Kansas City daily journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1892-1897, 1895-02-11
nnApy MAnE LIBRARIES.
They Are Boucht In New York city Al
most Every Week.

From the New York sun.
Chicago university's feat of creating a
| library of several thousand volumes at
| q single stroke, as II were, is unsur-
| passed in the line of lightning library
| making. but reaGy-made libraries are
! bought in New York almost every week.
| Several booksellers are ready to furnish
! on short notice Libraries of from 100 to
| 10000 volumes. and some of them would
hardly balk an order for 10000 to be
! filled in q month, though no conscien-
! tious bookseller recommends such haste
in getting together a library Of that size
I There are many books In existence pur-
porting TO name the 800 LOCO, 1000 or
10000 books for a library designed for
popular use, and there are similar lists
for other sorts of Libraries, sunday
school libraries of from 80 To 1000 vol
umes have been ready for immediate
delivery any time these fifty years, at
prices that seem astonishingly low.
The most careful booksellers who
make a speciality of furnishing libraries
on masse 90 private persons. cities.
villages. school districts and colleges.
accept no printed lists as final and de-
sire for the completion of their task
from a month to six months, according
TO the size and character Of the library.
Many public libraries of from 1000 to
10000 volumes are created every year,
aud they are selected upon all sorts of
plans, ana perhaps as often as not upon
no plan at all. Sometimes a committee
of prominent citizens. no one of whom
Is on intimate terms with SO many as a
dozen books, undertakes the task, and
gets hOpelessly mixed. The request for
advice from publishers and booksellers
brings a shower of catalogues that only
Increase the confusion, and only a prov
idential interference can prevent fool
ish expenditure of the money appro-
prated for the library.
The expert In the matter of selecting
books for an ordinary public library
that IL to be created at a stroke is us
ually a man who has been CONNER
cially acquainted with books for some
thing like half lifetime. That means
that he can give an intelligent opinion
as to the value of perhaps 10000 books
for library purposes II is his duty as
an expert to know something about
more books than any bookworm. in the
course of a long life, could read. Not
only that but he must know what
books have been superseded by others
and what are likely soon to be thus SUI
perseded. The expert will take up any
one of dozen publishers catalogues
and pick out at sight the superannu-
ated books-the books that are reCog-
niaed authorities upon the subjects they
treat Of the books that cover this or
that period of history those that prop
erly supplement others, ana hundred
like details to be found in no single
treatise. and beyond the knowledge of
pert library buyer has, in fact, an effect
i've smattering of many mems special
ties in the matter OF books, and he as
tonishes the laymen by the ease with
which he can enumerate editions, bind
ings and the like.
Fiction forms the largest department
in any library purchased for the COM
munity at large 1t is a simple matter
to choose the novels more than fifty
years old that shall go into such a Ii
brary. Time, the uncrring critic. has
taken that part of the work off the Ii
brary buyers hands. Cooper is the ear
liest American novelist to find a place
in a village libray of 5000 volumes.
and it often happens that less than half
his works are included. When ii comes
to current fiction the library buyer has a
little more difficulty in choosing. Nov
els that We're included in every library
purchased five years ago would not be
considered for a library bought to-day.
Some highly successful novelists of the
present day have so outlived the fame
of their earlier novels that nothing of
theirs published ten years ago would
find place in small popular library
chosen 1t this time. There are many
current British novels that would have
to he he included in a popular library to
be established in town of Great Brit
ain, but which could not possibly find
place in a like American library.