A Fault-Line in Library History: Charles Goss, The Society of Public Librarians, and ‘The Battle of the Books’ in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This paper will commence with a brief professional life of Charles Goss (librarian at London's Bishopsgate Institute from 1897 until 1941), focusing chiefly on his strenuous efforts to maximize public access to literature, information and knowledge throughout his career. It will point out that these efforts have been altogether eclipsed over time, obscured in library history accounts by a reductive preoccupation with Goss's trenchant and outspoken opposition to open access during the so-called ‘Battle of the Books’. A short description of this battle follows, paying particular attention to the ‘ridiculous’ views held by the losing side. This perspective has been neglected in the past largely because victory for open access was, eventually, so complete. Yet an assessment of the arguments of such pro-indicator stalwarts as Goss and some of his fellow professionals in the Society of Public Librarians exposes, among other things, the sheer impotence of those in the profession who attempted to oppose or criticize Library Association practise and management during the late nineteenth century. This paper will state that the frustrating experience of the Society of Public Librarians was merely symptomatic of a wider malaise, a prelude to what would eventually become a deep-seated fault-line in public library history. Put succinctly, there has been an absolute failure to recognize (let alone to accommodate or allow for) the fact that the inevitably narrow and partial interests of the Library Association have alone set the agenda for library history writing for more than a century.