"How to make town libraries successful" by F.B. Perkins

I loved this article for several reasons. First, there were some great quotes that literally made me laugh out loud. I especially liked the quote about how female librarians are more likely to no get along than men. I am not sure he has evidence to back it up. If one were to argue about the basic nature of females versus males, I would like to point out that perhaps men do not get along, either. Sometimes, family reunions can be quite exciting because of inebriated male brawls. But back to the article.

There were less blatantly controversial points to the article that I appreciated, including the argument for the inclusion of reading materials that were leisurely. I thought his argument was a medium in between JP Quincy’s argument and a let’s-buy-it-all. Also, I thought the argument that a library must provide fiction books to reel in readers and increase traffic was perhaps more truthful than many librarians even today would like to admit. It seems that in modern libraries the fiction section is often more popular than the non-fiction section, at least in smaller libraries. However, like JP Quincy, he has a distinctly moral tone in his article, and what seems like a disregard for the value of fiction material altogether. The language used to describe how readers should be drawn into the library through less valuable books was a bit disturbing and cult-like. Certainly the whole scheme rejects the value of the public’s judgment of what’s worth reading and sets a tone of moral superiority that I find nauseating.