LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION

CHAPTER I

THE LIBRARY AND ITS STAFF

THE genesis of the library, public or private, can be traced through the histories of all complex civilisations. It is, however, with the public library of modern times, its aims and methods, that the present work is chiefly concerned. For the appreciation of these we may neglect Assyria and Rome, and the monastic libraries, wherein alone the lamp of science was kept alight in the Dark and Middle Ages, and pass to the Renaissance. The phrase bibliotheca publica is first found, as far as at present known, in the fifteenth century,1 and in 1437 the earliest institution deserving of this title was founded when Niccolo Niccoli left his collection of manuscripts to the city of Florence, and they were thrown open to public use in a library which is now merged in the Laurenziana.

The functions of the librarian evolved themselves

in natural sequence. He was primarily custodian

1 Dziatzko: Entwickelung u. gegenwärtiger Stand der wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken Deutschlands, 1893.

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of the books, and in the perpetual wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the office was no sinecure. Thus we may well imagine that Gosselin, who had charge of the Bibliothèque du Roi during the wars of the League, had enough to do to ensure the safety of his charge, and it is not surprising to learn that during his forty-four years of office he never found time to make a catalogue, nor that his too jealous guardianship often thwarted the inquiring zeal of Isaac Casaubon, who afterwards succeeded him. He, again, was a striking example of a class of librarian that even to-day is by no means extinct-the mere scholar, who reads instead of causing books to be read.

The modern conception of the librarian seems to have been first reached, at least in Great Britain, by one John Durie, who set forth his views in an interesting little work, "The Reformed LibrarieKeeper" (London, 1650, 12m0). He was particularly opposed to the notion of a library being a mere museum of curiosities, and greatly blames the administration of the library at Heidelberg, in that "they that had the keeping of this librarie made it an idol, to bee respected and worshipped for a raritie by an implicate faith." He sets forth the defects that characterised the librarians of his time in words that are not without their application to-day :

"The Librarie-keeper's place and office, in most countries (as most other Places and offices both in Churches and

1 See Mark Pattison's "Casaubon,"

Universities) are looked upon as Places of profit and gain, and so accordingly sought after and valued in that regard: and not in regard of the Service which is to bee done by them unto the Common-wealth of Israel, for the advancement of Pietie and Learning : . . . and so they subordinate all the advantages of their places to purchase mainly two things thereby, viz. an easie subsistence, and som credit in comparison with others; nor is the last much regarded, if the first may bee had."

... If Librarie-keepers did understand themselvs in the nature of their work, and would make themselvs, as they ought to bee, useful in their places in a publick waie, they ought to becom Agents for the advancement of universal Learning, and to this effect I could wish that their places might not bee made, as everie where they are, Mercenarie, but rather Honorarie; and that with the competent allowance of two hundred pounds a year; som emploiments should bee put upon them further than a bare keeping of the Books."

"The proper charge then of the Honorarie Librarie-keeper in an Universitie should bee thought upon, and the end of that Imploiment, in my conception, is to keep the public stock of Learning, which is in Books and Manuscripts, to increas it, and to propose to others in the waie which may bee most useful unto all."

To this end Durie proceeds, the librarian shall "trade" with foreign men of learning for exchange of books and of discoveries in science, making himself a sort of confidential international agent. To carry this system out he must know the "parts of all scholars of eminence. As a check on his administration he shall give an annual account of his "trading," accompanied by a "Catalogue of