Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/316

 304 The Library. issues of fiction as much as possible not of course by dis- couraging the perusal of the great masters the Scotts, the Kingsleys, the George Eliots whom all allow to be invaluable agencies in their building up of character but by abstaining from trashy novels which may happen to be in demand for a season, and by employing his personal influence to assist the demand for instructive books. It has been stated that the demand for novels is sometimes stimulated by numbers of copies of such as are popular for the moment being procured simultaneously. I can hardly believe this, if so the practice is most objectionable. If the books are borrowed and returned the library becomes to that extent a circulating library, which was never contemplated by the Act. If they are bought there must be great waste of money, for in a year or two they will be worth nothing to keep, and can only be parted with at a heavy loss. This is so evident that I cannot believe that the practice has prevailed to any extent. Besides the personal influence of the librarian, there are other means of creating the public senti- ment which is needed to put libraries into a satisfactory position, which may mostly be summed up in the precept of an intimate alliance with other educational agencies. Do not be isolated. Help the School Board as far as possible, and the voluntary schoolmaster too. Give their pupils, present and past, every facility for resorting to the library. If the structure of the library permits, encourage lectures and exhibitions under its roof, and make it an instrument for encouraging those that may be given elsewhere. By these and similar measures on the part both of librarian and committee-men the needful public senti- ment will be created in time, and when once the community has made the development of libraries its affair, no man can predict how far this development may go. The address I delivered at Aberdeen last year was mainly retrospective, and I do not know that subsequent events in the library world call for especial remark, except one legal question which has arisen, and which, I think, deserves the attention of the Council of the Association. This is the action brought by Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin against the trustees of the British Museum. Mrs. Martin, a lady of such distinction in the United States that she has twice been a candidate for the highest office in the gift of her countrymen, was libelled years ago in a very contemptible pamphlet. This pamphlet acciden- tally found its way to the British Museum, where, after reposing