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29 - Library management in the pre-professional age

from PART THREE - PROVINCIAL AND METROPOLITAN LIBRARIES 1750–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
P. S. Morrish
Edited by
Giles Mandelbrote  and
K. A. Manley
Giles Mandelbrote
Affiliation:
British Library, London
K. A. Manley
Affiliation:
University of London
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Summary

This chapter and that on librarianship from 1650 to 1750 should be treated in some respects as concurrent rather than consecutive because, many aspects of librarianship having developed as slowly after 1750 as before, some details discussed above will not be re-examined here. Paradoxically this slow technical development coincided after 1750 with proliferation of subscription, circulating and other ‘public’ libraries, and generally increased activity in the book world. Thus library systems began to creak and arrears grew: despite Enlightenment and Revolution, library reform dawned late and tentatively.

No compendious treatise in English on librarianship was published, and even such French essays as those by Cotton des Houssayes and Parent failed to attract immediate translation. The remarks of the former were commonplace: librarians should be learned and well read in the arts and sciences, attend to readers promptly, courteously and constructively, and maintain order on the shelves. Libraries may not all require exactly the same type of person as librarian, or the same attention, but in many cases a common element was that the librarian, not being the proprietor, served those who owned and used the collection. This master–servant relationship featured in the 1826 rules of Lincoln’s Inn library: ‘the duty of the Librarian [shall be] to give his attendance at the Library whilst the same is kept open, and generally to superintend the state of the Library under the direction and inspection of the Master of the Library’. Contemplating selection of the first librarian for the London Library, Thomas Carlyle stated that relationship more subtly: ‘the Library’s function does not imply that he shall be king over us … but he will be a wise servant, watchful, diligent, discerning what is what, incessantly endeavouring, rough-hewing all things for us; and, under the guise of a wise servant, ruling actually while he serves’.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 479 - 493
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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