In selecting fiction, get from the older librarians a statement of what are the most popular of the wholesome novels found on their shelves.  A better guide than this it will be difficult to find.  Fiction is of the greatest value in developing a taste for reading.  Everyone should be familiar with the great works of 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 different departments of knowledge must vary greatly in different libraries.  The following is a good general guide: