Page:Library Administration, 1898.djvu/165

 CHAPTER IV

ARRANGEMENT

question of the arrangement of books on the shelves of a library has long been hotly disputed. The various systems are reducible to two. In the first, the location of each book is fixed, and the press-mark, or series of figures attached to the entry of each book in the catalogue, simply indicate on what shelf, and in what place on that shelf, it may be found. In the second system the position of the books with regard to the shelves is indifferent, but they must follow one another on the shelves in some preconcerted order, and it is this order which the press-mark (to keep the old term) signifies. This continual shifting, of course, adds considerably to the wear and tear. The objects to be achieved by a system of arrangement are: (1) to classify the books; (2) to provide space for the expansion of each class; (3) to waste no space, either horizontally or vertically.

Classification.—The need for classification is generally supposed by modern librarians to be beyond dispute, but the impartial outsider may very well ask why, in cases where readers are not allowed to forage for themselves among the 148