Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/60

 houses and battleships, fully-stocked and up-to-date technical collections of books, capable of being used in aid of the special trades or professions are very seldom in evidence.

The question of providing useful and suitable books for shops, warehouses or factories is greatly complicated by the immense variety of different trades and occupations implied by the very names of shop and workshop, and further by the absence of a good modern guide to the literature of trades. The books which may prove useful to a grocer are not necessarily those which an ironmonger would require, while the reference books wanted in a foundry would differ materially from those applicable to a tannery. It is, therefore, a matter of impossibility to attempt to single out the technical books which are best adapted for this, or that, or the other trade. Those who are interested must rely upon works like Sonnenschein's Best Books and Readers' Guide, or Greenwood's Guide to Technical and Commercial Books to be found in all good libraries, and the reviews or notes in special trade journals. But every shopkeeper and manufacturer ought to possess at least two or three of the leading textbooks dealing with his trade, and at least one manual of accountancy. It is needless to repeat what has already been said about the in-difference of shopkeepers to their technical literature and journals. It is, unfortunately, a fact too well known to the publishers who bravely undertake the thankless task of giving tradesmen, in book form, an equivalent for the technical train-