• Conferences, workshops, training opportunities

          As might be expected, the controversy over genre fiction also rages in library circles. Disdain for the tastes of the common reader is apparent in some librarians. One of this author's students, interning in a public library branch, checked out a western to read for the class on genre fiction, and the branch librarian said disdainfully, “Of course, you know westerns are trash!” Fortunately, there are some public librarians who read and enjoy “trash.” Unfortunately, the public library has always been defensive about stocking popular fiction: its educational and informational services are lauded, but there has too often been a suggestion that providing readers with entertaining books was pandering. Not all libraries are so blessed as is the Little Rock, Arkansas, Public Library: a local trust company set up a trust fund so that the librarian could, in clear conscience, buy “not so good books"—defined as westerns, detective stories, science fiction, romances, and the like. A former British librarian writing “Of 'Luv's and Lights' “ (K. F. Kister in Wilson Library Bulletin, January 1967) cites disparaging remarks about such fiction, e.g., that it “subverts the public's perspective of society.” (Nothing changes: In 1877 in the United States, a librarian, William Kite, wanted to exclude all fiction from public libraries as novels gave persons in “lowly but honest” occupations “false ideas about life.” In 1966, Library Journal headlined a news note: “Oz Comes to D.C. Libraries after 66 Years.” Fond aunts still steadily gave the Oz books as gifts during the banned period.)
          Librarians are also castigated for providing books of poor literary quality. There is pressure on them to be concerned with improving patrons' tastes. The professional library journals worry about this sporadically, the problem becoming complicated with implications of censorship. Librarians do get upset. In 1960, Library Journal ran an article criticizing the selection of books for the Fiction Catalog, used by librarians to identify authors and titles deemed necessary in a public library's permanent stock of fiction. The article was so controversial that the editor solicited comment to accompany it, and also published a later group of comments and letters t the editor of an irate nature (Dorothy Broderick, “Libraries and Literature,” August and October 15, 1960). One passage gives the tenor of the article: “We know that librarians read mysteries. We know this because ten percent of the total entries in the 1950 edition [Fiction Catalog] are mysteries. Does anyone actually believe that these approximately 340 mysteries are worth the space they take up? It has been my experience that the most useful mystery is the newest one and once read it can be forgotten. Obviously one would retain a few of the 'classics' in the field and this would mean the entries in the Catalog would be truly selective.” Other types of genre fiction were also to be ruthlessly weeded out, allowing for an increase in the number of worthwhile fiction titles. Among the comments: “I see little virtue in stocking a library with books that will not be read, simply because the librarian has a fixed idea of what her borrowers should read” (Margaret E. Cooley, book editor, Library Journal). A library school professor, Howard W. Winger, objected to some of the deletions: “I don't want to be accused of defending all the trivial books in libraries—just those I liked!”
          An academic librarian entered the fray, stating flatly, “The function of libraries is to get people reading and to keep them coming back” (Ellsworth Mason, “The Sobering Seventies: Prospects for Change,” Library Journal, October 1, 1972). Citing his own youthful devouring of pulp magazines and Hopalong Cassidy before writing a doctoral thesis on James Joyce, he queries, “Who in the world can tell at what age, or by what book, anyone is going to get an interest in anything under the sun?” The thinking of librarians disturbed him: “There is a deprecation of reading for pleasure, and much pride in the great increase in serious books in their collections for serious readers.”
          “Trash in the Library” is the forthright title of an article written by a branch librarian in New York's Queensborough Public Library, Rudolph Bold (Library Journal, May 15, 1980). He spoke out against the elitist librarians who would not stock Harlequin romances, though conceding, “It's the human heart, not the mind, that Harlequins touch.” Firmly on the side of the common reader, he concluded, “It is questionable practice to limit any public library's collection to material of a certain quality if a large percentage of the community does not find what it wishes to read in that collection.” Library Journal received a lively spate of letters, supporting his thesis but objecting to his tone of “humanistic tolerance” as contemptuous of the genre readers.
          The puritan ethic maintains all books must be useful. The hedonist holds if the books entertain, their justification lies therein. The poor librarian who wants to satisfy all the library's patrons may wish a plague on both philosophies, being, indeed, too poor to quiet both. What now bothers librarians is economics, not ethics—how to stretch increasingly inadequate budgets to cover both the useful and the entertaining. To the comment, “Let 'em buy paperbacks,” the conscientious public librarian replies that the library should supply what the patrons want, knowing, sadly, that economics will frustrate desire.
          Dissension among public librarians is by no means quiescent. Richard Hoggart, reviewing in the TLS (December 30, 1977) three books on the public library in Great Britain, noted that foes of the nineteenth-century Public Libraries Act said, “That the public libraries would be in the main ways of providing cheap fiction at public expense . . . [and] to establish them would encourage laziness among the working class (especially through the reading of cheap fiction).” The apologists for buying cheap fiction in the public libraries could not call such fiction improving nor valuable but insisted libraries must be catholic in their buying: “Librarians must therefore cater for people's 'recreational' needs. They should not be highbrow, snooty, elitist in their attitudes to popular fiction. A further turn of the screw resurrects the old and highly dubious 'ascending ever upwards' model, by which readers are assumed to move naturally from virtually pulp-fiction to George Eliot.” Hoggart's conclusion is against “cheap fiction”: “Librarians do not have to be what is fashionably called 'narrowly moralistic'; but they cannot escape the need to make judgments of quality. Their first duty is still to the idea of 'self-improvement,' with that phrase very imaginatively interpreted. To do less is a form of false democracy, which the whole history of the library service itself should call into question.” When Hoggart addressed the Centenary Conference of the United Kingdom Library Association of the “Uses of Literacy,” he stated bluntly, “The public's self-improvement, not its recreation, is the librarian's first concern.” Wilson Library Bulletin (February 1978) reported, “The conferees were aghast at this 'imposition of middle-class values' and the moral superiority involved in 'censoring' the meretricious.”
          Assuming the attainment of that Elysium in which educate and recreate coexist tranquilly, the librarian still faces problems both in maintaining a satisfactory stock of genre fiction and in displaying it to assure optimum use by patrons. That a goodly part of genre fiction is now in original edition in paperback, or available for replacement largely in paperback reprint, complicates the problem.
          The common practice for display in public libraries is to segregate genre fiction, grouping by type on labeled shelves. (Bookstores, also, tend to group genre fiction, particularly paperbacks.) Those books usually labeled are westerns, mysteries, or thrillers, and science fiction in hardcover and paperback. Paperback romances are also separately shelved. Some libraries color-code labels on the books, color-code the catalog cards, or maintain card files by subject or type of genre. Many libraries dislike labeling and segregation, as some patrons will look only at labeled shelves, while others never use them. Books, then, that might be of interest to both patrons will never be seen by them. Few libraries can afford, or find manageable, to have copies on both the genre shelves and within the general fiction collection. An additional hazard is that it is often tricky to label a novel within the correct genre. Shelving all fiction, including genre, in one alphabet makes it difficult for the fan to find desired genre titles without knowing the author. Labeling by genre and interfiling within the general fiction collection is disliked by the genre fan, who wants the easy access of a separate shelving, and may offend the fiction reader who objects to labeling as denigratory.
          No solution will please everyone. David R. Slavitt, writing in American Libraries (November 1973), takes a realistic view of what is published and readers' tastes in “Trash: Most Novels Are Trash. Most Books Are Trash. But There Is a Delight in Trash Heaps.” However, in responding to a letter in the January 1974 issue, he said that segregating genre fiction on library shelves (represents a judgment on the books—and not a flattering one.” Pyke Johnson, Jr., a publisher, had an illuminating stay at the Orange, New Jersey, Public Library, observing how a public library functions. The story appeared in Publishers Weekly (March 28, 1977) under the heading “What Publishers Should Know About the Public Library . . . A Book Editor's Firsthand Report.” The librarian wanted the publishers to do the labeling: “He would like to see categories printed on the spine. And at Orange he has solved the problem for himself by having small stickers reading “ 'A Man's Book,' 'Gothic,' a 'Regency' placed on the spines of appropriate titles.”
          Unless genre fiction in paperback is cataloged, with or without binding, expediency leads to display of the books in a somewhat haphazard and uncontrolled manner. The stock proves transitory, and no basic collection is formed. That a good basic collection is desirable is determined by the library's degree of commitment to serving the genre fiction reader: a reader who discovers an author and wants all the author's titles, or a reader of omnivorous tastes who seeks everything ever published in the genre.
          Selection of genre fiction for public libraries is fairly uncritical. One public library in England reported buying them “by the hard” from a dealer who specialized in review copies, expending 8% of his book fund for these books and providing over 20% of the books on the shelves. The number of genre titles in hardcover published each year is not beyond the means of most libraries. Paperback genre titles are becoming an increasing part of the collections. A survey reported in Publishers Weekly (October 9, 1981) said up to 30% of public library budgets were spent on paperbacks. Libraries have found that circulation increases with the paperback stock (readers evidently like the small size and light weight) and, on a per title basis, they have higher circulation than hardbacks. Librarians also “complained that the quality of hardcover books has deteriorated so much over the years that some paperbacks are now as durable as hardcover. Thus, paperbacks often give them more use per dollar.” These relatively inexpensive paperbacks, then, are purchased with minimal selectivity, processed with minimal records, shelved with little order, and allowed to wear out or be lost without lamentation.
          There is still the problem of which, if any, of these paperbacks should be bound, cataloged, and made part of the permanent stock—some of the titles are, after all, original works, however awkward the format for libraries. Replacement copies, if the library wishes to maintain a good collection, are often available only in paperback. The publishing trend toward trade (i.e., large) format paperbacks for some mass-market paperbacks is helpful. Also, many genre titles are being reprinted in hardcover large-print editions.
          Reader advisory service is one of the most interesting and demanding functions in a library, drawing on the librarian's background of reading and awareness of current publishing. In its issue of November 15, 1977, Library Journal published “Day-One Basics for M[aster of] L[ibrary] S[cience]”; of the 36 basics, two pertained to reader advising—”. . . to utilize knowledge of books and authors in order to assist and advise patrons in selection of appropriate reading material in a variety of genres and subject areas” and “to write clear, concise reviews and abstracts of library materials in order to provide guidance in their use.”
          To provide guidance in genre fiction, librarians should, ideally, be readers of the genres. Few libraries, however, will have a staff of genre fiction addicts, indeed being blessed if one staff member is addicted to one genre. Therefore, the fan asking for assistance in selecting books in a genre too often knows more than the librarian being queried. As patrons have a touching faith in the omniscience of librarians—they have ready everything!—subterfuge is necessary.
          Book lists in the form of bookmarks, broadsides, or pamphlets are provided by many libraries. These may be lists of authors by genre or subject, or authors and titles, with or without annotation. A well-annotated book list is a delight, and a librarian adept at writing annotations is a treasure. Other devices are to retain the book jacket with its blurb or tip annotations from review journals (Booklist, Library Journal, Virginia Kirkus, Book Review Digest, West Coast Review of Books) or any available source into the book.
          Special index files are made by librarians, granted staff enough and time. The ingenuity and interest of the compilers are suggested by a few examples: annotated list of series and sequels; detective genre file by name of detective; place name or locale file; professional background or subject file; permanent file of reviews, indicating genre or subject assigned to the book; “Women Will Like” or “Men Will Like” files of authors and titles.
          A ploy too seldom used in libraries is to conjoin borderline or background books for genre fiction. Historical novels and historical or period romances, the historical novel of the West and the western, adventure novels and nonfiction adventure could be combined on lists or on the shelves. Displays of popular background books may catch the fancy of a genre reader—history and social customs; illustrated histories; books on the genre in motion pictures or television; biographies of characters often appearing in historical romances; science and space exploration; books on dragons, unicorns, fairies, magic, and the like.
          There is, however, nothing so gratefully received by the patron as an interested common reader librarian. Readers love to talk about their reading. A librarian who can enthusiastically exclaim, “But haven't you read . . .” is the desired advisor. Publishers have long known that the popularity of books is made by word of mouth. By listening when patrons pour out their interests, a librarian may learn more than is wanted but will be able to amaze the next patron with the same interests. No one likes to be told what to read but will listen with interest when the discussion is on the enjoyment of reading a certain book. The librarian “is a missionary. He wants to communicate to others the enormous pleasure he has had from personal discovery” (Frank M. Gardner, “To Fill the Empty Mind,” Library Journal, October 1, 1964).

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