much of the expenditure on public and private education would be wasted, for as Alderman Newton well observed at the Newcastle Conference, they are "not only a necessary supplement to education but a corrective to that which schools and colleges afford". Writing in the "Contemporary Review" in December last, a distinguished, educationalist-Mr. J. E. G. de Montmorency-states that "we are in the midst of an age of change, and the direction of change depends upon the thinking capacity of the people. If to-day people are left to the untender mercy of immature thought, or ill-balanced thought, our danger is greater," he says, " than in the days of popular ignorance when nations were led like sheep by great leaders. If, on the other hand, the people as a whole attain to mature and well-balanced thought, then great leaders will arise, representing and directing the thinking power behind them, with social results hitherto undreamed of in the history of nations. It is for this reason," he adds, "that national education at this juncture of time is so all-important, and the inspired discontent of so many modern educationalists so admirable." The point of the educationalist under notice is that during the last sixty years many experiments-good, indifferent, and downright bad-have been made in the matter of education that various methods have become discredited, and new schemes, based upon the lessons of experience, are due. "The University is once more resuming its own;" county schools, universities, and university colleges are springing up on all sides, and a new efficiency is being inaugurated. Into the details of reforms already achieved, or about to be considered, we cannot venture, but the writer suggests the development of secondary schools, to which the public library system should be closely linked. The curriculum at the schools will provide a race of scholars to whom large libraries will be a necessity. These scholars will be bred on library books, and taught to know how to use a library. Libraries will then find it necessary to adapt themselves, more than ever, to the strictly educational side of their work, and the original functions of the rate-supported public library would thus be fulfilled. In order that this. : object may be attained, Mr. de Montmorency suggests that the "public library should become intimately associated with the Board of Education," and the present powers of the Local Government Board with respect to such libraries should be transferred to the Education Board, "with such additional powers as would enable the Board to throw upon the libraries definite educational functions in return for grants". "When this is done," he says, "we may anticipate a great advance in the University influence on English national education." It is but fair to explain that the writer in question fully admits the advance in the educational work of public libraries during the last decade or so, and it cannot fail to be gratifying to us to perceive such public recognition of the educational possibilities of libraries. We may, we feel assured, go further and say that librarians and library authorities will welcome such additional powers as are suggested above, and that the educationalist will find in the public library a valuable and very willing ally. It has been said that the Press is, in the main, inimical rather than friendly to the library movement, but a sweeping assertion of that kind cannot fairly be made to-day. Unfortunately some prominent organs still adhere to the hostility which they have consistently displayed for half a century or more, but the great newspapers of the country are for the most part either tolerant or favourable. The position might be better, but it might easily be worse. Our chief grievance in this direction lies, I think, in the publication in local papers of virulent letters from which the writers modestly withhold their names. Such a method of attack is unEnglish, and if scurrilous attacks are to be made through the Press it is only just that such epistles should be honestly signed. My final point is that, almost without exception, library criticism is purely destructive in character. If libraries were temporary or experimental institutions an attitude like this would be comprehensible, but as they have obviously come to stay, merely destructive criticism is absolutely futile. irresistibly suggests Sidney Smith's illustration of Mrs. Partington's earnest but misapplied endeavour to repel the It Atlantic tide with a mop. Whatever their virtues and defects, municipal libraries will continue to exist, and if the critics will recognize the former, and assist to improve the latter out of existence, this co-operation will be cordially welcomed. The public library has hitherto been the Cinderella of the municipal world. Let us hope that the simile may be continued, and that a future as prosperous as that which we are led to believe fell to the lot of that heroine of romance may be in store for municipal libraries. To this end I'confidently invite attention to the educational trend of modern library work, and I venture to suggest that the more this work becomes known,the better thought of it will be. A SHORT COURSE IN PRACTICAL CLASSIFICA TION, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE WITH BY W. C. BERWICK SAYERS, DEPUTY-LIBRARIAN OF THE CROYDON PUBLIC LIBRARIES. I. THE Preliminary. HE following papers do not make the smallest pretence of being a complete course of instruction in bibliographical classification. They are severely practical hints on the methods of approaching a classification scheme, the difficulties most frequently encountered in applying it and how to overcome them, and carefully selected book-titles. which illustrate these things. They were designed for students who had pursued a course of reading in the subject such as is provided by the usual Correspondence Course of the Library Association, but whose circumstance made the daily application of classification difficult, and who therefore required some such systematic discipline as these papers provide before facing the ordeal of the Library Association Examination. The plan has been to give one lesson to each of the main classes of the Decimal Scheme, except Literature and Philology, which are combined in one, and History and Geography, which are divided into two; to study its scope and difficulties seriatim, and to make a similar and simultaneous study of the corresponding sections of the Subject. Scheme. To obtain any real benefit from the lessons at least a fortnight should be devoted to each. This course was conducted under the auspices of the Library Association last year, but as the pressure upon my time makes it impossible for me to continue it, I have published it here for the use of such students as may desire this help. These remarks ex plain my purpose, and, I trust, are a suitable apology for the personal note, the lack of literary graces, telegraphic brevity, and other shortcomings in the following pages. 2. Difficulties in the course arise from the fact that Practical Classification is necessarily a matter of practice, and I could only be sure that you perfectly understand your work by handling books in company with you. I shall draw examples whenever possible from actual books in all departments of literature for you to classify by the Decimal and Subject systems; and this will be the important part of the course. But I expect you to be able to assign definite reasons for every process that you undertake. Every decision must be justified in your mind; and every difficulty you meet should be resolved as clearly as possible. Remember that every question and example set has a definite purpose, and do not pass over anything that appears difficult. 3. It is assumed that you have some grasp of the theory of classification; and you understand its logical bases, the meaning of the terms schedule, division, subdivision, notation, index; that you can define the "connotation of terms," characteristics, natural, artificial, and logical classification, cross-division, the mutual exclusiveness of terms, form, topic, etc. If you have not approached the study before you are scarcely likely to do justice to yourself unless you pursue some such initial course of reading as follows:JEVONS, Stanley. Lessons in Elementary Logic. Macmillan. Principles of Science (Chapter on Classification). Macmillan. SAYERS, W. C. B. The Grammar of Classification. Library The Expansive Classification. Libraco, London. Also papers by the last on "Some Canons of Classification Adplied to the Subject Classification," LIBRARY ASSOCIATION RECORD, Vol. IX, pp. 425-42, 1907; "The Decimal Classification After Thirty Years," ibid., Vol XII, pp. 314-34, 1910. 4. The indispensable books for the course are "The Decimal Classification" (sixth or seventh editions, Library Bureau) and "The Subject Classification" (Libraco). |
