Before Goodreds, the public library helped readers find their next novel: NPR

Before the Internet makes criticisms of books widely accessible, where will curious spirits go find information on the subject of a new novel or a plot?

If you lived in the Los Angeles region, you can reference the revision cards for fiction books from the Los Angeles public library. Opinions, a collection of thousands of files, contain the reflections and opinions of library staff on the new fiction versions that the library has transported. The library system was used from the 1920s and 1980s.

Robert Anderson, who has worked as a librarian at the Los Angeles public library since 1980, says that staff review cards were a practical tool that library staff used to answer specific questions that the public had on various books.

“In the pre-internet days, when you couldn’t just google something, if people called and said:” I heard about this book and I just want to know what it is “, you could remove the card and read them or show them if they were in person,” said Anderson.

Critics, while being a useful public tool, also helped the staff to choose the books that LAPL would order for their shelves. “They have not always written criticism for each book, but it was a major way for the decision to buy, especially for the new authors,” said Anderson. If a staff member examined a book favorably, he was more likely to carry the title and command several copies, he said.

In A recent video Published on library’s social accounts, Anderson describes revision cards and guides viewers through their archives. Although the cards are easily accessible to the public, hosted in large drawers near the reference office of the Central Library, Anderson said that the video, which had been published on Friday, would present most people the collection.

“They are in these drawers, but these are not drawers who have a big label saying:” Read these criticisms of 100 years “”, he said.

Anderson said that the library has always had its full collection of staff exams – the two books rejected and accepted by the library – between the 1950s and 1980s. But he said that the refusals before the 1950s had been thrown just before starting to work in the library. “I think if I had been here, I would have found a box or something to put them and I held them,” he said.

The revolving revision process was simple: on a sheet, the library staff wrote by hand or would type a short synopsis of a book they read and give their personal review. The staff member would then indicate: if he thought that the library should carry the book, how many copies of the book that the library should obtain and other details, such as an evaluation of the “literary merit” of the text. The cards offered adjectives that the critic could emphasize to indicate how history could affect readers emotionally.

For example, for the Virginia Woolf 1925 book library review Mrs DallowayThe critic underlined “healthy”, “pleasant” and “interesting”. Among the characterization of the book by the staff member, Anderson said that he did not know why the writer considered Woolf’s writing – who deals with solitude and other often dark human experiences – to be healthy “, but they did it.”

Other libraries can keep similar examination collections, Anderson said – although it is aware of it – but it noted that the space of the library is often a problem for the housing of the extended physical indices. The San Francisco public library, another large library system in California, for example, does not keep an archive of this type, according to Andrea Grimes, head of the book for book arts and special collections at SFPL. But, she noted, he recorded other old catalogs of cards manufactured by the SFPL librarians.

The Los Angeles public library index of staff review cards is no longer used regularly, Anderson said. But he said that the system now serves as a historical file of the two books, almost 100 years old, as well as cultural views held by the staff of the book library of the book of the time.

“They have become an interesting reflection not only on the books themselves, but on the staff of the library who wrote these criticisms and the attitudes which prevail in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940, on special subjects,” said Anderson. “Just in the short small scriptures on these cards, you can find a lot at the special moment when these criticisms have been written and on people who write criticism.”