The Philosopher's Public Library - Page 2

that he was entitled
to a special sort of supply.

He would not expect the machinery of retail book-selling to meet the
needs of wholesale buying. So he would go either to wholesale
booksellers, or directly to the various publishers of the books and
editions he had chosen, and ask for reasonable special prices for the
two thousand or seven thousand or fifty thousand of each book he
required. And the publishers would, of course, give him very special
prices, more especially in the case of the out-of-copyright books. He
would probably find it best to buy whole editions in sheets and bind
them himself in strong bindings. And he would emerge from these
negotiations in possession of a number of complete libraries each
of--how many books? Less than twenty thousand ought to do it, I think,
though that is a matter for separate discussion, and that should cost
him, buying in this wholesale way, under rather than over £2,000 a
library.

And next he would bethink himself of the readers of these books. "These
people," he would say, "do not know very much about books, which,
indeed, is why I am giving them this library."

Accordingly, he would get a number of able and learned people to write
him guides to his twenty thousand books, and, in fact, to the whole
world of reading, a guide, for example, to the books on history in
general, a special guide to books on English history, or French or
German history, a guide to the books on geology, a guide to poetry and
poetical criticisms, and so forth.

Some such books our philosopher would find already done--the
"Bibliography of American History," of the American Libraries'
Association, for example, and Mr. Nield's "Guide to Historical
Fiction"--and what are not done he would commission good men to do for
him. Suppose he had to commission forty such guides altogether and that
they cost him on the average £500 each, for he would take care not to
sweat their makers, then that would add another £20,000 to his
expenditure. But if he was going to found 400 libraries, let us say,
that would only be £50 a library--a very trivial addition to his
expenditure.

The rarer books mentioned in these various guides would remind him,
however, of the many even his ample limit of twenty thousand forced him
to exclude, and he would, perhaps, consider the need of having two or
three libraries each for the storage of a hundred thousand books or so
not kept at the local libraries, but which could be sent to them at a
day's notice at the request of any reader. And then, and only then,
would he give his attention to the housing and staffing that this
reality of books would demand.

Being a philosopher