imagination.
Nearly all the greatest literature of the world is fiction. The
educational value of the novel is not often questioned.

But don't buy a novel simply because it is popular. If you follow that
line you will end with the cheapest kind of stuff. Some librarians
pretend that they must buy to please the public taste; that they can't
use their own judgment in selecting books for a library which the
public purse supports. Why these librarians don't supply the Police
gazette it is difficult to understand. "The public" would like
it--some of them. We select school committees and superintendents and
teachers to run our schools. We ask them to inform themselves on the
subject and give us the best education they can. They don't try to
suit everybody. They try to furnish the best. Library trustees and
librarian are in a like case. The silly, the weak, the sloppy, the
wishy-washy novel, the sickly love story, the belated tract, the crude
hodge-podge of stilted conversation, impossible incident, and moral
platitude or moral bosh for children--these are not needed. It is as
bad to buy them and circulate them, knowingly, as it would be for our
school authorities to install in our schoolrooms as teachers romantic,
giggling girls and smarty boys. Buy good novels, those the wise
approve of, in good type, paper, and binding; keep plenty of copies of
each on hand; put them where your readers can handle them; add a few
each year of the best only of the latest novels, and those chiefly
on trial (not to be bought again if found not to have real merit) and
your public will be satisfied, and your library will be all the time
raising the taste of the community.

Some books should not be put, at least not without comment, into the
hands of young people. Other books, some people think, should not be
read by young people. Other books, some people think, should not be
in a public library at all. A good course to follow in regard to such
books is to consider the temper of your community and put into the
library as many of them as are noteworthy in a literary way as your
public and your resources permit.

In other departments follow at first the guidance of some one of the
good book lists now available.

Other things being equal, American scientific books are preferable
to those by foreign authors. In all departments select the latest
editions, and, at first, the recent book rather than the older book.

The proportion of books in the