Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography

Ere I quit the subject, suffer me to advert to one aspect of it of national and even international concern. I allude to the service which photography can render in the preservation and dissemination of the national records. The Record Office, in London at least, is no doubt as nearly fireproof as a building can be made; its guardians must say whether it is so absolutely impregnable as to supersede all need for the precaution of making a duplicate copy of any of its treasures. But I know that it has unique documents relating to the most interesting events in Scotch history, facsimiles of which would be acceptable throughout Scotland. I imagine that these are but types of a large class of documents; and I am sure that the sight of papers relating to memorable transactions, or bearing the signatures of memorable men, would foster historical study and patriotic feeling throughout the length and breadth of the land. But there is another class of records, for whose safety and accessibility measures should undoubtedly be taken. I refer to the parish registers. This is no new idea; it has been frequently proposed that such documents should be removed to London and collected in a great central repository. To this, as regards the originals, I cannot assent, both from respect for the rights of property and from the fear lest some unlucky day the registers of the entire kingdom might disappear in one common catastrophe. Photography would solve the problem. With regard to the international aspect of the question, it may be fairly expected that if we lead, other nations will follow, and that we shall have to follow if we let them lead. Suppose that France and we have taken the step in concert, we shall be in a position to mutually exchange copies of all the important documents illustrative of the history of either nation contained in the archives of both. Suppose Italy and Spain to join, and we may have the chief materials of English history at home, and shall no longer be obliged to despatch agents to calendar Venetian state papers, or unriddle the ciphered scrolls of Simancas. The conception is so fruitful, its application is so manifold and momentous, that I half recoil, like Fear, afraid of the picture myself have painted. Yet I believe there is nothing in it that upon sober examination will not be found to follow naturally from the simple propositions with which I began, that the photographic reproduction of national property should be the concern of the nation; and that to a great museum or library photography should be, not a tool, but a limb.

THE TELEGRAPH IN THE LIBRARY

Library administration, like all other departments of human activity in this age, must experience the results of the unexampled development of science in its application to the affairs of life. The most immediately obvious of these are the mechanical: so simple a device as the sliding-press, as will be shown in its place, has saved the nation thousands of pounds. The most promising field for such achievements has hitherto been the United States of America, where the application of scientific contrivances to ordinary purposes is more general than in Europe, and where the more important libraries are new structures, where improvements can form part of the original plan, with no fear of impediment from arrangements already existing. Next to mechanics, photography and electricity may be named as the scientific agencies chiefly adapted for the promotion of library service. Photography has been sufficiently treated in another essay in this volume. The services of electricity will be most cordially acknowledged by those who best remember the paralysis of literary work, alike official and private, engendered by a fog at the British Museum, and in particular recall the appearance of the Reading Room, a Byzantine "tower of darkness," with a lantern dimly burning in the centre, the windows presenting the appearance of slate, and dubious figures gliding or stumbling through the gloom – attendants brought in from the library to take care that the handful of discontented readers did not profit by the opportunity to steal the books. All this nuisance has been abolished by the electric light, which not only renders the Reading Room available for the public on dark days, but allows the ordinary work of the Museum to be carried on in all departments; the same may be said of all other libraries. The beautiful, potent, and above all safe electric ray is an advantage to all, and in dark days a passage from death unto life for those libraries where, as in the Museum, gas has been proscribed on account of its danger and its injurious effects upon books.

The services of electricity to libraries, however, are by no means exhausted by the electric light. It is capable of rendering aid even more important, and the more so in proportion to the extent of the library. The need for rapid communication throughout large buildings has been in some measure met by the telephone, whose usefulness is impaired by its incapacity for transmitting and recording written messages. Recourse must be had to the telegraph – not, of course, that ordinary description of the instrument where the record is made in dots and dashes, intelligibly solely to the expert – but the printing telegraph, where the message appears in clear type, or a facsimile of the transmitter's handwriting. The use of such telegraphs for various purposes, especially those of the Stock Exchange, is now very familiar, and there is perhaps no place where it could be introduced with more signal advantage than the Reading Room of the British Museum.

There is no great reason at present for complaint of delay in bringing books from the Museum library to the Reading Room; but the system is not, as so many other points of Museum administration are, one to challenge the administration and emulation of other libraries. It is impossible to observe its working without pronouncing it cumbrous and below the present level of civilised ingenuity. The reader writes his ticket at the catalogue desk, generally with a pen trying to his temper, and the captive of his bow and spear. He then walks some distance to deposit it in a basket on the counter, where it remains until a boy is at hand to carry it to the corridor outside the Reading Room, where it is put into a clip and drawn up to the gallery. All these operations are indispensable so long as recourse is solely had to human muscle, but they evidently involve great loss of time. The object to be aimed at should be the delivery of the ticket at the table of the attendants who procure the book in the library simultaneously with its being written in the Reading Room; and this seeming impossibility can be achieved by the employment of a writing telegraph by which, as fast as the message is written at one end of the wire, it is recorded in facsimile at the other. The present writer has experimented with the American Telautograph, and, so far as the experiments went, nothing could be more satisfactory. No knowledge of telegraphy whatever is required from the operator: he simply inscribes his message with a style on a piece of tissue-paper, and it reappears simultaneously at the other end of the wire. Nothing seems necessary but to furnish the catalogue desks with electrical transmitters (which occupy no great space) instead of inkstands, and to provide for the carrying of the wires out of the room. When the writer endeavoured to introduce electrical communication in 1894, he feared that this requisite would present difficulties, but was assured by experts that it really offered none. The ticket written by the reader might be retained by him as a memorandum: if it could be repeated in duplicate at the other end, one copy might be treated as now; the other, with any necessary correction, might be pasted at once into the register, saving all the time now occupied in registration.

It is of course perfectly possible that hitches and breakings down might at first occur from time to time, from the delicacy of the machine employed, or from other causes. The machines have not been properly tested, nor can they be, except by a continuous course of experiment. But whence this morbid fear of experiment? After Darwin's definition, the apprehension should surely be on the other side. A single machine, kept at work for a week, would be sufficient to test the principle. The first experiments with the electric light at the Museum were anything but promising, but Sir Edward Bond persevered, and the result is what we see.

And how brilliant a result the establishment of telegraphic communication would be! The saving of time is no doubt the most practical consideration, but apart from this, how vast the improvement in the economy of the Reading Room! No more troops of boy attendants, with the inevitable noise and bustle; nothing but the invisible messenger speeding on his silent errand, and the quiet delivery of books at the desks: an unparalleled scene of perfect physical repose in the midst of intense mental activity. Of course the improvement would not stop with the Reading Room, and ere long all departments would be connected by the writing telegraph.

This paper, of course, is not written with any view of recommending the Telautograph. Instruments better adapted for the purpose may exist, although the writer has not met with them. He originally proposed the employment of a printing telegraph as a means of abridging delays in the Reading Room as long ago as 1876. The great improvements in administration introduced at that time, however, rendered the need less urgent; nor, perhaps, was electrical science itself then sufficiently developed. Acquaintance with the Telautograph led him to take the subject up again in 1893 and 1894, and he still hopes to find the electric force a match for vis inertiæ.

ON THE PROTECTION OF LIBRARIES FROM FIRE

Of all the library's enemies, the most terrible is fire. Water is bad enough; is it not recorded that the 450 copies of the Bible Society's translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew into Manchu, printed on the soft silken paper of China, were destroyed by an inundation of the Neva? But such damage can rarely occur, unless when the element of the Sylph is invoked to combat the element of the Salamander. The muddy waters of the Neva, also, were probably more pernicious than the "salt sea streams" would have been. We ourselves have transcribed manuscripts of Shelley's which had been for months at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and which, although protected by package, had evidently been soaked with salt water. Exposure to fire for a hundred-thousandth part of the period would not have left a letter legible.

The librarian's vigilance and resource, accordingly, ought to be enlisted against fire in an especial manner, and no contrivance should be overlooked that seems to afford the least prospect of controlling or mitigating its ravages.

On July 17, 1884, experiments were made in the garden of Mr. Bernard Quaritch, the eminent bookseller, with fire-proof cases devised by Mr. Zaehnsdorf, equally distinguished as a binder, and were reported in the Academy of July 26. Three books, each enclosed in a separate case, were put into a fire, and kept there for half-an-hour. On their being extracted, "one, which had been in a case lined with tin, unpierced with air-holes, suffered only in its binding, which had been slightly damaged, not directly by the fire, but only by the heated metal. A second, of which the case was of the usual kind, but also unpierced with air-holes, came out intact. The third, in a case resembling that of the second, but pierced with air-holes of good diameter, suffered most, the fire, and the water by which the fire was extinguished, having both found admission through those punctures, the water being the more deleterious agent of the two. This book was, however, not materially injured. From this experiment it may be concluded that a good case will in almost all instances preserve a book from destruction by fire, that a metal lining to the case is not necessary, and that the air-holes (which experiments of a different kind have proved to be indispensable) should be small and numerous, distributed over the top and front edges, and not only on the top."

In 1894, the chief part of the library of Lord Carysfort at Elton Hall, Peterborough, was destroyed by fire, these books only escaping which had been protected by Mr. Zaehnsdorf's cases. On October 3, 1896, Lord Carysfort wrote: "A few of my books which were in cases were quite preserved from serious injury, the cases having been blackened and destroyed, while the book and its binding were scarcely discoloured. Since the fire I have had all my valuable books put into cases such as you make."

These circumstances having accidentally become known to the writer, he thought it his duty to test Mr. Zaehnsdorf's cases for himself. Two of these, filled with printed papers of no value, were placed (April 1897) on a very hot fire in the writer's own study, in the presence of Mr. Zaehnsdorf and several officers of the library of the British Museum. The result was highly satisfactory. Though the cases were greatly damaged, the papers received very little injury, and this only when they were in actual contact with the bottom and sides of the cases. Had they been bound volumes, nothing would have suffered except the edges of the binding.

It seems evident that Mr. Zaehnsdorf's invention well deserves the attention of wealthy collectors of precious books. There is a serious obstacle to its introduction on an extensive scale into great libraries from the expense of the cases, which at present average about a pound a piece. It is probable, however, that cases could be contrived to take books by the shelf-ful instead of single volumes. In any event, however, it would be well worth while to employ them for the protection of books of extreme rarity and inestimable manuscripts, as well as the archives of great libraries, and artistic and scientific departments in general, which, when calendared, as they must one day be if they have not been burned first, will be among the most valuable of materials for the history of culture.

It is no doubt true that the best protection against fire is not any mechanical device, but the contiguity of a good fire brigade. But at Elton Hall the nearest brigade was many miles off, and, be it as near as it will, it is also true that such devices are not exposed to the negligences, misunderstandings, and other infirmities incident to mortals which may in an evil hour paralyse the operations of human agents; and that the most efficient brigade will be greatly helped by anything which, by retarding the progress of a conflagration, holds it back from gaining the mastery before the opposing forces have been fully brought into play. This important object might also be promoted by the employment of wood specially seasoned by a chemical process. Experiments made on behalf of the British Museum in the spring of 1898 have been highly satisfactory, evincing that although wood so treated will char, it will not, properly speaking, burn, and that the use of it for floors and shelving would materially impede the process of combustion.

THE SLIDING-PRESS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM27

The object of this paper is to give a short account of the sliding-press or hanging book-press now in use at the British Museum, and to suggest the importance of its introduction elsewhere where possible, and of regard being had to it in forming the plans of libraries hereafter to be built. Every successful library is destined to be confronted sooner or later with the problem how to enlarge its insufficient space. Without considerable financial resources such enlargement has hitherto been absolutely impracticable, and even where practicable has rarely been carried into effect without a long period of makeshift, discomfort, and disorganisation, for which the enlargement itself affords only a temporary remedy. The great advantages of the sliding-press in this point of view are two: it allows expansion within the edifice itself, without the necessity of additional building, and it enables this expansion to be effected gradually out of the regular income of the library without the need of appealing for the large sums which would be required by extensive structural additions to the existing edifice.

I may assume that all present have seen, or will see, the photographs of the Museum sliding-press exhibited to the Conference, with the accompanying description. I may therefore be very brief in my account of it here, and simply characterise it as an additional bookcase hung in the air from beams or rods projecting in front of the bookcase which it is desired to enlarge, provided with handles for moving it backwards and forwards, working by rollers running on metal ribs projecting laterally from the above-mentioned beams or rods, and so suspended from these ribs as absolutely not to touch the ground anywhere. These are its essential characteristics, without which it would be indeed an additional book-press, but not a hanging-press or sliding-press. In recommending this system of additional accommodation, I by no means wish to insist upon this special form as the only one adapted for the necessities of a library. I have no doubt that in very many libraries the arrangement of the projecting beams or rods would be inapplicable, and that it would be better to resort to the original form of the idea, from which the Museum derived its own application of it – the idea, namely, of a skeleton door made in shelves, hinged upon the press requiring expansion, running on a wheel resting upon a metal quadrant let into the floor, and opening and shutting like any ordinary door. I have merely to affirm that for the Museum the adaptation we have made is a very great improvement; but this is due to the peculiar construction of the rooms to which the new press has hitherto been chiefly confined. Rooms of this pattern do not generally exist in public libraries, and where they are not found I am inclined to think that the plan which I have just described, the prototype of the Museum sliding-press, may be found the more advantageous. I also think, however, that for reasons quite unconnected with the sliding-press, this pattern of room ought to be imitated in libraries hereafter to be built, and when this is the case, it must inevitably bring the Museum press after it. It will therefore be worth while to describe this style of building, in order that the mutual adaptation of it and of the sliding-press may be clear. It consists of three storeys lighted entirely from the top. It is therefore necessary for the transmission of light from top to bottom that the floors of the two upper storeys should be open; and they are in fact iron gratings. It follows that the floor of the highest storey must form the ceiling of the second, and the floor of the second the ceiling of the third. Here is the key to the sliding-press system. The beams or rods which I have described as projecting from the presses that line the wall already existed in the shape of the bars of the grating, and did not require to be introduced. Nothing was needful but to provide them with flanking ribs projecting at right angles, from which, as you see in the photographs, the additional press could be suspended by rollers, admitting of easy working backwards and forwards, and then the sliding-press was fully developed out of the skeleton door. No thought of it had ever crossed the minds of the original designers of the building; yet they could have made no better arrangement had this been planned with an especial view to its introduction. They had even made the storeys of exactly the right height, eight feet. I have not hitherto mentioned that the press takes books both before and behind, because this feature is not essential, and must indeed be departed from when the press is applied to the accommodation of newspapers and such like large folios. For ordinary books it is manifestly a great advantage, but carries with it the obligation that the presses shall not be higher than eight feet, or, when full on both sides, they will be too heavy to work with comfort, unless, which I do not think impracticable, machinery for the purpose should be introduced.

The principle of a sliding or hanging-press is, so far as I know, entirely peculiar to the British Museum, and hardly could have originated elsewhere than in a building possessing, like the Museum, floors and ceilings entirely grated. The main point, however, the provision of supplementary presses to increase the capacity of the library without requiring additional space, had previously been worked out in at least two libraries. The earliest example, apart from casual and accidental applications at Trinity College, Dublin, and, as I have been told, the Bodleian, was, I believe, at Bradford Free Library, and the gentleman entitled to the credit of its introduction there was Mr. Virgo, the librarian. Mr. Virgo's contrivance was, I understand, a double door, not hinged on to the original press in one piece, as in the pattern I have just described, but opening in two divisions to right and left, as frequently the case in cupboards. I speak, however, with some uncertainty, for when, writing on the subject in Mr. Dewey's Library Notes, and most anxious to give Mr. Virgo all due credit, I applied to him for particulars of his invention, modesty, as I must suppose, rendered him silent, or at best but insufficiently articulate. I hope he may be present to-day, and that the Conference may hear the particulars from himself. It is due, however, to the Bethnal Green Library, the other institution to which I have referred as having given effect to the principle of press expansion in situ, to state most explicitly that the idea of its application at the Museum was derived wholly and solely from Bethnal Green; that the Bradford example, though it had been set for some years previously, was never heard of at the Museum until the model had been constructed and the first presses ordered; and that I am satisfied that Bethnal Green knew as little of Bradford as the Museum did. The Bethnal Green inventor was, I am informed, the late Dr. Tyler, the founder and principal benefactor of the institution, and, as elsewhere, the device was resorted to by him under the pressure of a temporary emergency – in this case the accumulation of specifications of patents annually presented by the Patent Office. The introduction of the principle at the Museum dates from a November evening of 1886, when, going down to attend a little festivity on occasion of the reopening of the Bethnal Green Library after renovation, I was shown the supplementary presses by the librarian, Mr. Hilcken. I immediately saw the value of the idea, and next morning sent for Mr. Jenner, assistant in the Printed Book Department, in whose special fitness I felt great confidence, from his admirable performance of the duty of placing the books daily added to the Museum, which frequently requires much ingenuity and contrivance. I told Mr. Jenner what I had seen, and desired him to consider whether he could devise a method of adapting the Bethnal Green system to the exigencies of the British Museum. He did consider: he went down to Bethnal Green and saw the presses employed there, and, to his infinite credit, hit upon the plan of suspending the presses from the grated floors of the upper storey in the manner shown by the photograph, which, as I have already pointed out, is entirely original. A model was constructed by the aid of Mr. Sparrow, the ingenious locksmith of the Museum. Mr. Bond, then principal librarian, took the matter up warmly, the first batch of presses was ordered early in 1887, and from that time forward we have had no difficulty at the Museum in providing space for ordinary books, although some structural alterations will be requisite before the sliding-press can be applied to the whole of the New Library, and it must be modified if it is to be made serviceable for newspapers. A new room in the White Wing, not admitting of a grated ceiling, has been specially adapted with a view to the introduction of the press, and may be usefully studied by librarians about to build, although I think that some modifications will be found expedient. I have pleasure in adding that on my report of June 1, 1888, in which I went into the whole matter very fully, the trustees obtained from the Treasury a gratuity of £100 for Mr. Jenner and of £20 for Mr. Sparrow, in recognition of their services.

I have designedly said recognition, not recompense, for no grant likely to be awarded by the Treasury would bear any proportion to the saving effected on behalf of the nation. To make this clear I will adduce some particulars stated in my report to the trustees. Eight hundred sliding-presses can be added to the New Library at the Museum without any modification of the building as it stands, and 300 more by certain structural alterations. The cost of a press being about £13, this gives £14,300 for the 1100 presses, or, with a liberal allowance for the cost of the alterations, say £15,000 altogether. Each press will contain on the average about 400 volumes, showing a total of 440,000 volumes, or about seven times the number of books in the great King's Library added to the capacity of the New Library, without taking in another square inch of ground. Excluding newspapers, periodicals, Oriental books – otherwise provided for – and tracts bound in bundles, and assuming an annual addition of 20,000 volumes of other descriptions, this provides for twenty-two years. But much more may be said, for, whether in the form of swinging door or sliding-press, the principle of expansion in situ can undoubtedly be carried out through the greater part of the Old Library, as well as in the basement of the New.28 What additional space this would afford, I have not endeavoured to estimate. Another immense advantage connected with the system is the facility it offers of gradual expansion. Any other enlargement requires new building; new building requires a large sum to be raised by a great effort of rating, borrowing, or subscribing; and too frequently the adjoining ground is preoccupied, and must be acquired at a great additional expense. Fifty thousand pounds would, I believe, be a very moderate estimate for such accommodation, if obtained by building, as the Museum gets from the sliding-press for £15,000, supposing even that the ground were free to build upon. In our case, however, this ground must have been purchased. We may well imagine the Trojan siege we should have had to lay to the Treasury, to obtain the money; the delays of building when this was eventually forthcoming; and the fearful inconvenience which would have existed meanwhile. Now we simply put down a sum in the annual estimates for as many sliding-presses as are likely to be required during the ensuing financial year, introduce them wherever they seem to be necessary, and hope to go on thus for an indefinite number of years. Any new apartment, complete in itself, must involve waste, for some parts of it must necessarily fill up faster than others; but in the sliding-press is a beautiful elasticity; it can be introduced wherever it is seen to be wanted, and nowhere else. Finally, and for the Museum this is most important, the additional space gained is in the close vicinity of the Reading Room. A new building must have been at a distance, involving either great inconvenience in the supply of books to readers, or an additional Reading Room, catalogue, reference library, and staff.