Excerpt from The Library World, Vol. 2: A Medium of Intercommunication for Librarians; July, 1899, to June, 1900

From these factors was evolved the idea of the indicator, which by and by took practical shape as a machine for saving the legs of the librarian and his assistants from frequent and fruitless climbs to high shelves, and enabling readers to satisfy themselves that books were actually in use. The original indicators were intended only for show ing, by means of numbers, the novels which were out or in, but since then a considerable number of libraries have applied them to all classes.

The Indicator, as a library tool is almost entirely an English appliance, and it is somewhat curious, considering their love for, and extensive use of, mechanical contrivances, that American librarians have never taken kindly to it. Various abortive experiments have been tried at Boston and elsewhere with indicating devices of several patterns, but the almost universal opinion of American librarians is against indicators in any shape or form. Practically this holds good as regards Colonial and Foreign libraries generally, though one' or two Canadian and Australasian libraries have adopted indicators of an English design. In England, on the contrary, the invention of these appliances has gone on unremittingly for thirty-six years, and there must be at least twenty different varieties, each possessing a certain amount of merit or ingenuity, and many claiming to be the best, or the possessor of some point of' superiority over. All others. But it is not quite accurate to assume, as has been done by various writers, that the indicator system is used almost universally in English Public Libraries, or is even to be found in a majority of them. As a matter of fact, only 166 places, possessing Public Libraries under the Acts, have adopted indicators, out of 376 towns or districts where Public Libraries exist, so that, in reality, there is still a plurality of 210 places in the United Kingdom which do not use indicators, though some of these are not yet organised. This statement is made to correct a very common belief, which at one time I shared myself, that practically every British lending library was worked by means of some form of indicator. There is another point which should not be lost sight of in estimating the popularity of different charging systems, and that is the fact of the use of the indicator being restricted in many places to Fiction only. Some librarians use indicators only as indicators and not as registers, while in some towns indicators will be found in cen tral libraries and not at the branches, or vice versa. Again, some of the very largest and most used Public Libraries in the country - Man chester, Liverpool, Bradford, Salford, &c. - do not use indicators at all. It is, therefore, quite evident that this particular system is not so universal as our American cousins and others assume.

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