By Cindy Orr

I’ve been researching early libraries and how librarians felt about reading and readers’ advisory service, for a presentation I’ll be giving next month in Albany. I came across an article written in 1886 by F. B. Perkins of the Boston Public Library. It’s called “How To Make Town Libraries Successful.”

Here are a few excerpts that caught my eye:

“The first mistake likely to be made in establishing a public library is choosing books of too thoughtful or solid a character. It is vain to go on the principle of collecting books that people ought to read, and afterwards trying to coax them to read them.”

That thought still holds up pretty well today, right? But he goes on:

“The only practical method is to begin by supplying books that people already want to read, and afterwards to do whatever shall be found possible to elevate their reading tastes and habits.”

This is the Elevation of Taste Theory, which librarians had pretty much given up within 20 years or so when it turned out not to work. People read what they want to read, and thinking you will pull them up to the higher levels of great literature is a lost cause in most cases.

And he tops it all off with the sentiment that a patron should know he is being unreasonable:

“if I plague the librarian by trying to make him (or her) pick out books for me instead of doing it myself.”

Well, guess he wasn’t much of a readers’ advisor after all.

But then there’s this:

“A perfect librarian is bound to be courteous and kind, attentive and accommodating, not only to the polite and considerate, but also to the evil and the unthankful.”

So maybe he was crabby, but it sounds like he tried to control himself at least.

And there you have it…a quick look back to a library of 1886.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 2:49 am and is filed under Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.