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118 ROBERT L. HANSEN
tion of this spirit into Denmark to the few who could comprehend it
re-mains, probably, when all is said and done, as Steenberg’s first gain. The
remainder we would probably have got all the same someday from
some-where or other, but hardly anyone else would have been so suscepiible to
this spirit and belief, or what name one should give it, and which, in the
end, cannot be dispensed with in any Librarian. And in no other country
had it developed at the time as in America.
From America also came our methods in two of the most important
departments within the inner working of Libraries: Classification of Books
and their Cataloguing. Whilst the method of the latter is copied fairly
truly from American examples, the Classification, as used by the Danish
Public-Libraries is, although principally in accordance with Dewey’s
De-cimal-Classification, nevertheless a strongly worked-out adaptation
here-of for use under Danish conditions, and according to the size of Danish
Public-Libraries. Its incorporation of Dewey’s classes 40 and 80 into class
40 is, besides, an American invention. There afterwards became room for
Geography as a distinct class. Of the other deviations which have
be-come still larger in the last edition (1929), the Geographical and Linguistic
sub-division must especially be mentioned, which, of necessity, must regard
Europé and especially Denmark as the primary groups.
This Danish Decimal-Classification, which is not only used by
Public-Libraries and several Special-Libraries, but also in »Dansk Bogfortegnelse»
and in »Dansk Tidsskrift-Index», has, to a certain extent, been a model for
the Finnish classification and is also used in the Norwegian
»Tidsskrift-Index », although Norway, on the other hand, adopted Dewey’s System fairly
unaltered, which has of t en been regretted.
Before closing my remarks ön this period — abt. 1895 to abt. 1913 —
which really ought to be called Steenberg’s years of study and wandering,
it must be said that there was one thing which Steenberg does not seem
to have learnt in America, namely to tell people that it requires money to
make libraries. But few patrons of the Danish Library Cause were found
and Steenberg has probably believed in the necessity of concealing from
his country-men, that without regulär and fairly ample grants for working
expenses one cannot attain a library equipped in an English or American
way. He was always afraid of applying for the establishment of purely
municipal libraries as found in England, neither does he seem to have
con-ceived the idea of suggesting a municipal library-tax according to American
or English methods. The immediate result of his efforts was certainly the
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