such an event fosters community education
• 109: But in spite of the obliging school candidate
• 110: His alertness makes him open to educative influences
• 111: Such moments are humiliating to the librarian
• 112: When the Art Librarian looked up
• 113: Scotland and the Elizabethan Period
• 114: And before there were children's librarians
• 115: This malady is doubtless spontaneous in some degree
• 116: Or any of the agencies like it
• 117: Not only all the algebra and geometry
• 118: Most students are rather like ducks in a barn yard puddle
• 119: That the printed word has become a fetish
• 120: Read before clubs and associations
• 121: It would not even be a good compilation
• 122: Revolution is always the outcome of a mistake
• 123: Protested the scandalised librarian
• 124: She timidly asked the clubwoman
• 125: We are outgrowing this particular imaginary distinction
• 126: Perfunctory and unintelligent programme making
• 127: The two associated objects grow
• 128: I have been telling some odd stories of clubwomen
• 129: But such inhibitions cannot develop into judgment
• 130: Dictated by a programme committee
• 131: If sponge cake is a desirable product
• 132: He prescribes for an average man
• 133: An obscure and humble librarian
• 134: Which we first coddle with pap
• 135: As to the relative legibility of different type faces
• 136: In the interests of legibility
• 137: But not at all in its legibility
• 138: The large type collection is used
• 139: It is especially adapted to show realities
• 140: Most of the time at a movie theatre
• 141: The least stagy actors are almost always favorites
• 142: The writers of most captions seem
• 143: Is there any chance of a movie masterpiece
• 144: Theirs was a true drame libre
• 145: Rather than attempt to reproduce realistic details
• 146: We may get along very well with the di chroic ones
• 147: Suppose there were two black pebbles
• 148: If you trust the French physicist
• 149: Will usually have that belief strengthened
• 150: These are all trite things to say to churchmen I have tried
• 151: Said Socrates I know nothing except this one thing
• 152: 50American Library Association
• 153: 317Clubs that meet in libraries
• 154: 113England an elective monarchy
• 155: A Librarian's Open Shelf by Arthur E. Bostwick
• 156: 313Municipal ownership and operation
• 157: 52 See America First movement
• 158: 82Society of Illuminating Engineers