CHAPTER 5.

THE ENEMIEs of Books.

We have seen in former chapters how the books of a ..brary are acquired, how they are prepared for the shelves, or for use, and how they are or should be bound. Let us now consider the important questions which involve the care, the protection, and the preservation of the books. Every librarian or book owner should be something more than a custodian of the books in his collection. He should also exercise perpetual vigilance with regard to their safety and condition. The books of every library are beset by dangers and by enemies. Some of these are open and palpale; others are secret, illusive, little suspected, and liable to come unlooked for and without warning. Some of these enemies are impersonal and immaterial, but none the less deadly; others are personally human in form, but most inhuman in their careless and brutal treatment of books. How far and how fatally the books of many libraries have wen injured by these ever active and persistent enemies can never be adequately told. But we may point out what the several dangers are which beset them, and how far the watchful care of the librarian and his assistants may forestall or prevent them.

One of the foremost of the inanimate enemies of books is dust. In some libraries the atmosphere is dust-laden, to a degree which seems incredible until you witness its results in the deposits upon books, which sol your fingers, and contaminate the air you breathe, as you brush or blow it AWAY Peculiarly liable to dust are library rooms located in populous towns, or in business streets, and built close to

the avenues of traffic. Here, the dust is driven in at the windows and doors by every breeze that blows. It is an omnipresent evil, that cannot be escaped or very largely remedied. As preventive measures, care should be taken not to build libraries too near the street, but to have ample front and side yards to isolate the books as far as may be consistent with convenient access. Where the library is already located immediately on the street, a subscription for sprinkling the thoroughfare with water, the year round, would be true economy.

In some cities, the evils of street dust are supplemented by the mischiefs of coal smoke, to an aggravated degree. Wherever soft coal is burned as the principal fuel, a black, fuliginous substance goes floating through the air, and soils every thing it touches. It penetrates into houses and public buildings, often intensified by their own interior use of the same generator of dirt, and covers the books of the library with its foul deposits. You may see, in the publie libraries of some western cities, how this perpetual curse of coal smoke has penetrated the leaves of all the books, resisting all efforts to keep it out, and slowly but surely deteriorating both paper and bindings. Here, preventive measures are impossible, unless some device for consuming the coal smoke of chimneys and factories were made compulsory, or the evil somewhat mitigated by using a less dangerous fuel within the library.

But, aside from these afflictions of dust, in its most ag gravated form, every library and every room in any building is subject to its persistent visitations. Wherever carpets or rugs cover the floors, there dust has an assured abding-place, and it is diffused throughout the apartment in impalpable clouds, at every sweeping of the floors Hence it would be wise to adopt in public libraries a floorcovering like linoleum, or some substance other than

woolen, which would be measurably free from dust, while soft enough to deaden the sound of feet upon the floors. Even with this preventive precaution, there will always be dust enough, and too much for comfort, or for the health of the books. Only a thorough dusting, carried on if posble daily, can prevent an accumulation of dust, at once deleterious to the durability of the books, and to the comfort both of librarians and readers. Dust is an insidious fe, stealing on its march silently and unobserved, yet, however impalpable in the atmosphere of a library, it will ttle upon the tops of every shelf of books, it will penetrate their inner leaves, it will lodge upon the bindings, ling books and readers, and constituting a perpetual

annoyance.

It is not enough to dust the tops of the books periodically, a more full and radical remedy is required, to render Ibrary books presentable. At no long intervals, there should be a thorough library cleaning, as drastic and complete as the house-cleaning which neat housewives institute twice a year, with such wholesome results. The books are to be taken down from the shelves, and subjected to a shaking-up process, which will remove more of the dust they have absorbed than any brush can reach. To do this effectually, take them, if of moderate thickness, by the halfdozen at a time from the shelf, hold them loosely on a table, their fronts downward, backs uppermost, then with a hand at either side of the little pile, strike them smartly together a few times, until the dust, which will fly from them in a very palpable cloud, ceases to fall. Then lay them on their ends, with the tops uppermost on the table, and repeat the concussion in that posture, when you will el m`nate a fresh crop of dust, though not so thick as the frst. After this, let cach volume of the lot be brushed over at the sides and back with a soft (never stiff) brush,

or else with a piece of cotton or woolen cloth, and so restored clean to the shelves. While this thorough method of cleansing will take time and pains, it will pay in the long run. It will not eliminate all the dust (which in a large collection is a physical impossibility) but it will reduce it to a minimum. Faithfully carried out, as a periodical supplement to a daily dusting of the books as they stand on the shelves, it will immensely relieve the librarian or bookowner, who can then, (and then only) feel that he has done his whole duty by his books.

Another dangerous enemy of the library book is damp. already briefly referred to. Books kept in any ba-ement room, or near any wall, absorb moisture with avidity; both paper and bindings becoming mildewed, and often covered with blue mould. If long left in this perilous condition, sure destruction follows; the glue or paste which fastens the cover softens, the leather loses its tenacity, and the leaves slowly rot, until the worthless volumes smell to heaven. Books thus injured may be partially recovered, before the advanced stage of decomposition, by removal to a dry atmosphere, and by taking the volumes apart, drying the sheets, and rebinding-a very expensive, but necessary remedy, provided the books are deemed worth preserving.

But a true remedy is the preventive one. No library should ever be kept, even in part, in a basement story, nor should any books ever be located near the wall of a buildAll walls absorb, retain, and give out moisture, and are dangerous and oft-times fatal neighbors to books. It the shelves be located at right angles to every wall-w.th the end nearest to it at least twelve to eighteen inches removed, and the danger will be obviated.

A third enemy of the book is heat. Most libraries are unfortunately over-heated, sometimes from defective means of controlling the temperature, and sometimes from

carelessness or want of thought in the attendant. A high

temperature is very destructive to books. It warps their e vers, so that volumes unprotected by their fellows, or by a book support, tend to curl up, and stay warped until they become a nuisance. It also injures the paper of the volby over-heating, and weakening the tenacity of the leaves held together by the glue on the back, besides dry

g to an extreme the leather, till it cracks or crumbles urber the heat. The upper shelves or galleries of any library are most seriously affected by over-heating, because t'e natural law causes the heat to rise toward the ceiling. If you put your hand on some books occupying the highest places in some library rooms, in mid-winter, when the fires are kept at their maximum, the heat of the volume will almt burn your fingers. If these books were sentient beings, and could speak, would they not say "our sufferings are intolerable?”

The remedy is of course a preventive one; never to suffer the library to become over-heated, and to have proper ventilation on every floor, communicating with the air outde. Seventy degrees Fahrenheit is a safe and proper max mum temperature for books and librarian.

The mischief arising from gas exhalations is another se72 925 source of danger to books. In many well-lighted 1 rares, the heat itself from the numerons gas-burners is

ert to injure them, and there is besides a sulphuric Bearing from the coal-gas fluid, in combustion, which rust deleterious to bindings. The only remedy appears be, where libraries are open evenings, to furnish them rith electric lights. This improved mode of illumination 18 row so perfected, and so widely defused, that it may be reckoned a positive boon to pubble libraries, in saving their b= k* from one of their worst and most destructive ene