Library Association Record Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...other fields of literature as well as our own. It is perfectly true, as was pointed out recently by Mr. Baker in the Library World, that whichever way you look at fiction forms the subject under treatment. In making a selection it should always be borne in mind that borrowers Of both sexes make use of the public library, and I think it ' A paper read at a meeting of the Librarians oi the Mersey District held at St. Helens. not unlikely that the wives and daughters of the ratepayers form by far the largest section of the users of the lending department. In order further to demonstrate the importance of this question of selection, it needs only to be pointed out that in libraries where a French department is already established, large use is made of the French literature by students from the colleges, the high schools and the schools generally. Foreign novelists, we are told, have influenced modern thought; but it may be well to be reminded there is an influence for evil as well as an influence for good, and it is extremely doubtful whether writers like Feuillet, Maupassant, Balzac, Bourget, Zola and Huysman, by their sheer fidelity of representation and analysis, and by their unparalleled frankness and piercing insight, have exercised a beneficial influence upon modern thought by the moral fragrance of the greater number of their literary creations. They may have supplied food for earnest thought to the student of human nature, but surely the strongest arguments are against admitting such literature into the public library. It is true that properly administered the deadliest venom becomes valuable medicine, and homoeopathists even use among their remedies the poison of the rattlesnake; but how few of the readers in our public...