Let me now adduce some minor instances of the inconvenience created, at the Museum alone, by the absence of photographic facilities. The Congress of Orientalists has felt the want of Oriental MSS. deposited in England so keenly as to have unanimously concurred in a perfectly futile memorial to allow them to be sent to the Continent. The Austrian Government lately addressed an official request for the loan of an exceedingly rare book, which, if the Museum had possessed it, they could not have had, but of which, if an official photographic department had existed, they might have obtained the facsimile for a trifle. With due photographic facilities at Basle we might each of us have taken home a perfect facsimile of the memorable letter of Fichet which Mr. Bullen has brought to our notice, the accurate typographic reproduction of which will assuredly tax the resources of the printers of the "Library Chronicle." The Dean of Armagh could tell us how much he had recently to pay for the transcription of an entire book on Irish history at the Museum, though the charge was as low as possible. I have seen an accomplished lady, the wife of a Professor of Fine Art, toiling day after day for weeks together, laboriously tracing plans of architectural structures for the illustration of her husband's lectures, which plans, under the conditions contemplated, she could have carried away in facsimile for a few shillings. I have known weeks employed and twenty pounds expended in copying a manuscript grammar of an African language; and a rare old English book transcribed, every word of it, to obtain a reprint. I have now a colleague in the Museum coming early and staying late out of his official time to transcribe an almost illegible Coptic manuscript, a photograph of which would have answered every purpose. Another colleague wished to give a facsimile page of a very curious MS. he had edited for a learned society; but was prevented by the cost; conversely, the same gentleman, thanks to photography, is at present deciphering a most obstinate MS. for the Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, without having to go there or make himself responsible for the safe custody of the document. I know that the charges of the skilful men who restore missing passages of books in facsimile are, inevitably I suppose, so high that nobody who can help it will employ them. I have a mutilated book on my table at this moment which I earnestly wish could be entrusted to one of them, but I fear it will not do. Now, when we consider that it has been found practicable to facsimile the rare original edition of "Goody Two Shoes," with numerous woodcuts, by photo-zincography, and publish it at half-a-crown, it is clear that there must be something wrong about this exorbitant cost which so effectually hinders the very work which photography, in our age, seems so especially called upon to perform, of counteracting the inevitable tendency of old books to scarcity and consequent dearness. Of the numerous official services which photography could render in a library, such as saving time in copying documents, or restoring damaged leaves of catalogues, I say nothing, for fear of occupying your time unduly; and of the innumerable uses to which it can be turned by an ingenious bibliographer I am also silent for the same reason, and because I regard this branch of the case as the especial property of Mr. Henry Stevens, who has proved it experimentally, and who has, I hope, more to tell us respecting it. I will merely remark that under all disadvantages, the last four volumes of the British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins contain 116 autotype plates, with representations of nearly 2000 coins. What might not be done if the Museum were its own autotypist!
Instances so numerous, representative without doubt of a very large number which have not come to my knowledge, encourage the hope that the establishment of a photographic department at the Museum would be even financially successful. One very strong fact may be adduced, that proposals have been actually made to obtain a photographic copy of the great Chinese Cyclopædia, occupying eighteen hundred volumes. The proposition, needless if the Museum had possessed a photographic establishment of its own, was that the parties should take the Cyclopædia away and photograph it themselves. It could not be granted, although the sum offered was no less than five hundred pounds, which would have about paid the proposed photographic officer's salary for a whole year. The fact is conclusive both of the need of photography as an auxiliary to library work, and of the encouragement which a well-managed endeavour would be sure to meet. Like the penny post and the telegraph, once fairly launched, it would raise the wind for itself. "Work," says George Eliot, "breeds: " and the great initial difficulty removed, unsuspected developments and applications are sure to be thought of. Much prudence and judgment would be requisite in working the scheme. Competition with professional photographers must be avoided; and the work of the institution confined to reproducing objects in its own collections, or those of other public institutions, or such in private hands as possessed a distinct literary, artistic, or scientific impress and value. The locality should be the British Museum, because, while we are able to receive articles from any other place on deposit, we are disabled from even temporarily parting with our own. If so, the management must, of course, rest with the Museum authorities, as we could not allow an imperium in imperio. It will be admitted that under the present Principal Librarian the Museum has fully earned the confidence of the public, and that this has been largely gained by the readiness shown to enlist mechanical processes in aid of library work, particularly printing and electricity. The introduction of photography would be but a further development of the same principle; and although much consideration and discussion will evidently be necessary, I am not without hope that Mr. Bond, who has brought print into the catalogue and electricity into the Reading Room, may make the sun-crowned nymph, now an inmate who charges for her lodging instead of paying for it, a daughter of the house. Many questions will arise which only experience can solve. The work which the institution does for itself and that which it does for others must not be allowed to get into each other's way, and the adjustment of the scale of charges will require serious consideration. On the one hand, the very essence of the scheme is to reduce the cost of photography for literary or educational purposes to a minimum; and high prices would evidently be extortionate when the main elements of cost had been suppressed. On the other hand, the bona fides of customers must be guaranteed; and the Treasury will scarcely help unless the obligation to recoup it as far as possible is acknowledged and acted upon. The best principle, I apprehend, would be to proportion charges as nearly as possible to the expenditure of material – a variable quantity, depending upon the amount of work done – and to look upon the salaries of the photographic officer and his assistants as expenses to be covered as far as possible – but with which the State is not bound to concern itself more than with the salaries of other literary and artistic servants from whom it does not expect pecuniary returns.
Ere I quit the subject, suffer me to advert to one aspect of it of national and even international concern. I allude to the service which photography can render in the preservation and dissemination of the national records. The Record Office, in London at least, is no doubt as nearly fireproof as a building can be made; its guardians must say whether it is so absolutely impregnable as to supersede all need for the precaution of making a duplicate copy of any of its treasures. But I know that it has unique documents relating to the most interesting events in Scotch history, facsimiles of which would be acceptable throughout Scotland. I imagine that these are but types of a large class of documents; and I am sure that the sight of papers relating to memorable transactions, or bearing the signatures of memorable men, would foster historical study and patriotic feeling throughout the length and breadth of the land. But there is another class of records, for whose safety and accessibility measures should undoubtedly be taken. I refer to the parish registers. This is no new idea; it has been frequently proposed that such documents should be removed to London and collected in a great central repository. To this, as regards the originals, I cannot assent, both from respect for the rights of property and from the fear lest some unlucky day the registers of the entire kingdom might disappear in one common catastrophe. Photography would solve the problem. With regard to the international aspect of the question, it may be fairly expected that if we lead, other nations will follow, and that we shall have to follow if we let them lead. Suppose that France and we have taken the step in concert, we shall be in a position to mutually exchange copies of all the important documents illustrative of the history of either nation contained in the archives of both. Suppose Italy and Spain to join, and we may have the chief materials of English history at home, and shall no longer be obliged to despatch agents to calendar Venetian state papers, or unriddle the ciphered scrolls of Simancas. The conception is so fruitful, its application is so manifold and momentous, that I half recoil, like Fear, afraid of the picture myself have painted. Yet I believe there is nothing in it that upon sober examination will not be found to follow naturally from the simple propositions with which I began, that the photographic reproduction of national property should be the concern of the nation; and that to a great museum or library photography should be, not a tool, but a limb.
THE TELEGRAPH IN THE LIBRARY
Library administration, like all other departments of human activity in this age, must experience the results of the unexampled development of science in its application to the affairs of life. The most immediately obvious of these are the mechanical: so simple a device as the sliding-press, as will be shown in its place, has saved the nation thousands of pounds. The most promising field for such achievements has hitherto been the United States of America, where the application of scientific contrivances to ordinary purposes is more general than in Europe, and where the more important libraries are new structures, where improvements can form part of the original plan, with no fear of impediment from arrangements already existing. Next to mechanics, photography and electricity may be named as the scientific agencies chiefly adapted for the promotion of library service. Photography has been sufficiently treated in another essay in this volume. The services of electricity will be most cordially acknowledged by those who best remember the paralysis of literary work, alike official and private, engendered by a fog at the British Museum, and in particular recall the appearance of the Reading Room, a Byzantine "tower of darkness," with a lantern dimly burning in the centre, the windows presenting the appearance of slate, and dubious figures gliding or stumbling through the gloom – attendants brought in from the library to take care that the handful of discontented readers did not profit by the opportunity to steal the books. All this nuisance has been abolished by the electric light, which not only renders the Reading Room available for the public on dark days, but allows the ordinary work of the Museum to be carried on in all departments; the same may be said of all other libraries. The beautiful, potent, and above all safe electric ray is an advantage to all, and in dark days a passage from death unto life for those libraries where, as in the Museum, gas has been proscribed on account of its danger and its injurious effects upon books.
The services of electricity to libraries, however, are by no means exhausted by the electric light. It is capable of rendering aid even more important, and the more so in proportion to the extent of the library. The need for rapid communication throughout large buildings has been in some measure met by the telephone, whose usefulness is impaired by its incapacity for transmitting and recording written messages. Recourse must be had to the telegraph – not, of course, that ordinary description of the instrument where the record is made in dots and dashes, intelligibly solely to the expert – but the printing telegraph, where the message appears in clear type, or a facsimile of the transmitter's handwriting. The use of such telegraphs for various purposes, especially those of the Stock Exchange, is now very familiar, and there is perhaps no place where it could be introduced with more signal advantage than the Reading Room of the British Museum.
There is no great reason at present for complaint of delay in bringing books from the Museum library to the Reading Room; but the system is not, as so many other points of Museum administration are, one to challenge the administration and emulation of other libraries. It is impossible to observe its working without pronouncing it cumbrous and below the present level of civilised ingenuity. The reader writes his ticket at the catalogue desk, generally with a pen trying to his temper, and the captive of his bow and spear. He then walks some distance to deposit it in a basket on the counter, where it remains until a boy is at hand to carry it to the corridor outside the Reading Room, where it is put into a clip and drawn up to the gallery. All these operations are indispensable so long as recourse is solely had to human muscle, but they evidently involve great loss of time. The object to be aimed at should be the delivery of the ticket at the table of the attendants who procure the book in the library simultaneously with its being written in the Reading Room; and this seeming impossibility can be achieved by the employment of a writing telegraph by which, as fast as the message is written at one end of the wire, it is recorded in facsimile at the other. The present writer has experimented with the American Telautograph, and, so far as the experiments went, nothing could be more satisfactory. No knowledge of telegraphy whatever is required from the operator: he simply inscribes his message with a style on a piece of tissue-paper, and it reappears simultaneously at the other end of the wire. Nothing seems necessary but to furnish the catalogue desks with electrical transmitters (which occupy no great space) instead of inkstands, and to provide for the carrying of the wires out of the room. When the writer endeavoured to introduce electrical communication in 1894, he feared that this requisite would present difficulties, but was assured by experts that it really offered none. The ticket written by the reader might be retained by him as a memorandum: if it could be repeated in duplicate at the other end, one copy might be treated as now; the other, with any necessary correction, might be pasted at once into the register, saving all the time now occupied in registration.
It is of course perfectly possible that hitches and breakings down might at first occur from time to time, from the delicacy of the machine employed, or from other causes. The machines have not been properly tested, nor can they be, except by a continuous course of experiment. But whence this morbid fear of experiment? After Darwin's definition, the apprehension should surely be on the other side. A single machine, kept at work for a week, would be sufficient to test the principle. The first experiments with the electric light at the Museum were anything but promising, but Sir Edward Bond persevered, and the result is what we see.
And how brilliant a result the establishment of telegraphic communication would be! The saving of time is no doubt the most practical consideration, but apart from this, how vast the improvement in the economy of the Reading Room! No more troops of boy attendants, with the inevitable noise and bustle; nothing but the invisible messenger speeding on his silent errand, and the quiet delivery of books at the desks: an unparalleled scene of perfect physical repose in the midst of intense mental activity. Of course the improvement would not stop with the Reading Room, and ere long all departments would be connected by the writing telegraph.
This paper, of course, is not written with any view of recommending the Telautograph. Instruments better adapted for the purpose may exist, although the writer has not met with them. He originally proposed the employment of a printing telegraph as a means of abridging delays in the Reading Room as long ago as 1876. The great improvements in administration introduced at that time, however, rendered the need less urgent; nor, perhaps, was electrical science itself then sufficiently developed. Acquaintance with the Telautograph led him to take the subject up again in 1893 and 1894, and he still hopes to find the electric force a match for vis inertiæ.
ON THE PROTECTION OF LIBRARIES FROM FIRE
Of all the library's enemies, the most terrible is fire. Water is bad enough; is it not recorded that the 450 copies of the Bible Society's translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew into Manchu, printed on the soft silken paper of China, were destroyed by an inundation of the Neva? But such damage can rarely occur, unless when the element of the Sylph is invoked to combat the element of the Salamander. The muddy waters of the Neva, also, were probably more pernicious than the "salt sea streams" would have been. We ourselves have transcribed manuscripts of Shelley's which had been for months at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and which, although protected by package, had evidently been soaked with salt water. Exposure to fire for a hundred-thousandth part of the period would not have left a letter legible.
The librarian's vigilance and resource, accordingly, ought to be enlisted against fire in an especial manner, and no contrivance should be overlooked that seems to afford the least prospect of controlling or mitigating its ravages.
On July 17, 1884, experiments were made in the garden of Mr. Bernard Quaritch, the eminent bookseller, with fire-proof cases devised by Mr. Zaehnsdorf, equally distinguished as a binder, and were reported in the Academy of July 26. Three books, each enclosed in a separate case, were put into a fire, and kept there for half-an-hour. On their being extracted, "one, which had been in a case lined with tin, unpierced with air-holes, suffered only in its binding, which had been slightly damaged, not directly by the fire, but only by the heated metal. A second, of which the case was of the usual kind, but also unpierced with air-holes, came out intact. The third, in a case resembling that of the second, but pierced with air-holes of good diameter, suffered most, the fire, and the water by which the fire was extinguished, having both found admission through those punctures, the water being the more deleterious agent of the two. This book was, however, not materially injured. From this experiment it may be concluded that a good case will in almost all instances preserve a book from destruction by fire, that a metal lining to the case is not necessary, and that the air-holes (which experiments of a different kind have proved to be indispensable) should be small and numerous, distributed over the top and front edges, and not only on the top."
In 1894, the chief part of the library of Lord Carysfort at Elton Hall, Peterborough, was destroyed by fire, these books only escaping which had been protected by Mr. Zaehnsdorf's cases. On October 3, 1896, Lord Carysfort wrote: "A few of my books which were in cases were quite preserved from serious injury, the cases having been blackened and destroyed, while the book and its binding were scarcely discoloured. Since the fire I have had all my valuable books put into cases such as you make."
These circumstances having accidentally become known to the writer, he thought it his duty to test Mr. Zaehnsdorf's cases for himself. Two of these, filled with printed papers of no value, were placed (April 1897) on a very hot fire in the writer's own study, in the presence of Mr. Zaehnsdorf and several officers of the library of the British Museum. The result was highly satisfactory. Though the cases were greatly damaged, the papers received very little injury, and this only when they were in actual contact with the bottom and sides of the cases. Had they been bound volumes, nothing would have suffered except the edges of the binding.
It seems evident that Mr. Zaehnsdorf's invention well deserves the attention of wealthy collectors of precious books. There is a serious obstacle to its introduction on an extensive scale into great libraries from the expense of the cases, which at present average about a pound a piece. It is probable, however, that cases could be contrived to take books by the shelf-ful instead of single volumes. In any event, however, it would be well worth while to employ them for the protection of books of extreme rarity and inestimable manuscripts, as well as the archives of great libraries, and artistic and scientific departments in general, which, when calendared, as they must one day be if they have not been burned first, will be among the most valuable of materials for the history of culture.
It is no doubt true that the best protection against fire is not any mechanical device, but the contiguity of a good fire brigade. But at Elton Hall the nearest brigade was many miles off, and, be it as near as it will, it is also true that such devices are not exposed to the negligences, misunderstandings, and other infirmities incident to mortals which may in an evil hour paralyse the operations of human agents; and that the most efficient brigade will be greatly helped by anything which, by retarding the progress of a conflagration, holds it back from gaining the mastery before the opposing forces have been fully brought into play. This important object might also be promoted by the employment of wood specially seasoned by a chemical process. Experiments made on behalf of the British Museum in the spring of 1898 have been highly satisfactory, evincing that although wood so treated will char, it will not, properly speaking, burn, and that the use of it for floors and shelving would materially impede the process of combustion.