A National Library Not a Mausoleum (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3*take in the Library. No visitor at the Capitol but looks with pride on this magnificent collection, or but thinks with shame and sorrow on its possible loss and destruction. He thinks it ill comports with the dignity and prosperity of these United States to disperse or destroy by neglect the record of our country's literature, and the documentary proofs of our origin and growth as a people. What, will you destroy the bible of American history, and along with it the family record of the Nation ? Go then, and face the scorn and contempt of the civilized world. textit{ 3ro to the great government libraries and museums of France, of England, of Italy, of every European and Asiatic country, and tell them what you have done. Tell them that America has no record and no literature worth possessing, and that so far as it had any, you did your best to erase and destroy it from the face of the earth! Propose to them your example, and await their answer. It makes no difference whether or not you appreciate the literary, artistic and scientific value of the collection; it has a value quite independent of your estimates. It is not merely a storehouse of information, a magazine, an armory. It is highly useful no doubt, in these relations, as it is made to serve the rhetorical aims and aspirations of members, to provide material for debate, and to minister knowledge, instruction and amusement to members who seek it with those objects in view. All this is well, but it is only incidental to the function of a great national library. That function is to foster and conserve the literary growth of the country, to preserve copies and records of American books, and to guard the rights of literary property in the United States. .All the traditions of the country support this view of the case. textit{May there not be wanting the...