The Library and Society Reprints of Papers and Addresses
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The Different West as Seen by a Transplanted Easterner (1913) (Paperback) - Common
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Libraries of Greater New York: Manual and Historical Sketch of the New York Library Club
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The relationship between the library and the public schools; reprints of papers and addresses
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Arthur Elmore Bostwick was an American librarian, writer, and editor. He was chief of the circulation department of the New York Public Library.
Background
Arthur Bostwick was born on March 8, 1860, in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States, to David Elmore Bostwick, a physician, and Adelaide (McKinley) Bostwick. He was apparently an only child. His father, a direct descendant of Arthur Bosticke, who emigrated from England before 1639 and settled in Stratford, Connecticut, died when Arthur was twelve years old. His mother, determined that the boy should not want for a full education, supplemented her means by taking in lodgers, renting her house in summer, playing the organ in a local church, and teaching music.
Education
Having attended Litchfield Institute, Arthur went on to Yale.
Following his graduation he stayed on at Yale to take a Ph. D. in physics (1883), studying in part under the younger Josiah Willard Gibbs.
Career
In his senior year Arthur Bostwick surved as an editor of the Yale Daily News, organist of the Berkeley Association, and Class Day historian. Bostwick came to library work only after careers in science and publishing. Disappointed in his hope for a permanent appointment at Yale, and having received several noncollege offers, he chose an instructorship in physical science at the Montclair high school. After two years (1884 - 1886), fully convinced that teaching "a lot of kids" was not for him, Bostwick embarked on editorial work, at double his Montclair salary, by joining the staff of Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, with which he remained until 1888. Literary work for Henry Holt & Company followed, mainly the Young Folks' Cyclopedia of Games and Sports (1890), most of which he wrote himself, although his cousin John D. Champlin was joint author. Successively Bostwick became assistant editor of Forum magazine (1890 - 1892); associate editor (1892 - 1894) of A Standard Dictionary of the English Language, undertaken by Isaac K. Funk and Adam W. Wagnalls upon the expiration of the copyright of Webster's classic; and scientific editor of the Funk-founded Literary Digest, a position he was to occupy for more than forty years (1891 - 1933).
In 1895 Bostwick entered the world of librarianship, beginning at the top as librarian of the New York Free Circulating Library, which boasted William W. Appleton, the publisher, as a founder and chairman of the library committee. Untried in the field, Bostwick quickly displayed an administrative talent which complemented that love of books he was always to consider an important qualification for library service. Although a scholar, he did not share the general view of many men of the time, like John Shaw Billings, that libraries were primarily for reference use. He saw them as instruments of popular education. Under his direction the widely scattered branch libraries, in which he instituted an open-shelf policy, developed impressively.
In 1899 Bostwick accepted the librarianship of the Brooklyn Public Library, recently taken over by the city. He successfully promoted the branch system with open shelves as well as a traveling library, started a children's collection, launched an apprenticeship program, and boosted annual book circulation from about 183, 500 to more than a million. But struggles with civil service red tape made him happy to rid himself of "the Brooklyn incubus" by returning on February 1, 1901, to his former position with the Free Circulating Library, which was about to be merged with the Astor and Lenox libraries to create the New York Public Library. As chief of the circulation department of the new library, whose expansion was aided by a $5, 200, 000 gift for library buildings from Andrew Carnegie, Bostwick supervised the opening of as many as ten new branches at one time, began children's rooms and a training class, initiated cooperation with the public schools, and provided foreign language books for the swelling immigrant population, whose reading needs he met with rare understanding. By 1909 he was overseeing the largest circulation library in the world, with forty-one branches and an annual circulation of more than 6, 500, 000 volumes.
His professional stature was further increased by the appearance of his first book, which William Appleton suggested he undertake in 1908: The American Public Library (1910). A unique general treatise that combined a history of the subject with procedures for librarians, it went through four editions by 1929. In 1909, weary of constant trials with Billings, the New York Public Library's director, who was out of sympathy with the circulation department, Bostwick accepted an offer to head the St. Louis Public Library. "A transplanted Easterner, " as he himself phrased it, Bostwick so came to love St. Louis that he made it his permanent home.
During his years as a practicing librarian, Bostwick poured forth a stream of lucid articles on literature, library economy, and the sciences, physical, political, and social. He also edited series such as the Classics of American Librarianship (10 vols. , 1914 - 1933) and Doubleday's Encyclopedia (10 vols. , 1931 - 1941), delivered lectures, advised on library problems, and preserved a sense of humor. In 1925, invited by the Chinese Association for the Advancement of Education, he visited China to inspect her libraries and recommended the use of part of the Boxer indemnity payment for the improvement and extension of China's public libraries. Bostwick died in his eighty-second year of a heart ailment (auricular fibrillation) in Oak Grove, Missouri; his ashes were buried in New East Cemetery, Litchfield, Connecticut.
Achievements
Arthur Bostwick is best remembered as head of the St. Louis Public Library, which position he held from 1909 to 1938. With his fine administrative and organizational ability, his flair for experiment, his liberal views (he refused to stop the circulation of German books during World War I), and his experienced community-mindedness, he made it a leading educational institution of the city while raising its rank among national libraries. Upon his retirement in 1938 the trustees, in reviewing his achievements, cited among other facts the growth of branches from four to nineteen and of annual circulation from about one million to more than three million volumes.
Bostwick was president of the American Library Association (1907 - 1908).
Personality
Tall, stately, and reserved, Bostwick carried himself with an undeniable air of authority. Bostwick was widely respected for the broad range of his learning - he read French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Quotes from others about the person
"Bostwick looked as if he would send in a riot call if anyone presumed to slap him on the back. " - Keith Kerman
Interests
Fond of music, travel, and parties, Bostwick indulged in bedtime reading of detective stories and was one of the first Perry Mason fans.
Connections
On June 23, 1885, at Carmel, New York, Bostwick married Lucy Sawyer. They had three children - Andrew Linn, Esther, and Elmore McNeill.
